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| ashik | Hi | 07:57 |
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| ignas | th1a_: ayt ? | 16:08 |
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| th1a_ | hi ignas | 17:46 |
| ignas | i went to VGTM lyceum today | 17:47 |
| ignas | I and gintas that is | 17:47 |
| th1a_ | Ah. | 17:47 |
| th1a_ | How'd it go? | 17:47 |
| ignas | we have talked to their Informatics teacher and he was interested in our system, so he will talk to the principal | 17:48 |
| th1a_ | OK... that sounds like a good start. | 17:48 |
| ignas | as he is the one who will actually be our contact with the school | 17:48 |
| ignas | chances are very high | 17:48 |
| th1a_ | Did he teach either of you? | 17:49 |
| th1a_ | It should be a good deal for the school ;-) | 17:49 |
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| ignas | he taught gintas i think | 17:50 |
| gintas | who? | 17:50 |
| th1a_ | The Informatics teacher. | 17:50 |
| th1a_ | Oh, you didn't grow up in Vilnius, did you Ignas? | 17:50 |
| ignas | th1a_: no not really | 17:51 |
| gintas | Well, yes, formally he was my teacher for a year or two. | 17:51 |
| anonymous | **censored** | 17:51 |
| ignas | gintas: Bronius Skūpas | 17:51 |
| gintas | Oops, I'm on log | 17:51 |
| * gintas hides | 17:51 | |
| ignas | at the moment they are interested in Timetabling and Calendaring | 17:52 |
| ignas | with gradebook comming next i think | 17:52 |
| gintas | We agreed to start with imports of some basic data. | 17:53 |
| th1a_ | You're going to have to go into povbot's logs and strike that. | 17:53 |
| ignas | strike what? :D | 17:53 |
| gintas | Hmm, povbot is on fridge? | 17:53 |
| mgedmin | bash.org, here I come :) | 17:54 |
| alga | lol | 17:54 |
| ignas | th1a_: do we have to get the clearance from Mark or i just should get the cooperation going as soon as possible ? | 17:57 |
| ignas | and do we have to do any paperwork for it to become official etc. | 17:57 |
| th1a_ | It would be good to have the terms on paper, just for everyone's satisfaction, but basically, get going ASAP. | 17:58 |
| gintas | For the record (this time), I do know Bronius fairly well. | 17:59 |
| gintas | He's been helping with organising contests and things like that. | 17:59 |
| th1a_ | Also, there is a possibility that Jean-Francois Roche may start working on SchoolTool in Belgium: http://www.jfroche.be/author/jfroche | 18:00 |
| gintas | See http://source.schooltool.org/irclogs/%23schooltool.2006-09-14.log.html | 18:00 |
| th1a_ | We're discussing it now. | 18:01 |
| ignas | th1a_: so we'll actually have 2 client schools at the same time ? | 18:02 |
| th1a_ | He'd be working with Nicolas Pettiaux and Denis Frère at their schools, so actually it would be three. | 18:02 |
| ignas | could you define the role i'll be filling in please ? | 18:03 |
| th1a_ | He was Denis Frere's student. If CanDo is any indication, having students come back and work for their teachers is a good model for us. | 18:03 |
| th1a_ | ignas: Well, it is slightly more complicated if there are two of you. | 18:04 |
| ignas | and 3 schools | 18:04 |
| th1a_ | But yes, do you want to talk about that now? | 18:04 |
| *** th1a_ is now known as th1a | 18:04 | |
| ignas | which means that the school i will be cooperating with will suddenly not be the priority all the time ... | 18:04 |
| th1a | It will be *your* priority. | 18:04 |
| ignas | i see | 18:04 |
| ignas | ok then | 18:04 |
| th1a | You'll each have your own client, essentially. | 18:05 |
| th1a | At least, that's how I envision it. | 18:06 |
| ignas | i can envision that part, what i can't envision is - a convenient way to share the codebase | 18:07 |
| ignas | but we'll solve that when we'll encounter any actual problems | 18:07 |
| ignas | i can envision a few possible solution snow ;) | 18:08 |
| th1a | bzr! | 18:08 |
| ignas | svn is just as fine | 18:08 |
| ignas | but roles, and changes to the core functionality vs local changes | 18:09 |
| th1a | bzr gives me headaches. | 18:09 |
| ignas | why ? | 18:09 |
| th1a | Actually, trying to host bzr branches on LaunchPad gives me headaches. | 18:09 |
| th1a | bzr itself is fine. | 18:10 |
| ignas | i see | 18:12 |
| ignas | as for two additional schools, the downside is that they will add overhead for the guy who will be responsible for the "core" of schooltool | 18:13 |
| gintas | I think that if you want to have three schools, you will need an extra person to coordinate the effort. | 18:13 |
