[OSGeo-Edu] Our proposed educational content andmanagement standard!

[Landon Blake]

I had some of the same concerns that Moritz had.

Most importantly, I agree with this statement about using an open source
XML-Editor. It seems a little hypocritical to have OSGeo using
"non-free" software to produce documentation unless this is absolutely
necessary.

I also find that this type of documentation tool chain works great for
"text based" content, but are not ideal for production of professional
publications for which slightly more complicated layouts are required. 

I think Scribus is a great FOSS tool for publications that require a
little more flexibility in the layout.

Having said that, I will gladly follow whatever standard the group comes
up with, and if that means using Docbook and a non-free XML editor, so
be it. 

It would be nice if we could come up with a standard that worked for the
OSGeo Journal and the Education material, since I hope to continue
contributing to both over the next couple of years.

I think the idea about metadata is a great one! Is there a metadata
standard for educational or technical material?

Landon

P.S. - I've briefly looked at Docbook as a documentation format in the
past, but I haven't used it. Please keep that in mind when considering
my comments.

-----Original Message-----
From: edu_discuss-bounces at lists.osgeo.org
[mailto:edu_discuss-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Moritz Lennert
Sent: Monday, January 21, 2008 1:10 AM
To: cschweik at pubpol.umass.edu
Cc: nedh at lightlink.com; smailiidaho at yahoo.com; OSGeo-edu
Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Edu] Our proposed educational content andmanagement
standard!

Hello,

First of all thanks for all the work !

However, I have a fundamental question: why does OSGeo have to impose 
such a standard ? Almost all types of formats are searchable nowadays 
and we can create a metadata base which contains all the relevant 
information, but why does all content have to be in this format ?

I think we all have varying constraints due to local situations which 
means that we won't always be able to use docbook, but as long as the 
content is available in some source form, this allows people to reuse 
it. In my eyes OSGeo should concentrate on a good collection of 
meta-data on available contents.

The exact toolchain to use for collaborative works is probably best 
decided project by project.

On 18/01/08 18:43, cschweik at pubpol.umass.edu wrote:
> 1) Comments or a general vote of OK so that we can implement; and

Ok for docbook (or latex for that matter, no religion on that - in my
experience they are equivalent for most uses).

However, I don't like the idea of OSGeo actively promoting a toolchain
which contains non-free software, e.g. XMLMind - the fact that you
mention it several times suggests that you have not found a satisfying
free alternative. From their license text, it is not clear to me what 
would happen if one of us used the contents created with XMLMind for a 
commercial consultancy. So, I suggest that if we go down the route you 
suggest, we promote free software in all steps.

I don't have any experience with specific xml-editors (have always used
simple text editors), but some existing related free projects (besides
the obvious candidates emacs and vi or kate and gedit) are (in no
particular order):

http://www.conglomerate.org/
http://www.stacken.kth.se/project/pptout/
http://www.freespiders.org/projects/gmlview/
http://kxmleditor.sourceforge.net/


> 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.

Again, I don't think that a searchable database really depends on the 
format of the material. As I wrote a while ago, for me the collaborative

creation of content and the collection and indexation of material are 
two different issues and should be approached as such.

For my project (french-language e-learning platform for free gis 
software in the context of a 4-month training), I will use what is best 
for the project. If docbook is a reasonable choice amongst others for 
the material, I can commit to choosing it over the other alternatives, 
but if not, I won't.

Moritz
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