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| * Lumiere sits down at the table | 15:59 | |
| ignas | hi | 16:00 |
|---|---|---|
| *** Aiste has joined #schooltool | 16:02 | |
| Lumiere | hi | 16:07 |
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| ignas | hi tom | 16:21 |
| Lumiere | morning th1a | 16:22 |
| th1a | good morning ignas, Lumiere | 16:22 |
| jfroche | hello | 16:22 |
| th1a | Hi jfroche. | 16:22 |
| th1a | My power supply seems to have given out on my desktop. | 16:23 |
| th1a | Or at least nothing happens when I try to turn it on. | 16:23 |
| jfroche | happenned twice to me when i had storm in here | 16:24 |
| ignas | th1a: tried pulling out the cord | 16:25 |
| ignas | and puting it back again | 16:25 |
| ignas | and then turning it on | 16:25 |
| th1a | No. | 16:25 |
| th1a | I'll try that. | 16:25 |
| ignas | works 99% of the time for me | 16:25 |
| ignas | it's flicker protection, so that if your PC goes down because of power outage, it won't turn on automatically, so that if you have 5-6 short outages, PC would not get damaged | 16:26 |
| th1a | Hm. No luck. The chassis and power supply are really old now though. All the other parts have been replaced over time. | 16:27 |
| ignas | i see | 16:27 |
| th1a | Guess it is time for the annual "pull it out from under the desk, blow all the dust out and replace what's broken" ritual. | 16:27 |
| Lumiere | hehe | 16:28 |
| Lumiere | thankfully the power supply is cheap | 16:28 |
| th1a | jinty: ayt? | 16:29 |
| jinty | th1a: yep | 16:29 |
| * Lumiere hands th1a a bag of gravel | 16:30 | |
| th1a | OK. let's get underway then. | 16:30 |
| th1a | jinty: How was UES? | 16:30 |
| jinty | pretty cool, met lots of great people | 16:30 |
| jinty | sevilla's incredible too | 16:30 |
| Lumiere | you guys didn't scare ogra too much? | 16:31 |
| jinty | nope, don't think thats possible | 16:31 |
| jinty | but otherwise I spent a lot of time talking with everyone | 16:33 |
| jinty | even discovered why SIS is one of the big things schooltool needs to do | 16:34 |
| th1a | Why? | 16:34 |
| Lumiere | SIS -> SIF? | 16:34 |
| jinty | It was explained to me how essential that was in getting into schools | 16:36 |
| th1a | SIF? | 16:36 |
| jinty | and how much of a bearocratic load it can take off teachers | 16:37 |
| jinty | to be compliant with the informational demands of local govornment | 16:37 |
| th1a | SIS? | 16:37 |
| jinty | well, I think it's called different names in different countries | 16:38 |
| th1a | Student Information System, aka, Management Information System. | 16:38 |
| th1a | What else did you learn? | 16:38 |
| jinty | mostly it was human stuff | 16:39 |
| jinty | seeing people | 16:39 |
| jinty | otherwise I'm 99% certain Zope 3.4 is going into gutsy | 16:39 |
| th1a | That's good to know. | 16:40 |
| th1a | Did you meet Dave Trask and Matt Oquist? | 16:40 |
| jinty | yeh | 16:41 |
| jinty | David I think was going to do your presentation | 16:42 |
| th1a | He offered to. | 16:42 |
| jinty | but eventually that didn't happen | 16:42 |
| th1a | OK... anything else to report from Sevilla? | 16:43 |
| jinty | not much other than what I put in my e-mail | 16:44 |
| jinty | I generally got the impression that people were waiting for a release before even trying to do anything with schooltool | 16:44 |
| jinty | at least those people who wanted to try it out with their local school | 16:45 |
| th1a | I've encouraged that approach, considering the state of the current release. | 16:45 |
| jinty | and who didn't need SIS functionality | 16:45 |
| th1a | I'm getting more excited about having a real release again. It has been a while. | 16:45 |
| th1a | I'm a little confused about the new build system... we are using zc.buildout now? | 16:46 |
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| jinty | well out build system just makes a schooltool egg | 16:47 |
| jinty | that's all | 16:47 |
| th1a | Were we using buildout before ;-) | 16:48 |
| ignas | no | 16:48 |
| jinty | then you need to assemble the eggs into something that you can run | 16:48 |
