Re: [Masterlibre-list] subjects for the master

[Manuel Carro]

[I posted this message yesterday at night, but for some reason it
didn't seem to get trhough, and I did not receive any message from
nongnu.org, so I am resending it.  Sorry if this clutters up your
mailbox.]

>> master. This is only a draft for some administrative procedure we have
>> to fulfill shortly, it is not the final proposal (which should in any
>> case be discussed, for instance in the Madrid-meeting in February).

    Good!  Sorry about this long silence -- several matters prevented
me from contributing more often.  I'd finally managed to check out the
CVS repository (don't ask me why I could not before - I just do not
understand it).

    I had written time ago two subject guides for sociology and
version control / development tools which I'd like to merge with what
Gregorio has already written.  While I know that this draft is mainly
and administrative requirement, I hesitated to commit my changes
because I had somewhat more specific contents and slightly longer
descriptions.  I think that we should try to maintain the same
description level across all subjects -- this will also save work
later.  Or should we not worry about having non totally homogeneous
descriptions?  Notwithstanding, I have committed some changes which
correct typos or are only minor modifications of what is in the
repository.

    I have doubts about some particular data:

    * Some fields have what I think is a "default value":

        + <Tipo></Tipo> is left empty in all the subjects; shouldn't
        it be TRO (from TRONCAL == mandatory)?  We are dealing with
        the core subjects now.

        + <Nivel></Nivel> is the level at which the courses belong; it
        is set at "POS" (i.e., postgraduate).  It is possible that
        this is the right level, but it is still not clear to me: does
        this mark the degree students have, or the degree students pursue?

        + <Prerrequisito> is set to "None" in all of the descriptions.  

        + The year and semester each core subject is assigned to must
        be changed (we have close to 80 ECTS right now, and all
        subjects are in year 1, semester 1 :-).

        + Will we fill in the <HorasSemTeoria></HorasSemTeoria> field
        by just dividing subject hours by # of weeks?  (Remember we
        talked a lot about intensive seminaries).  This is fine with
        me - however we have to agree on that.  I guess that the main
        point in that field is the balance classroom / lab.


Plus some comments:

    * In database.xml, I guess that any database development
    (especially plugin development) should refer to some real
    database,  and therefore introducing a particular brand must be
    done earlier in the semester.

    * I miss stories of failure in the "Case Studies" section.

    * There is one introduction.xml and one introduccion.xml ; are
    they intended to be different?  introduccion.xml is the more
    complete one.  However the rest of the file names are in English,
    so I suppose we should rename introduccion.xml to introduction.xml
    and forget about the previous introduction.xml .

    * There are several overlapping topics (e.g., development and
    collaborative environments appears in several places with several
    names and under several views; care must be taken when doing it
    for  real).  This is an ample topic still in development, and
    there are several tools and environments available besides CVS,
    gnuarch, and subversion.  Just google for "collaborative software
    development". 

BTW, can't we convince whoever maintains the xml schema to allow some
form of enumeration inside the <Contenidos> section?  I can barely
remember how to count... :-)

- -- 
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|Manuel Carro --- Facultad de Informática -- U. Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) |
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