[OSGeo-Edu] Our proposed educational content and management standard!

Sun Jan 20 20:24:47 EST 2008

Hi Maria,

On Sun, 2008-01-20 at 21:46 +0100, maria.brovelli at diiar-topo.polimi.it
wrote:
> Dear Charlie and Sasha
> congratulations! and thanks for the good work!
Thanks... Just to give credit where credit is due... Sasha did a lot of
this work working with Ned Horning...

> Just few questions: I have the same problem of Helena (some equations  
> into my documents) but in my case they are written with Office or  
> OpenOffice. Is it possible to save the formulas or I have to rewrite  
> them?
Good and important question... It looks like there are Open Office
writer converters to DocBook (http://xml.openoffice.org/xmerge/docbook/)
but it isn't clear to me about formula conversion. 

Sasha's been investigating an Open Office template option to feed the
docbook xml file. I was concerned about making the process as easy as
possible for content developers. But that would be for new content, not
conversions. And he's finishing up his dissertation so he only has a
little more time to work on this. 

If anyone on this list is willing to help investigate Open Office
conversion to Docbook format -- let us know!

Finally -- This is a hard process for us to communicate to you all...
should we try and get the tutorials/template to you for the next step?

Thanks
Charlie

> 
> Me too, I would be pleased to try your template with my stuff in order  
> to see the amount of work that is needed.
> 
> Yours sincerely.
> Maria
> 
> 
> Citando Helena Mitasova <hmitaso at unity.ncsu.edu>:
> 
> > Charlie, Sasha,
> >
> > thanks for working on the framework - I have a few questions:
> >
> > - I will be working on two graduate level courses and that will require
> > to include equations (some may be complex) - I can see that DocBook supports
> > equations, but given the fact that I have most of my texts written in latex
> > and that the structure of DocBook actually resembles latex
> > is there a latex <-> DocBook translator available?
> >
> > - I looked at the pdf example and the html files - do you also have the
> > actual template
> > that I could use to write a sample text to get some feeling for how it
> > will work
> > for the kind of material I need to write?
> >
> > - just a comment - using OSGeo svn is a good idea and it would be good
> > to set it up
> > ASAP so that we can try out the entire procedure (the svn repository
> > could be used
> > to handle also material written in latex that could follow the same structure
> > and would be served as pdf).
> >
> > Tyler - can you arrange for the svn to be set up, or who should we contact ?
> >
> > Thanks a lot for all the hard work - it is great to see the progress
> > and I hope
> > that others will join the effort!
> >
> > Helena
> >
> > Helena Mitasova
> > Associate Professor
> > Department of Marine, Earth
> > and Atmospheric Sciences
> > 1125 Jordan Hall, Campus Box 8208
> > North Carolina State University
> > Raleigh NC 27695-8208
> > http://skagit.meas.ncsu.edu/~helena/
> >
> >
> >
> > On Jan 18, 2008, at 12:43 PM, cschweik at pubpol.umass.edu wrote:
> >
> >> Greetings OSGeo Education list members:
> >>
> >> Happy New Year! 2008's going to be a great year for our group.   
> >> (Note: To keep
> >> this manageable, I'm going to send two emails out. This one is   
> >> about standardize
> >> content and its management, the other will be on broader edu   
> >> committee tasks.)
> >>
> >> Our proposal to standardize OSGeo educational content and version control
> >> management is at
> >> http://wiki.osgeo.org/images/3/3a/A_Proposal_for_OSGEO_Edu_Authoring_Summary.pdf
> >>
> >> The main benefits are (1) a structured writing approach and (2) the  
> >>  ability to
> >> easily create multiple formats from a single source file. This   
> >> second benefit
> >> would allow relatively easy creation of, for example, a book from various
> >> selected OSGeo edu modules, following a similar structure and format.
> >>
> >> This has taken significant research/work on our end. What we want   
> >> from you is:
> >>
> >> 1) Comments or a general vote of OK so that we can implement; and
> >> 2) A commitment from some who have edu material or are writing edu   
> >> material to
> >> follow this standard so we build a searchable database of standardized
> >> educational content over the next 6 months.
> >>
> >> Wouldn't it be **WONDERFUL**, if by October in South Africa we have  
> >>  a searchable
> >> database of standardized content to present? This goal IS   
> >> achievable and would
> >> be a huge leap forward for our group.
> >>
> >> SO,
> >>
> >> - PLEASE REVIEW THE PROPOSAL. COMMENTS APPRECIATED.
> >> - IF IT LOOKS OK I'D LIKE TO SUGGEST A COMMITTEE VOTE TO MOVE FORWARD TO
> >> IMPLEMENTATION.
> >>
> >> We want to move forward. Can we decide by Jan 23rd before I leave   
> >> email for 2
> >> weeks? If we need to set up an IRC to discuss, let me know.
> >>
> >> Thanks all!
> >>
> >> Charlie Schweik (UMass Amherst, education committee chair for any new list
> >> members)
> >>
> >> for
> >>
> >> Ned Horning (American Museum of Natural History, edu committee co-chair; Ned
> >> provided a lot of the initial thinking here)
> >> Alexander (Sasha) Stepanov (UMass Amherst. Sasha did much of the   
> >> research/hard
> >> work here)
> >> Maili Page (UMass Amherst; helping develop/test the tutorials)
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Edu_discuss mailing list
> >> Edu_discuss at lists.osgeo.org
> >> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/edu_discuss
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Edu_discuss mailing list
> > Edu_discuss at lists.osgeo.org
> > http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/edu_discuss
> 
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
Associate Professor 
- Department of Natural Resources Conservation (www.umass.edu/nrc) 
- Center for Public Policy and Administration (www.masspolicy.org),
- Associate Director, National Center for Digital Government (www.ncdg.org)
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003
Phone: (413) 545-1824
Website: http://people.umass.edu/cschweik 