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

[Arnulf Christl]

P Kishor wrote:
> 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.

For what its worth - I very much support this suggestion.

Regards, Arnulf.