[plug] Linux ideology (was: EduBDO/SIGfest)

[Denis Brown]

At 11:50 27/05/2003 +0800, James wrote:
>In message <20030527032404.GA23656 at guild.uwa.edu.au>
>on Tue, May 27, 2003 at 11:24:04AM +0800, James Devenish wrote:
> > It would be nice to know that the 'back end' logic and data for
> > education tools were actually in a shared resource,
>
>And even if some flagship educational tools were part of KDE (for
>example), it would be advantageous if the data, or at least updates to
>the data, were not limited to the KDE release cycle (since that imposes
>packaging and installation issues).

I think I covered this in my previous reply -- Kalzium is open source to 
the extent that it depends on the TrollTech Qt library and can thus be 
recompiled for (for example) Windows, as an alternative to the Linuces (or 
whatever is the plural for Linux.)   For whatever reason, KDE seem to have 
given it birth.   I imagine -- although I have not checked -- that this 
applies, too, to the other educational / administrative / whatever 
applications found in KDE.   That being the case, a Gnome-isation should be 
equally possible.  ??

>  It would be potentially useful (both
>for general currency and for making corrections to errors) if the most
>recent data were always available. Even if updates had to be advertised
>as "six monthly" in order for the general public to feel as though they
>were getting "value" :) I mention this as a cultural technique (which we
>already see in practice) rather than something to be relevant to only
>one piece of software.

Yes, it would be addressed if the data were held in a back end data base of 
some sort.   Less painful than recompiling from sources :-)   A good 
practise to consider when authoring any tool where current 
state-of-knowledge may change over time.   Even more important for 
something like Kalzium since it includes a quiz feature -- veracity of 
answers is critical, the ability to add fresh questions is highly desirable.

>  (Aside: note that the periodic table is not
>immutable---there have been political controversies such that you might
>have got the same periodic table if you had asked a different person).

I bow to your knowledge on this.  I was aware that the table is constantly 
under review because of the discovery from time to time of elements that 
were "predicted" to exist, but not that political forces were at play.   A 
nice feature of Kalzium (though I vouch not for its veracity!) is the 
timeline which permits one to see the evolution of the table starting with 
(I think) some of the then most accessible materials - iron, copper, ...

Regards,
Denis