Re: [Forum-dev]Forum!

[Peter Minten]

James Michael DuPont wrote:
>
> Hey all,
> I look forward to helping out with the forum tool.
>
> Is there any plans to support an IRC chatbot interface?

Not yet.

> Is there any plans to support an wiki interface?

I have plans for a simple webbrowser forumapp, dunno if it will support forms
though.

> Is there any plans to support an rdf file import/export?

Not yet.

> Also, we need to able to upload pictures and files.

I have plans for a file server forumapp.

> Also, we need to able to allow posting in mathml and posting of graphs.

This is more something in specific forumapps, like the schoolboard forumapp.

> Also, we need to able to allow posting in docbook/bookml.

Possible.

> What do you think?

Well the first thing you should know is that Forum uses a simple server, a 
simple client and leaves most of the job up to plugins (for the client) and 
separate applications (for the server). For FSA it will be sufficient to 
implement only frontended apps, applications which have a part running as a 
plugin on the client and an application running on the server that 
communicates with the plugins.

When a user enters a node belonging to a forumapp the client sends a request 
to join a node to the forumserver, the request contains the clients location 
(ip/jabber/etc (though all apps created in Forum will use jabber)). If the 
server approves this then the server sends a random string to the app and to 
the client. The app contacts the client and sends the string. The client 
checks the string and if correct accepts the connection and starts the plugin.

Plugins are fully trusted (I'm pretty simple in that, the best security is 
that of which you know it sucks :-) and can do whatever they want. This 
includes loading rdf files and sending them to the server.

The backends of the forumapps are essentially normal applications that happen 
to work with Forum. They can have a normal GUI or textmode interface. They 
can of course also communicate with other forumapps or non-forum apps. This 
makes it possible for example to assign the storage of rdf stuff to a 
specialized app that doesn't communicate with Forum itself but only 
communicates with other applications.

What's definitely needed is a list of what forumapps we will need. Here are my
thought:
* Plaza (gathering place)
* Browser (for surfing stored webpages and wiki's)
* File server
* Discussion forum
* Admin control room (for controlling the forum and parts of it)
* User control room (for setting user preferences)
* Whiteboard (simple drawing area)
* Text editor (for writing stuff, including calculations and graphs)

For the text editor I'm thinking of something like TeXmacs, based on
mathml/bookml. The GTK2 text widgets have a lot of power that can help here,
still the text editor is going to be a lot of work. The whiteboard and text
editor will be the first forumapps that implement simultaneous editing btw.

Greetings,

Peter