| jinty | which is what ignas is doing with the buildout stuff | 16:48 |
| jinty | and what I'm doing with the packaging | 16:48 |
| th1a | OK. | 16:48 |
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| jinty | conceptually buildout is similar to apt | 16:48 |
| th1a | jinty: Right. | 16:49 |
| ignas | i just wanted to test whether the egg has everything required, and whether it can run | 16:49 |
| ignas | and make it easier to install pre packaged schooltool for people who want to try out svn version | 16:49 |
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| ignas | now i can actually install schooltool in such configuration that will (i assume) be used in a packaged deb (at least the bits in src) | 16:50 |
| ignas | and see if everything works | 16:50 |
| th1a | OK. Do you make some kind of egg sandbox to try that out? | 16:51 |
| ignas | yes, the buildout thingie | 16:51 |
| ignas | and i had a small script that would replace the egg installed from nightly build, with an egg i just build locally | 16:52 |
| Lumiere | th1a: the st-buildout svn is the sandbox that does it | 16:52 |
| th1a | So it takes care of the sandboxing itself? | 16:52 |
| Lumiere | it takes care of installing the eggs into itself | 16:53 |
| th1a | So I won't pollute my main Python installation. | 16:54 |
| th1a | ? | 16:54 |
| Lumiere | hmm | 16:54 |
| ignas | no | 16:54 |
| Lumiere | it seems to be using the main python installation? | 16:54 |
| ignas | the only problem with it is - your local python installation might polute *it* | 16:55 |
| Lumiere | ah | 16:55 |
| Lumiere | I am trying to find the src | 16:55 |
| ignas | all your python applications etc. won't notice any local schooltool buildouts | 16:55 |
| ignas | but at the moment we have the problem with some ubuntu packages unsolved | 16:55 |
| th1a | What's the problem? | 16:56 |
| ignas | so if you for example have pytz2006 installed - buildouting schooltool will not really work :/ | 16:56 |
| Lumiere | where are all the source files? | 16:56 |
| ignas | and the buildout for schooltool has to workaround docutils package if it is intstalled | 16:56 |
| ignas | Lumiere: eggs/ | 16:57 |
| jinty | ignas: I let some people know about that | 16:57 |
| Lumiere | ic | 16:57 |
| ignas | jinty: i'll talk to j1m about that as well | 16:57 |
| th1a | So the problem is that when you run SchoolTool it will still use the main Python version of the package rather than the local one? | 16:58 |
| ignas | ? | 16:58 |
| ignas | local? main? | 16:59 |
| th1a | Oh... sorry. | 17:00 |
| ignas | oh, i seem to understand you. | 17:01 |
| th1a | main > /usr/lib/etc. local > in the checkout directory. Or maybe I'm still confused. | 17:01 |
| ignas | the conflicts arise not just when using, but when installing as well | 17:02 |
| ignas | so yes, sometimes the wrong package is used | 17:02 |
| ignas | sometimes buildout tries to install your "site-packages" instead of the egg from the internet | 17:02 |
| th1a | Regardless, I can try it out without worrying about polluting the system Python, right? | 17:03 |
| ignas | yes | 17:03 |
| ignas | definitely | 17:03 |
| th1a | OK. Cool. | 17:03 |
| th1a | Does anyone have a concern that this is just going in the wrong direction? | 17:03 |
| th1a | Speak now or forever hold your peace. | 17:04 |
| Lumiere | at this point | 17:04 |
| Lumiere | the wrong direction may be better then no direction | 17:04 |
| th1a | I'll take that as a "no problem." | 17:05 |
| Lumiere | yea | 17:05 |
| th1a | OK... moving on then. | 17:05 |
| th1a | jfroche: How are things going for you? | 17:05 |
| jfroche | going well, worked out the import | 17:06 |
| th1a | Oh, the schedule info? | 17:06 |
| jfroche | got to understand their version of the gradebook | 17:06 |
| jfroche | not yet the courses after the fact that they changed their export | 17:06 |
| jfroche | now i have informations i need to build the gradebook | 17:07 |
| th1a | Excellent. | 17:07 |
| jfroche | i was wondering how deep do i have to go with it | 17:07 |
| jfroche | as deep as it match their wishes ? | 17:07 |