| ignas | the upside is - they will make us do changes in a way that is customizable, thus there will be a common schooltool "core" | 18:13 |
| gintas | I mean a technical person. | 18:13 |
| ignas | not necessarily | 18:14 |
| ignas | just that it will slow down the feature adding pace | 18:15 |
| th1a | Hrm... I don't think it is that severe. | 18:15 |
| th1a | Especially since we aren't starting from scratch at this point. | 18:15 |
| th1a | A lot of what has to be done now is on the level of writing reports, stuff like that. | 18:16 |
| th1a | There isn't a lot of serious programming left. | 18:16 |
| ignas | well actually there is | 18:16 |
| ignas | I don't think we should stick to polishing the surface to suit better instead of adapting to actual needs of the school | 18:17 |
| th1a | I guess we'll find out what needs to be done. | 18:18 |
| ignas | from what i have heard from Bronius already, there are some things they want that will require serious programming | 18:19 |
| th1a | What does he have in mind? | 18:20 |
| ignas | interface or maybe even model for gradebook will have to be modified a lot, the hierarchy of users Teacher/Clerk/Administrator/Manager does not match the way things are performed in Lithuanian schools | 18:22 |
| ignas | they will probably want some extra features for Calendaring | 18:23 |
| th1a | That's reasonable. | 18:28 |
| ignas | so we either work on separate branches and die a painful merging death, or have to coordinate every important change with each other and all three schools | 18:31 |
| gintas | th1a: coordination would indeed be more difficult than it might sound | 18:32 |
| gintas | The obvious problem is that if you wanted to change functionality, you would have to coordinate with the other developer to make sure you were not doing duplicate work. | 18:32 |
| gintas | The unobvious problem is that the other developer would actually have to check with their school to make sure that your changes are OK for them. | 18:33 |
| gintas | And if they're not OK (it is perfectly reasonable for a client to assume that things don't change if a change is not requested), then actually agreeing on the changes might be very difficult | 18:34 |
| gintas | In a perfect world, you would have people from both schools sit at a table and discuss. | 18:34 |
| gintas | This is clearly not possible in our case. | 18:34 |
| gintas | I'm not sure if we want the schools to communicate directly; at least we were not planning for it. | 18:35 |
| th1a | If we can't even create a version of SchoolTool that will work at three schools at this point, we're completely fucked. | 18:35 |
| gintas | It's not a question of three schools. | 18:36 |
| gintas | If we adapt SchoolTool to the Lyceum, hundreds of schools in Lithuania could probably use it. | 18:36 |
| ignas | alga suggests developing all the things as "addons" by only adding hooks to schooltool core | 18:36 |
| gintas | Thing is that three clients for two teams for one product complicates things. | 18:36 |
| ignas | now that i think it might be possible, though more difficult, but possible | 18:37 |
| gintas | Adding hooks sometimes works, and is occasionally very nasty if you need just a small change. | 18:37 |
| gintas | ... deep inside the application. | 18:37 |
| ignas | it is not nasty for a small change, it get's nasty for big changes | 18:38 |
| ignas | as one will have to refactor schooltool a lot in such case | 18:38 |
| gintas | Basically hooks as such show deficiencies of the architecture. | 18:38 |
| ignas | which is good, but takes more time | 18:38 |
| th1a | Well... a) this is all hypothetical at this point and; | 18:38 |
| gintas | Tom, I don't want to stall any plans, but I just want to make sure that you are aware of the problems that could arise. | 18:39 |
| th1a | These problems are basically inherent to trying to write SchoolTool as something that will work around the world. | 18:40 |
| gintas | Serializing the clients would make things a whole lot easier. | 18:40 |
| ignas | and I just want to be sure about things I as a programmer can bravely promise to our new clients | 18:40 |
| gintas | It would also take more time, of course. | 18:40 |
| gintas | There's a tradeoff here. | 18:40 |
| th1a | As far as I'm concerned, the worst case scenario (outside of utter failure by one or both teams) is that we end up in six months with two working version of SchoolTool that have to be merged. | 18:42 |
