On Sat, 28 Apr 2001 10:05:35 Georg Lehner wrote:
...
>That's why I still get interested in GNUe's form module. It seems to
>advance, and it has the advantage, that it is designed to support any
>form-rendering client you can imagine.
Hi Georg,
I think if you are willing to build custom clients, then any form-rendering client
that you can imagine can be built. :-) Reliance on "custom" clients is one of the
weaknesses of GNUe that I previously listed. There are existing text-based clients
such as lynx, gopher, etc that are perfectly fine to run on any 386 PC. I am not
against all customized clients - but I think they do incur additional development /
deployment / training costs.
>Especially there should be a
>ncurses client. So the "buisness logic" under the hood is always the
>same, the forms are always the same, but you can choose the form's
>presentation according to you hardwares capabilities.
This is fine but why not just use HTML where there are existing "clients" that work in
text-mode and graphics mode?
>I suppose there should/could be a forms translator beetween OIO and
>GNUe-Forms (both are XML).
This should be quite easy to do. When there are sufficient number of forms for each
system, then a translator will likely be built.
...
>places where the kids go
>to play Nintendo in the barrio, so they get the oportunity to get used
>to (OSS) computing at the same cost of the game.
I am not sure this will work. Games are far more fun for most kids than text-based
Linux. :-) You will have to pay most people to use text-based Linux.
If you pay the kids to write software, it may be different. But then, who is going to
pay you for the text-based software?
>Any ideas? What about the provider side of the hardware?
I keep saying this but no one seems to agree. Access to hardware is not the problem. I
have seen too many giga-megahertz PCs being used to type letters and play solitaire.
Granted getting any PC to many parts of the world remains very hard, planning an
education/dissemination program will have to include much much more than getting the
PCs. PCs are just like any other tool. If the purpose is to entertain the young people
in the barrio, importing used Nintendo may be more effective. After that, perhaps you
can set up a training program for Nintendo games programming. :-)
This is not completely off-topic since this may have been the reason why medical
information systems have been slow to replace paper charts. It is more useful to give
the users what they want than to cram good intentions down their throat.
always trying to offer my $0.02,
Andrew
---
Andrew P. Ho, M.D.
OIO: Open Infrastructure for Outcomes
www.TxOutcome.Org
Assistant Clinical Professor
Department of Psychiatry, Harbor-UCLA Medical Center
University of California, Los Angeles
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