| th1a | Well, we just have to decide a reasonable point. | 17:08 |
| jfroche | ex: they have different "kind" of grade book depending on the level | 17:08 |
| jfroche | i mean not only the view but the terms are different | 17:08 |
| th1a | Hm... maybe you should write up their requirements and send us an email. | 17:08 |
| jfroche | ok i have some of them on Excel | 17:09 |
| th1a | So we can discuss which parts overlap with what pcarduner and ignas are doing. | 17:09 |
| jfroche | this might help to understand their wishes | 17:09 |
| jfroche | ok so i will write up the way they are working with gradebook | 17:09 |
| th1a | Overall I'd rather have one good system that works with part of the school than two that don't quite work for anyone. | 17:10 |
| ignas | th1a: most of the time it's the other way | 17:10 |
| ignas | either 2 that work | 17:10 |
| ignas | or 1 that tries to suit both, but doesn't | 17:11 |
| Lumiere | I think he's trying to say | 17:11 |
| Lumiere | that he wants 1 for part of the school | 17:11 |
| Lumiere | that works really well | 17:11 |
| ignas | oh, about the level gradebook requirement | 17:11 |
| ignas | in that case - yes, starting with 1 type is better | 17:11 |
| ignas | later it can be extended | 17:11 |
| ignas | if there is time | 17:11 |
| th1a | Of course, something that is great for everyone is best, but I've learned about the hazards of that route. | 17:12 |
| th1a | Lumiere: How are things in CanDo-land? | 17:13 |
| Lumiere | not too bad | 17:16 |
| Lumiere | we're working on finalizing the user story list | 17:16 |
| Lumiere | the only official list will be in blueprints@launchpad | 17:16 |
| th1a | I'm going to try out pcardune's new gradebook this week. | 17:18 |
| Lumiere | it is in constant use | 17:18 |
| Lumiere | by jelkner | 17:18 |
| th1a | Excellent. | 17:18 |
| th1a | ignas: Do you want to have a longer chat -- you had some questions last week? | 17:20 |
| ignas | yes | 17:20 |
| ignas | oh | 17:20 |
| ignas | as for what i did ;) | 17:20 |
| th1a | ignas: Yes, sorry. | 17:20 |
| ignas | I began working on the journal for lyceum | 17:20 |
| ignas | i think i will be done with the initial implementation this week | 17:21 |
| ignas | apparently it is quite simple when you don't have to think about WFMC ;) | 17:21 |
| th1a | I learned my lesson. | 17:21 |
| ignas | the egg branch is working, but we should find out whether we want tests working in the packaged egg | 17:22 |
| ignas | and what kind of Person would be the right one to use | 17:22 |
| ignas | i have picked the packages to be included using my own judgement | 17:22 |
| ignas | if anyone wants to help us with eggs/buildout - we need people do checkout the buildout branch and test it | 17:23 |
| Lumiere | ignas: is the lyceum journal anything like cando's journaling system | 17:23 |
| ignas | i guess having instructions somewhere on the web would be nice | 17:23 |
| th1a | Yes... instructions. | 17:23 |
| ignas | Lumiere: no, it's more like Belgium one | 17:23 |
| ignas | Lumiere: journal - gradebook + attendance | 17:24 |
| ignas | Lumiere: Lithuanian terminology | 17:24 |
| Lumiere | ah | 17:24 |
| ignas | oh | 17:25 |
| ignas | Lithuanian open source guys asked whether we could package schooltool adapted to lithuanian schools as a deb package in like 2-3 days | 17:25 |
| ignas | but i am afraid that we can't really do that | 17:25 |
| th1a | Is there a Lithuanian distro? | 17:25 |
| ignas | yes, but a simple deb for any debian distro would be good enough for them | 17:26 |
| ignas | lithuanian distro is Desktop oriented at the moment | 17:26 |
| th1a | Well, they'll get one in the fall. | 17:26 |
| ignas | th1a: no, not really, Lyceum is a bit different from other schools | 17:26 |
| ignas | not much, but still would need work on data importing | 17:27 |
| th1a | Well, data importing is always going to require some tweaking. | 17:27 |
| th1a | OK... did I forget anyone else? | 17:28 |
| th1a | ignas: So do we need to schedule another chat? | 17:29 |
| ignas | we can schedule, or talk right now | 17:29 |
| ignas | the way it's more comfortable to you | 17:30 |