| th1a | Which wouldn't be ideal, but would be a hell of a lot better than what we've got now. | 18:43 |
| ignas | just that if I say that I will do dedicated work for their school, I want to be capable of fulfilling that promise | 18:43 |
| th1a | Imagine there are two companies selling SchoolTool services. They've got to serve their clients needs first, but they also want to strengthen SchoolTool itself. | 18:46 |
| gintas | The school has some very specific needs, and they want us to help through the whole process. | 18:46 |
| gintas | They even asked about teaching the future users of the system. | 18:47 |
| th1a | Now, there is a priority on focusing on the exising areas of functionality. | 18:47 |
| gintas | In your case the teams would just implement everything as addons. | 18:47 |
| th1a | I don't want you to drop attendance and gradebook and write a library system. | 18:47 |
| gintas | :) | 18:48 |
| th1a | gintas: Perhaps that's how it should be done. | 18:48 |
| gintas | th1a: the problem with that approach is that SchoolTool would not gain much as a platform. | 18:48 |
| th1a | Definitely working directly with teachers and training them is something we'd want you to do. | 18:49 |
| gintas | Some of the addons would be reusable by other schools (especially in the same region), but chances are that they would not be general enough for significantly different use cases. | 18:49 |
| th1a | gintas: Yes, but that's inherent to the goals of SchoolTool. | 18:49 |
| gintas | If we do that, we're basically closing down the development of the core. | 18:50 |
| gintas | There's still a lot to be done for SchoolTool to be usable as is for most schools. | 18:50 |
| gintas | That would mean that they would have to use some specific sets of addons. | 18:50 |
| th1a | I'm looking forward to not working on the SchoolTool core. | 18:50 |
| gintas | That might actually work, but it complicates thing a little. | 18:51 |
| gintas | Me too, but I don't think it's done yet. | 18:52 |
| th1a | It depends on what you mean by "development of the core." | 18:52 |
| th1a | And what the core is. | 18:52 |
| th1a | The UI framework reorganization is pretty clearly core. | 18:52 |
| gintas | Right, that is a bit vague. | 18:53 |
| ignas | core - all existing schooltool modules | 18:53 |
| gintas | I was thinking along the lines of "components that will be used by the vast majority of SchoolTool users" | 18:53 |
| ignas | attendance, gradebook, timetabling, calendaring, skin, app | 18:53 |
| * gintas wants videoconferencing for this stuff | 18:53 | |
| ignas | +1 | 18:54 |
| gintas | Who'll do +100$ ;) | 18:54 |
| ignas | the problem is that the core is too raw and will require significant work to become actually usable for more than 1 school | 18:54 |
| th1a | What do we need for video conferencing? | 18:55 |
| th1a | Is there anything that actually works on Linux? | 18:56 |
| ignas | alga says yes there is | 18:56 |
| ignas | we'd need a couple of webcams | 18:56 |
| ignas | if we want to make core usable by more than one school, we need someone whose responsibility it will become | 18:58 |
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| th1a | Well, let's not get too worked up about it until we have a little more indication that this will definitely happen. | 19:03 |
| ignas | ok | 19:03 |
| th1a | Right now, it is pretty hypothetical. | 19:03 |
| th1a | And I'm not aggressively looking for someone else. Only if it really seems to be the right person. | 19:03 |
| th1a | And the right school, which isn't too easy to find. | 19:04 |
| ignas | i think we can work it out in the end | 19:19 |
| ignas | maybe more schools are even better for schooltool as a framework | 19:19 |
| ignas | if we'll try not to work on the same module of schooltool at the same time it should work out quite well | 19:24 |
| ignas | as the amount of overhead will be kept on the code level communication instead of trying to balance requirements of 3 clients through 2 programmers | 19:25 |
| th1a | Right. | 19:26 |
| th1a | if SchoolTool is Zope, | 19:26 |
| th1a | then POV is Zope Corp., | 19:26 |
| th1a | and another contractor is, say Infrae. | 19:27 |
| th1a | Does that make sense? | 19:27 |
| ignas | maybe, i don't know how Zope works | 19:28 |
| th1a | It isn't a perfect analogy. | 19:28 |
| th1a | Anyhow, I think it will work out. Hopefully we'll have the opportunity to find out. | 19:29 |
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