Hi all,
New user here. I've dabbled in the distant past, but I'm going to have a serious go at openacs this time. Please bear with my suggestions and questions. I am only making suggestions because I want to see openacs succeed.
*) I made the mistake of installing PG 7.2.3 with OACS 4.5. I found that the calendar package did not work with it. When I reinstalled 7.1.3 and rebuilt everything, the calendar package worked.
*) It is not clear to me where to report problems. The calendar package description page (i.e. at http://192.168.123.1:8000/acs-admin/apm/version-view?version_id=2824)
has broken links to arsdigita, so I'm not sure if I should trust the owner email given on the same page.
*) Is there a system for automatically detecting broken links on openacs sites so such problems would be caught quickly?
*) The documentation is much better but still needs more work for newbies.
*) Backing up a bit to the beginning of my installation experience: when I clicked on "unleash openacs now" and downloaded the distribution, I looked at readme.txt, which referred me to www.openacs.org/4/. Naturally, I was looking for the words "install" and "how to" or "documentation" or something like that. I found it eventually, but you have to make it easier on the newbie. Why not point the user directly to the installation instructions from within the readme.txt file?
*) Initially I somehow skipped the postgres install/prep. Maybe there could be a progress bar at the top of the install pages to show you which step you're on.
*) As I mentioned in an email to Vinod, it would be good if some of the manual installation steps were encoded in a makefile-driven suite of scripts. Most new users, i.e. people who are taking openacs for a testdrive, will not care to deviate from defaults.
*) On https://openacs.org/doc/openacs-4/openacs.html, it is confusing to the newbie that different boot-time startup methods for aolserver and postgres are suggested.
*) In https://openacs.org/doc/openacs-4/nextsteps.html, why not have the backup feature be a built-in "feature" of openacs, to be turned on and configure as desired?
*) The sitemap doesn't list the unmounted applications when I click on "Unmounted applications". The only way to see them is to create a url and choose "new application".
*) I was confused that the "mount" link doesn't seem to do anything, whereas the "new application" link mounts an application.
*) When you add a new application to the sitemap, the lefthand text box is of unclear purpose. I can guess, but I shouldn't have to.
*) Is there somebody who is charged with reading the forums and farming out the suggestions and bug reports to the appropriate authors?
*) It would be good if every package had a development status page. I'm sure that somebody knew that Calendar in 4.5 wouldn't work with postgres, but searching the forums didn't tell me.
*) I am a little depressed at the sluggishness of some openacs operations. There's an awful lot of tcl code being executed, isn't there?
*) As a newbie taking openacs for a spin, my initial interest is in porting a small static site to openacs and then injecting a few features like Calendar, Comments, and Forums. There should be a tutorial for how to do this (and maybe my own experiences will form the basis of one). Secondarily, I will be interested in adding my own database-backed functionality to some of the pages. The Notes tutorial in the documentation functions along these lines, but it is too discursive, and for all its erudition, it doesn't cover some details.
Kevin Murphy