| ignas | convenient i mean | 17:30 |
| th1a | Well, we're here now, so we can just keep going. | 17:31 |
| ignas | ok | 17:31 |
| Lumiere | I'll be back in an hour | 17:31 |
| ignas | th1a: while i know what i want from schooltool, sometimes it seems that i have no idea what are your expectations | 17:32 |
| ignas | what things you consider important | 17:32 |
| ignas | and what direction do you want schooltool to evolve | 17:33 |
| th1a | What directions are you thinking about? | 17:33 |
| th1a | I mean, what kind of directions do you mean? | 17:34 |
| ignas | let's say - how do you think schooltool should be installed, by someone who wants to try it out? | 17:34 |
| ignas | how will people customize it to suit the needs of their schools? | 17:34 |
| ignas | how much are we going to do ourselves, and what parts will be left to schools to implement/configure? | 17:35 |
| th1a | Well, I suppose it is a matter of deciding what is NOT a priority. | 17:36 |
| th1a | I mean, I'm not going to say "SchoolTool should be difficult to install" as a goal. | 17:36 |
| ignas | well - there is one thing "what should we do now", we can agree upon that most of the time | 17:37 |
| th1a | Definitely Ubuntu is a priority. | 17:37 |
| ignas | but sometimes while agreeing on small steps, i seem to lose the sense of direction | 17:37 |
| th1a | I understand. | 17:37 |
| ignas | what being in Ubuntu gives us? | 17:37 |
| ignas | how is it a part of the major goal, having a SIS used and usable by schools | 17:38 |
| ignas | ? | 17:38 |
| th1a | I mean, for the forseeable future, if people want to run SchoolTool in production, we'll probably point them at Ubuntu, because we aren't going to be spending a lot of time writing an installer for Mac OS X. | 17:38 |
| th1a | So in terms of ease of installation, that's one focus. | 17:39 |
| ignas | can people run schooltool in production? | 17:39 |
| th1a | Not yet. | 17:39 |
| ignas | when do you think we should reach the stage of running in production | 17:40 |
| th1a | Maybe in the fall. Definitely in a year. | 17:40 |
| ignas | premonition? ;) | 17:40 |
| th1a | Gutsy+1. | 17:40 |
| ignas | what do you think is missing? why can't we run schooltool in production right now? | 17:40 |
| th1a | A gradebook, attendance, reports, more import tools, general polish. | 17:41 |
| th1a | Usability. | 17:41 |
| ignas | what country should schooltool be usable in then? | 17:42 |
| ignas | because gradebook, reports, and import tools are very specific. | 17:42 |
| th1a | We just have to make it as generally usable as we can and broaden it out as we go forward. | 17:44 |
| th1a | Reports will always be fairly specialized, so we'll need to provide some tools for creating them. | 17:44 |
| ignas | what tools? | 17:44 |
| th1a | But also some reasonable defaults. | 17:44 |
| ignas | how do tools for making reports look like? | 17:44 |
| ignas | what does "generally usable" mean? | 17:45 |
| th1a | Well, just having documentation for doing them with ReportLab or pdftemplate would be a start. | 17:45 |
| th1a | I mean, work in a wide variety of schools. | 17:46 |
| ignas | this is the point in which my vision is different. | 17:46 |
| ignas | i think having a gradebook work for a different schools, or attendance for different schools, or person for different schools | 17:47 |
| ignas | is not very feasible, and very difficult to attain without having a lot of different but precise requirements. | 17:47 |
| ignas | i was thinking of going for "core" and "plugins" mode of operation | 17:47 |
| ignas | having small, simple, and different gradebooks | 17:47 |
| ignas | belgian, Cando, lithuanian | 17:48 |
| ignas | at the moment | 17:48 |
| ignas | polishing them so that they would work first | 17:48 |
| ignas | and only then when they really work, going for something different | 17:48 |
| th1a | I think we envision the same thing. | 17:49 |
| ignas | i haven't seen many "broad" applications, even word processors seem narrow, when you compare them to the reporting/attendance of different schools | 17:49 |
