Re: [cmfsyllabus] comments on CMFSyllabus

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On April 11, 2004 12:00 pm, Bruce D'Arcus wrote:
> I'm new to Plone and just found CMFSyllabus, which could be a really
> useful addition.  I do have a few comments, though, after having
> recently written my own XML schema and XSLT files for course syllabi
> and assignments, an output example of which is here:
>
> 	http://www.users.muohio.edu/darcusb/courses/454.html

Hey, this looks good :) It's quite similar to what CMFSyllabus can do although 
some things are different.

<skip/>

> 1)  Why must one have a syllabus document within a "courses" folder?
> What if one wants the entire site to be focused on one course?

hmm... that's quite unusual. CMFSyllabus is designed to represent Calendar 
*and* Syllabus which means it represents list of items (Courses, Programs 
etc.) 
But if you'd like to have one course per site you can change implicitely 
addable flag for Course in portal_types and have your course wherever you'd 
like (Note that in that case you're loosing Programs and all what is related 
to it).

>
> 2)  I find the categories and interface quite confusing.  What does
> "courses materials" mean, for example?
>
> Perhaps you can compare it to my schema and example syllabus and see if
> there may be better ways?

Course Materials could be : CD-ROM, Book, Magazine, lab kit etc. See 
difference is - we are distance education institution - we don't have 
students coming in - everything they do they do from home. So we have to list 
everything they have to obtain. That actually is reflected in most of 
CMFSyllabus.

>
> 3)  A lot of fields are required, which I do not think is necessary.
> For beginning courses, for example, prerequisites are not applicable.

Some time ago we were discussing possibility of making CMFSyllabus more 
"pluggable" so that core of it has only certain features common for everybody 
or at least 90% of cases. All the rest should be add-ons installed by 3rd 
party products and/or classes derived from base classes (Course, Program 
etc.) which extend schema with needed fields.

> 4)  BTW, I also have an XSLT file to create LaTeX code to then create
> high-quality PDF files.  I wonder if something like that might be
> valuable later?

You've bet it would :) I was planning on making XML-export/storage feature, 
but unfortunately for couple of month now I'm occupied with my direct 
responsibilities (admin job) so CMFSyllabus development stalled.

> 5)  Seem to be missing:
>
>   	-  office location, office hours, lecture location and time, etc.
This is exactly the difference between distance education and conventional 
education institution :) We don't have those. Nice example for class derived 
from Course with extended schema ;)

> 	-  bibliographic support for reading lists (I know, this is hard!)

Actually it's not *that* hard - I was planning on integrating with 
CMFBibliographyAT. Raphael did a good job on it and I'd have to generate 
"publications" database anyway - this is a good point where you want to 
interconnect those.

> 	-  events (due dates for assignments, exams, etc.)

again - that's a difference in how institution does it's business - we don't 
have standard dates and times - student can enroll into course in the middle 
of the month and complete it on his/her own schedule - so this kind of 
feature makes no sence for us. But it would make another perfect example for 
extension product :)

I hope I gave you some ideas on why and what is done in CMFSyllabus. You might 
want to look in TODO to get some rough idea on what is scheduled to be done 
(tip: LOTS :) ). 

If you're comfortable with Python/ZPT and willing to participate I can get you 
account on collective to help with development (CMFSyllabus needs more that 
one developer since one developer == one point of view and incompatibility 
with other institution business strategies)

- -- 
Dmitry Makovey
Web Systems Administrator
Athabasca University
(780) 675-6245
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