[OSGeo-Edu] Some thoughts on the production of educational materialabout FOSS Geospatial Tools

Mon Aug 9 17:05:16 EDT 2010

As identified, making it easy to create good content for authors is more 
important than the format it is stored in. Hence my leaning toward 
OpenOffice.

A template should be provided to authors, so that all content is 
provided in the same format and style. The University of Southern 
Queensland in Australia have gone a long way down this path with their 
ICE product: http://ice.usq.edu.au/

I wish Docbook was more widely accepted, as it is the best format I've 
found for structured text. The best free editor I've found for Docbook 
is XXE: http://www.xmlmind.com/xmleditor/
The deficiency of Docbook is that images need to be stored outside of 
your docbook file.

On 10/08/10 01:17, Landon Blake wrote:
> Simon,
>
> You've given an excellent summary of the options for OSGeo education
> documentation. Let me share some of my own thoughts.
>
> (1) The Latex learning curve can be a real challenge. In my humble
> opinion our selection of Latex as the vehicle for producing the OSGeo
> Journal is one of the main reasons for the delay in the publication of
> Volume 6.
>
> (2) I don't think we are going to get "good clean" HTML out of Open
> Office.
>
> (3) As an author, working in XML is a pain, even with a good XML editor.
>
> For my own written media I found the best solution was:
>
> (1) Write the article in Open Office. This allowed me to take advantage
> of spell check and features like headers and footers.
>
> (2) Produce a PDF from the article in Open Office.
>
> (3) Convert the article text into HTML (by hand) using a web article
> template.
>
> That is what worked for me. I'm not saying it will work for the OSGeo
> education committee. :}
>
> Landon
> Office Phone Number: (209) 946-0268
> Cell Phone Number: (209) 992-0658
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: edu_discuss-bounces at lists.osgeo.org
> [mailto:edu_discuss-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Simon Cropper
> Sent: Saturday, August 07, 2010 10:53 PM
> To: edu_discuss at lists.osgeo.org
> Subject: [OSGeo-Edu] Some thoughts on the production of educational
> materialabout FOSS Geospatial Tools
>
> Hi,
>
> I have been reviewing my personal needs relating to the production of
> educational material about FOSS Geospatial Tools.
>
> To help conceptualise the variety of aspects relating to the creation,
> acceptance, dissemination and acceptance of educational material I
> created the
> following diagram.
>
> In my mind, this superficial analysis identified some interesting points
> for me
> relating to how I expect to prepare and distribute my tutorials. I
> thought you
> may be interested and have listed some thought below.
>
> 1. My personal emphasis will be on workflow tutorials rather than manual
>
> creation. Similar to some of the GIS Desktop Handbooks/Cookbooks touted
> by
> others at various stages.
>
> 2. Three main tasks have been identified: create, maintain and
> disseminate. The
> question is whether any solution to the preparation of educational
> material
> should meet all these needs or just address them.
>
> 3. Creation of material, in my experience, is problematic. Most packages
> are
> difficult to use or require teaching yourself mark-up languages. This
> latter
> issue can put off newcomers getting involved. Focus should be on the
> rapid
> acquisition of content rather than getting bogged down with formatting.
> - OpenOffice Writer is easy to use, familiar and can create PDFs,
> DocBook XML
> and a variety of other formats readily.
> - Lots of HTML editors exist, although variously compliant to W3C
> specifications
> - Latex (e.g. Lyx) is promising as it can create multiple output formats
>
> readily
> - XML Editors like Serna FOSS XML Editor also look promising for the
> same
> reason
> - lots of templates and an easy to use program is essential.
>
> 4. Once written, maintenance is a big issue as some formats are
> problematic to
> read (XML, HTML, RST) or harder to translate than others (PDF, RST).
> Formats/Languages where the text/paragraph format is intermingled with
> content
> have problems when edited.
> - Latex/XML Structured Documents separate the issue of format and
> content.
> Once templates have been created all future contributors need do nothing
>
> except input content. This option also makes for a consistent output -
> as all
> people are required to use the same templates.
> - Templates in OO are not the same as in Latex/XML editors. The latter
> create
> structured documents, whereas OO Writer allows unstructured documents --
>
> something that facilitates diversity/innovation but also creates
> problems with
> ongoing maintenance. So templates in OO is really about ensuring all the
>
> appropriate data is supplied rather than formatting and standard looking
>
> output.
> - Free XML Structured Document Editors are not common and only a few
> have
> suitable features to make content creation easy. The only program I
> would be
> happy using is a free version of a commercial product - it is always
> unclear
> whether these packages will remain freely available into the future.
> - LATEX looks promising but templates creation is not intuitive and Lyx,
> the
> most promising option, is very math/formula oriented. The GUI interface
> an be
> a bit off putting.
>
> 5. Dissemination is dependant on the format created.
> - If OO is used to create PDFs then these can just be dumped to a
> repository
> similar to what already exists on OsGeo. OO can also save in HTML and
> DocBook
> XML. The latter could be a useful storage medium for maintenance and
> derivatives.
> - Ideally though the repository should aim to categorise documents into
> workflows and provide all relevant information (e.g. PDF,
> OpenDocumentText file,
> data) for the various packages out there. The OSGeo repository is
> limited in
> this extent, although it can be filtered.
> - if Latex/XML/OO is used to create HTML, this can be inserted into a
> CMS or
> website for traditional presentation. PDF/ODT/Text as required for
> inclusion
> onto CD and online document repositories. All these packages allow for
> output
> in various formats. OO is probably the most widely used and familiar
> product.
>
> 6. Of course there are traditional CMS or Blogging Software (e.g.
> Wordpress or
> Joomla). Despite being relatively easy to create documents, content
> stuck in
> online databases like MySQL is difficult to review, export, disseminate,
>
> maintain, etc. This analysis excludes these systems as suitable
> solutions to
> my needs.
>
> Whatever the system used, it needs to be easy to create, maintain and
> disseminate the material, and have acceptance of both the FOSS GIS
> developers
> and users alike.
>
> The options I am toying with at present are using Open Office Writer or
> Lyx/XML
> Editor to create content and posting the content (PDF, source, data)
> directly
> to a webpage. I have not been able to locate a suitable web-based FOS
> Document
> Management System (DMS) that provides public access, manages PDFs,
> source files
> and data as related items and can present the data in various
> taxonomies.
>
>
> Anyone have any other issues that you think I should consider please let
> me
> know.
>
> Anyone with experience in using Serna [1] or Lyx [2], or have a suitable
>
> template/s I can try I would be very interested in hearing from you.
>
> Anyone know of a good DMS I would be very interested to hear about it.
>
> [1] http://www.syntext.com/downloads/serna-free/
> [2] http://www.lyx.org/Home
>
>
> (C) Simon Cropper 2010. Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0
> Australia
>    

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