| th1a | Well... there certainly are commercial applications that more or less work for most schools, at least in a given country. | 17:49 |
| th1a | What is the "something different" you refer to? | 17:50 |
| ignas | i don't think "broad" gradebook can be implemented | 17:50 |
| ignas | i don't think "generally usable" is useful | 17:51 |
| ignas | CanDo is very precisely usable | 17:51 |
| ignas | and is very very good at it | 17:51 |
| th1a | Yes, but CanDo's case is much more general than you think. | 17:52 |
| ACSpike[Work] | have you examined the gradebooks in systems such as moodle and blackboard? moodle is pretty widely used and so has probably already hit on a number of different use cases. | 17:53 |
| th1a | Yes, there are certainly existing gradebooks that people find to be useful, if not perfect. | 17:54 |
| ACSpike[Work] | I've never heard anyone claim either of those to be "perfect" :-) | 17:54 |
| th1a | I mean, we've got a few different types of grading we're discussing now, and we've only got a small sample of schools, | 17:54 |
| th1a | but fundamentally there are only a handful of ways to approach grading, which aren't that different. | 17:55 |
| ACSpike[Work] | examining the feature requests and bug reports against moodles gradebooks might be interesting | 17:55 |
| ACSpike[Work] | you can see what people claim they want and what they complain about | 17:55 |
| th1a | ACSpike[Work]: Well, at this point we're trying to stay focused on the needs of the specific schools we're working with. | 17:56 |
| ACSpike[Work] | oh, well from a bystanders perspective you are flipping back and forth a little between specific applicability and general applicability | 17:56 |
| ignas | th1a: so if to concentrate our effort on some moderately large country, we have actual experience with (US for example) | 17:57 |
| ignas | we need | 17:57 |
| ignas | Gradebook(US), Attendance(US), Usability testing, improvement | 17:57 |
| ignas | Polish? (what is included)? | 17:57 |
| ignas | Reports (pdf? html with print CSS?) | 17:58 |
| th1a | ACSpike[Work]: Yes... the tension between the two. | 17:58 |
| ignas | from the technical side: | 17:59 |
| ignas | Pluggability on the database level. | 18:00 |
| ignas | Year to year transition. | 18:00 |
| ignas | Installation and customization by users. | 18:00 |
| th1a | Yes... year to year transition is huge. Forgot about that. | 18:00 |
| ignas | Generation scripts for different plugins. | 18:01 |
| ACSpike[Work] | I hate the year to year transition around here | 18:01 |
| ignas | Integration with existing systems. | 18:01 |
| ignas | Import of timetables, persons, groups, courses, sections etc. | 18:01 |
| ignas | ACSpike[Work]: how do you do it? | 18:01 |
| th1a | ACSpike[Work]: We don't, yet. | 18:01 |
| ignas | Levels, and all the logic around them. | 18:01 |
| ACSpike[Work] | well, we're a college | 18:02 |
| ignas | th1a: the Gusty +1 is when? | 18:02 |
| th1a | A year. | 18:02 |
| ACSpike[Work] | one of our main issues is that different people aren't always in the same year | 18:02 |
| ACSpike[Work] | and summer session has tended to overlap with the fall semester in the past | 18:03 |
| th1a | ignas: I'm not sure where you're going with this. | 18:03 |
| ignas | th1a: taking all the tasks that should be done, and trying to fit with resources we have. | 18:03 |
| ACSpike[Work] | so we aren't really transitioning between years as much as semesters (trimesters if you want to get picky) | 18:03 |
| ACSpike[Work] | gradeshools probably dont' have it as bad | 18:04 |
| th1a | ignas: Well, nothing has changed. | 18:04 |
| ignas | now that i have at least some idea of the velocity. | 18:04 |
| th1a | This is why I'm trying not to make a lot of visionary statements. | 18:04 |
| ignas | th1a: why? | 18:04 |
| th1a | You've got enough on your plate as it is, to make SchoolTool work at Lyceum. | 18:05 |
| ignas | how can you make short term decisions without a long term plan? | 18:05 |
| ignas | how can you create a product, without everyone on the team knowing how is it going to look like in the end ? ;) | 18:06 |
