[MKDoc-users] message for new user

[Roger Merritt]

At 02:20 PM 6/4/03, you wrote:
>>Thanks. I'm currently having some problems getting all the perl modules I 
>>need to work, particularly the Unicode. I just got a suggestion from the 
>>FreeBSD list and will be working on installing perl 5.6.1 today and 
>>seeing if that works. I'm hoping to avoid upgrading to 5.8 until they 
>>bring 5.8.1 our.
>
>MKDoc 1.4 will work with Perl 5.6.1 only (Perl 5.6.0 is full of bugs). 
>However we're about to release MKDoc 1.6, and that will work only with 
>Perl 5.8. Perl 5.8 is really well made and very stable.
>
>You might find MKDoc 1.6 even more appropriate since it features forums, 
>audience-based metadata tagging, user account subscription and optional 
>personalizable newsletters.

Thanks for the information about perl 5.8. I don't recall exactly now what 
the problem was that was mentioned, but I do recall that it was concerned 
with signal handling and (I think) concurrent processes, which don't apply, 
as far as I know, to any of the software I run. I was just thinking today I 
might install it instead of 5.6.1. Anyway, since 5.6.1 installed so easily, 
I think I'll give it a try first.

I'm not too clear on just what features we will want on this intranet. My 
boss was originally talking about having the teachers post copies of the 
handouts they give out in class, lesson assignments, quiz and exam results. 
There is a commercial CMS which does a great job of making that stuff easy 
to set up and administer, but we can't afford it. I felt we needed 
something that the teachers could use fairly easily, and I think I could 
teach them how to use MkDoc pretty quickly, although I would still have to 
do a lot for them -- especially putting up any handouts they didn't create 
in a word processor.

I'll have to get MkDoc installed first and see how easy it is to set up 
authorizations. We probably would want to allow students to create their 
own home pages (the Computer teacher covers that in the 11th grade) and the 
students might like a forum, but they seem to be more interested in instant 
messaging and chat. ICQ and other forms of IRC are very popular in Thailand 
just now. Student home pages probably shouldn't be constrained by 
templates, though.

I haven't put much effort into designing the intranet yet. I felt I needed 
a tool like MkDoc first, just to give me an administrative tool and give 
users a convenient document creation/editing capability. Further design 
decisions will really involve finding out first what the teachers feel they 
can do -- at this point they're likely to see it as just another burden 
being imposed on them.


-- 
Roger