teaching material format (was Re: [Fwd: Sorry can't make it])

[P Kishor]

Charlie Schweik wrote:
..
> on Linux. This is probably pretty minor. But I also ran into the problem
> that the MassGIS website offers downloadable shape files in a zipped
> executable, and extracting them on Linux is a bit of a headache.

http://www.info-zip.org/pub/infozip/UnZip.html

> So this
> has scared and confused them a little. Moreover, I don't know what I am
> headed for in terms of platform differences in the future as I move
> toward GRASS. Certainly I'll find out over the next 6 months. But I
> raise this because I am developing first-drafts of modules and want to
> know if the group feels various education modules need to have different
> versions written for FOSS GIS software running on different operating
> systems.
>
> So -- Should modules written be platform independent? Or should we focus
> on one operating system platform to start? Or is this generally not a
> concern?

my approach is to be as platform neutral as possible. The way to do
that is to use as lower a common factor as possible. For me, text
files are the best. The next best is CSS compliant html. You get all
the benefits of text, and readymade renderers (we call them browsers
;-) ) on almost every known platform.

There is absolutely no reason why teaching materials couldn't be made
on and for a wiki. All binary files would be only the data and other
software dependent entities.

Open Office is FOSS alright, but it is also slow as all heck, and
requires, well, requires Open Office to be able to see it. If it is
just textual teaching material, I tend to stay with wikis.


-- 
Puneet Kishor