| th1a | Well, I can't tell you what a Lithuanian gradebook should look like. | 18:07 |
| ignas | yes, but you should have an idea what the word "deployed" means | 18:07 |
| th1a | I think part of the problem is that your standards are so high. | 18:08 |
| ignas | and you have your expectations for pluggability, installability, ease of use for schooltool | 18:08 |
| th1a | Which is great, but it can cause paralysis. | 18:08 |
| ignas | how? to whom? | 18:09 |
| th1a | I mean, we'll be better off shipping something that works SOMEWHERE than not shipping something. | 18:10 |
| ignas | yes, but it is better to know where that SOMEWHERE is, before shipping | 18:11 |
| th1a | But more to the point, the market is full of educational administration tools that don't quite fit and are impossible or VERY expensive to modify. | 18:11 |
| ignas | my first SOMWHERE is Lithuania | 18:11 |
| th1a | ignas: Yes. | 18:11 |
| th1a | We've got Lithuania, Belgium and Arlington, Virginia. | 18:11 |
| ACSpike[Work] | th1a: is that a problem with the tools or the market? ie, every school has bewhilderingly different rules of operation | 18:12 |
| th1a | ACSpike[Work]: This is one reason why open source makes sense in this area -- customizability. | 18:12 |
| ACSpike[Work] | wholeheartedly agree! | 18:13 |
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| th1a | One underlying issue here, I think, is whether or not SchoolTool/Zope 3 is just too difficult and obscure for people to modify locally. | 18:13 |
| ignas | for schools - yes | 18:14 |
| ignas | schools don't have admins, nor programmers | 18:14 |
| th1a | But we'll have lots of interest from larger government entities. | 18:14 |
| ignas | we have a lot of people expecting, but not many capable of writing a functional test even | 18:14 |
| ACSpike[Work] | and that would be an excellent environment for independent contractors to grow up around | 18:14 |
| th1a | ACSpike[Work]: Yes. I think we're at the point where we don't know if ST is too tough for that to happen easily, though. | 18:15 |
| ACSpike[Work] | oh, really? | 18:15 |
| ACSpike[Work] | is that possible? | 18:15 |
| ACSpike[Work] | I still haven't gotten into it, but I've been blaming time. | 18:16 |
| ignas | that's why i think plugins are very important | 18:16 |
| ignas | look at moodle plugin page | 18:16 |
| th1a | ignas: I agree completely. | 18:16 |
| ACSpike[Work] | please don't follow the moodle model too closely :-) | 18:17 |
| th1a | I'm really not sure where we are disagreeing. | 18:17 |
| th1a | If we are. | 18:17 |
| ignas | th1a: we are disagreeing on the amount of work that can be completed in the given amount of time, and on what is the priority, and what it means to focus. | 18:18 |
| th1a | Well... we went so far as to write up a little letter of intent about the scope of the work with Lyceum and when it would be done. | 18:19 |
| th1a | Your first priority is to do that. | 18:19 |
| th1a | Secondarily, we need to have some kind of release in Gutsy. | 18:20 |
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| ignas | th1a: i just think it would be more feasible to have a web based timetable for a lot of schools, that integrates with their LDAP, or some other student registry, has a way to go from year 2007 to year 2008, and _maybe_ even a few different gradebook plugins, with the same UI we have now | 18:24 |
| ignas | instead of a demo of what might be useful for someone, and a promise that in 6 months we will add some way to switch to another year | 18:25 |
| ACSpike[Work] | what is a " web based timetable for a lot of schools, that integrates with their LDAP"? | 18:26 |
| ignas | LDAP integration means that everyone gets a password and a username in schooltool if they had one in theyr old system | 18:26 |
| ignas | if the school uses LDAP | 18:27 |
| ACSpike[Work] | heh, yeah | 18:27 |
| ACSpike[Work] | so LDAP and webbased timetable weren't related in that statement? | 18:28 |
| ignas | no | 18:28 |
| th1a | The entire strategy this year is to work for actual customers. | 18:28 |
| ignas | yes, i know, but i can either be pushing for "attendance, UI, reports" | 18:28 |
