Forum .LRN Q&A: Even Management Package

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Posted by Neophytos Demetriou on
Is this the same package that is available under the contrib directory. AFAICS, contrib/packages/events is a port from ACS 3.x. Are there any plans for releasing the dotLRN package? What is the status?

I've tried to search the forums but all I found is that it is said to be sloan-specific and probably not useful for a wider audience. Since, my interest in this package is purely experimental, I would greatly appreciate to have a copy. Could someone upload it into the file-storage or something?

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Posted by Neophytos Demetriou on
The title is misspelled in my previous message. I mean "Event Management Package".
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Posted by Jarkko Laine on
Neophytos,

AFAIK Collaboraid uses events package too, not for dotLRN but for their own site. You might ask Lars or Peter for a copy.

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Posted by Neophytos Demetriou on
Jarkko, AFAICS collaboraid uses the ACS 3.x port and not the dotlrn package. The ACS 3.x port is available in contrib/packages. I'm looking for the dotlrn event management package.
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Posted by Don Baccus on
The Sloan-sponsored package hasn't been completed.  I'm scheduled to do this in the next month.  Sloan and I decided it was more important that I spend time making sure the first .LRN release happened in reasonable time.  We mothballed work on this package for this reason.

It will be quite Sloan specific in the sense that it's tied to their business procedures regarding processing of event fees, cancellations and all that.

No, I don't intend to release the code until I'm satisfied with it and Sloan's satisfied with it.

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Posted by Don Baccus on
A little more explanation ...

I used acs-workflow to encapsulate the processes I describe as being fairly Sloan specific, but ... the result convinced me that acs-workflow was too complex to use in everyday cases.

So Lars and I sat down and talked about workflow last June in Amsterdam.  I thought it would be one of those talks where I'd politely criticize acs-workflow while taking pains not to hurt Lars's feelings, but it turned out he'd reached the same conclusion on his own and we had a lot of ideas in common as to what an easier, simpler workflow package would look like.  We agreed, for instance, that Finite State Machines would suffice for the vast majority of workflows we'd use in OpenACS and would be easier to work with for the majority of programmers, most of whom don't know Petri nets.  PL/[pg]SQL-only callbacks were, we agreed, a mistake.  I could go on but let's just say it was a very fruitful meeting.

Anyway ... the events package is messy for that, among other reasons which I won't go into here.  I'm not interested in releasing it in its current state because frankly, it just sucks too much and I don't like airing my sucky code in public, just my not-so-sucky code.

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Posted by Lars Pind on
Don,

Please remind me, what's the status of this Sloan events package?

Is it going to build on the contrib/packages/events package?

/Lars

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Posted by Janine Ohmer on
Don may or may not see this right away, so I'll answer for him and he can jump in when he does see it.

We ended up abandoning the Events package described above.  Don is going to spend some time polishing the contrib package instead, but he has left that task on hold until his 5.0 work is completed.

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Posted by Lars Pind on
That's good. We'll be needing the events package for a client shortly, and that means that if we and Furfly both build on the contrib version, we'll all be pulling in the same direction.

Cool.

/Lars

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Posted by Alfred Essa on
We have decided not to impose any Sloan-specific requirements for the event management package. We want this to be useful package in OpenACS for the entire community and, therefore, will let Don take the lead on functionality and implementation.