| ignas | or for "switch to another year, integrate better" | 18:28 |
| th1a | You do have some leeway to work with your customer. | 18:29 |
| ignas | i know, but i want to know which of these is more important to schooltool as a project | 18:29 |
| ACSpike[Work] | you guys need more hands | 18:30 |
| ignas | ACSpike[Work]: you think so? ;) | 18:30 |
| th1a | Switching to a new year is the most complicated. | 18:31 |
| ignas | th1a: the difference between schooltool.table and lyceum.journal, between "custom groups" and "complex import script that does the right thing for lyceum" | 18:31 |
| ignas | th1a: you haven't heard about different plugins having different evolution scripts | 18:31 |
| th1a | ignas: I'm not sure what you mean there. | 18:31 |
| ignas | you change schooltool add evolution script 27, change lyceum add evolution scipt 2 | 18:32 |
| ignas | and you have no control over which one of these will be executed first | 18:32 |
| ignas | now add schooltool.timetable, schooltool.attendance to the fray with their own evolution | 18:33 |
| ignas | and ... | 18:33 |
| ignas | well - i haven't found a solution yet | 18:33 |
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| th1a | OK, so that's a long term problem, but not one we have to answer today. | 18:35 |
| th1a | I'm not sure what this means: th1a: the difference between schooltool.table and lyceum.journal, between "custom groups" and "complex import script that does the right thing for lyceum" | 18:37 |
| ignas | small steps | 18:37 |
| ignas | all of these could be done in more than 1 way | 18:37 |
| ignas | and i am doing the choice based on my vision of schooltool | 18:37 |
| ignas | not considering what is important to you, only thinking "hmm, this might be useful to someone" | 18:38 |
| ignas | you see - i can think about pluggability, or not think about it | 18:38 |
| ignas | i can spend my time making it easier for CanDo | 18:39 |
| ignas | or just do what lyceum asked me to do | 18:39 |
| th1a | One thing is that your sense of what is best in these decisions is much better than mine. | 18:39 |
| th1a | Remember, I thought WFMC was a good idea. | 18:40 |
| ignas | if i know where you want to be, i can do my best to get us there | 18:40 |
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| ignas | as i can't ask you technical questions, you have no idea about | 18:40 |
| th1a | We both understand that pluggability and customizability are long term goals. | 18:40 |
| ignas | i need to know where and when do you want schooltool to be | 18:40 |
| th1a | It is pretty much up to you to try to find the right balance. | 18:41 |
| ignas | and what can be dropped if we don't have the resources | 18:41 |
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| ignas | so we would not get into situation "gaaah, but we absolutely need to release the new UI next month" | 18:42 |
| th1a | What is not an option is not having some substantial part of SchoolTool being used at Lyceum in the fall. | 18:42 |
| ignas | yep | 18:42 |
| ignas | another not an option seems not releasing schooltool on ubuntu | 18:42 |
| ignas | one more not an option was - not merging resource booking to trunk | 18:42 |
| th1a | Although that doesn't mean much in particular in terms of functionality. | 18:43 |
| Lumiere | ignas: I think that last not an option was more a "please make sure this work doesn't die" | 18:44 |
| Lumiere | *is back* | 18:44 |
| th1a | So ultimately you just have to make these decisions, ignas, and I trust your judgment. | 18:45 |
| th1a | But we have explicitly set things up this year to make you think a bit less about getting the framework right and more on delivering a product to a customer. | 18:46 |
| ignas | th1a: having 2 other programmers using trunk with different requirements, made me think about framework way more than all the time when we had no users | 18:47 |
| ignas | i just can't say - sorry, you shouldn't have used schooltool these 9 months, as i had some requirements for lyceum to implement | 18:48 |
| th1a | ignas: Has this been at all helpful? | 18:50 |
| ignas | th1a: yes, it was | 18:50 |
| ACSpike[Work] | what is lyceum? | 18:50 |
| ignas | ACSpike[Work]: http://licejus.lt/ | 18:50 |
| ignas | the school i am deploying schooltool for | 18:51 |
| ACSpike[Work] | ah, ok. | 18:51 |
| Lumiere | oh wow... it's an IB school no less | 18:51 |
| th1a | Indeed. | 18:52 |
| th1a | I guess one thing I'd add is to not sweat the functionality or completeness of whatever trunk gets packaged for Gutsy. | 18:54 |
| th1a | I don't have any illusions that it will be complete and production ready in all its parts. | 18:54 |
| Lumiere | imo we should just package what is production ready | 18:55 |
| th1a | My goal for it is pretty much to get the packaging right and be ready for Gutsy+1. | 18:56 |
| Lumiere | and add on other things as secondary packages | 18:56 |
| Lumiere | as we go | 18:56 |
| ignas | Lumiere: imo - nothing except calendar can be considered production ready | 18:56 |
| ignas | but that's just imo | 18:56 |
| Lumiere | cando will be | 18:56 |
| ignas | my standards are high | 18:56 |
| th1a | Well, I'm saying that figuring out how to make the secondary packages behave may in itself take a long time. | 18:56 |
| Lumiere | th1a: yes | 18:57 |
| ignas | CanDo will be a secondary package | 18:57 |
| Lumiere | ignas: that is my assumption | 18:57 |
| ignas | so we will have to figure at least part of it very soon | 18:57 |
| Lumiere | is that CanDo will be installed as schooltool-cando and require schooltool-common to be installed | 18:58 |
| th1a | Let's make it the simplest thing that could possibly work, though. | 18:58 |
| ignas | Lumiere: that part is junty's territory ;) | 18:59 |
| ignas | and we have an idea how to make it work | 19:00 |
| Lumiere | yea | 19:00 |
| th1a | OK. | 19:00 |
| Lumiere | I know it's jinty's area :) | 19:00 |
| Lumiere | th1a: that bag looks heavy | 19:00 |
| ignas | the only problem is - what if you will fix a bug in CanDo, and we will fix a bug in SchoolTool | 19:00 |
| th1a | I'm about ready to take a shower. | 19:00 |
| th1a | My shoulder hurts. | 19:00 |
| th1a | I forgot to drop the bag. | 19:00 |
| ignas | and we both will evolve | 19:00 |
| * th1a drops the bag of gravel. | 19:00 | |
| ignas | we need some Intelligent Design ;) | 19:01 |
| Lumiere | ignas: we may have to rewrite some part of the zope evolution system | 19:01 |
| Lumiere | which would SUCK | 19:01 |
| Lumiere | *hears a M. Shuttleworth rolling in his bed or sneezing* | 19:01 |
| ignas | or write our own evolution system | 19:01 |
| Lumiere | yea | 19:01 |
| Lumiere | there are definately areas where something like SchoolTool is going to come against corner cases | 19:02 |
| Lumiere | that zope corp hasn't thought of | 19:02 |
| Lumiere | database evolution may be one of them | 19:02 |
| th1a | I guess I'm saying that would be something to punt down the road until after the fall. | 19:03 |
| Lumiere | th1a: I think what ignas and I are saying is... we may not be able to | 19:03 |
| ignas | or during EP | 19:03 |
| Lumiere | EP may be a good choice | 19:04 |
| ignas | or not upgrade CanDo nor SchoolTool packages | 19:04 |
| * jinty also heard that schooltool was installed at 300 schools in south africa | 19:04 | |
| ignas | until out next big release | 19:04 |
| Lumiere | ignas: or do no upgrades | 19:04 |
| jinty | the last release that is | 19:04 |
| Lumiere | that change the database | 19:04 |
| ignas | jinty: poor kids :( | 19:04 |
| jinty | yeah, I told them to write mail to the list, or be left with useless databases | 19:05 |
| th1a | OK... I'm going to take a shower. Have a good week, guys. | 19:07 |
| ignas | you too | 19:07 |
| ignas | bye | 19:07 |
| ignas | today is a holiday in Lithuania anyway ;) | 19:08 |
| ignas | yes, one more ;) | 19:08 |
| jinty | ignas: enjoy it!!! | 19:08 |
| jinty | at least for a moment | 19:08 |
| ignas | :) | 19:08 |
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| Lumiere | bbiab as well | 19:13 |
| Lumiere | if anyone sees pcardune, I'll be looking for him later | 19:13 |
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