aethelwulffe wrote on Sunday, July 17, 2011:
WOOT! that answer was so fast that it beat me by 3 minutes!
aethelwulffe wrote on Sunday, July 17, 2011:
ps, if you need any art…well art is my middle name…
-Art
drbowen wrote on Sunday, July 17, 2011:
Modules will need shell access to install. Currently I think brady and I are the only ones with shell access. I am currently driving up I-40 at 65 mph. These new telephones are kinda neat that way. The sun is shining brightly and I have my beloved driving the car. But this does make it somewhat difficult to see the screen. Bear with me.
Art, there is an artful discussion that will take place via teleconference on Tuesday with Sara, Tony, Shameem and myself. You will welcome to attend. I’ll have Tony put you on the invite list.
Sam Bowen, MD
drbowen wrote on Sunday, July 17, 2011:
The site with the instructions on how to embed phpBB into Drupal is currently down so I will have to check back again later. I will work on installing the drupal module.
Sam Bowen, MD
http://www.oemr.org
drbowen wrote on Sunday, July 17, 2011:
More not do good news. The most recent planned intergration is phpBB 3.0 with Drupal 6.x. There is a forum for persons who know how to do this. It doesnn’t look like this is going to be a drop in solution:
http://groups.drupal.org/phpbb
Sam Bowen, MD
http://www.oemr.org
drbowen wrote on Sunday, July 17, 2011:
I have restricted access to the old XOOPs site so that the login menu is no longer visible. If you need to login to the old XOOPS site contact me so I can give you the link. I put a link on the new drupal site to make this access easier.
Sam Bowen, MD
http://www.oemr.org
tmccormi wrote on Sunday, July 17, 2011:
Jason and Jeremy at MI-SQUARED also have shell/server access to oemr.org servers.
-Tony
drbowen wrote on Monday, July 18, 2011:
Thanks Art for the help on the site.
I added OpenID to the Loging page.
I redirected the XOOPS login to the new drupal login page.
Sam Bowen, MD
aethelwulffe wrote on Monday, July 18, 2011:
In a couple of hours I will be able to get home and check out the drupal/phpbb3 dealie. I will try to digest it and report back.
aethelwulffe wrote on Tuesday, July 19, 2011:
LOOKS like a real shit sandwich.
Options:
1. Try the Drupal Advanced Forum, which still has the incredibly terminally sucky drupal use of display area.
2. Use PHPBB3 unintegrated with OpenID .
For most folks using the site daily vs. only for downloading or checking documentation on occasion, the forum is the most-used (visited) portion of the site. I am assuming that sourceforge/git will still be handling the repository, so we have a non-issue there. This makes (to my tiny mind) the forum the prime raison d’être.
-but I could be wrong…
<case study>
In an attempt to reduce mass in the special ops field gear, SOCOM attempted deployment of a product in a can that could be used as both a whipped topping as well as shoe polish. While it’s poor field performance would have normally been overlooked, the wives of sailors and marines returning home complained of their husband’s sticky boots and blackened teeth to the admiral’s wife. In an unprecedented violation of the Dept. of the Navy’s motto (“235 years of Tradition unhampered by Progress!”) the “Shine-o-Whip MK1 mod2 Alfa” cans were removed from the system, re-deployed as Coast Guard assets, and replaced with a box containing a smaller can of whipped cream as well a liter-sized container of shoe wax.
<Conclusions>
While in this case, Sailors continued to eat the shoe polish (if you ever tasted Navy Partially Hydrolyzed Vegetable/Meat By-Product Protein Whipped Cream Pattie Mix you would understand), it is important to note that sometimes specialized things should be left alone, and that when you mix two functions, you don’t always get a 50/50 result, just a 20/20 effect.
tmccormi wrote on Tuesday, July 19, 2011:
I refer you to: http://www.theopensourceway.org/book/The_Open_Source_Way-Introduction-Open_collaboration_tools.html
I recommend reading the whole thing, though it is itself and open source project and, as such, not complete.
Redhat and most other Opensource projects do not use forums for development discussion any more. Forums are used for end user help topics and bug triage. Mailing lists and IRC chats are used for development collaboration. The wiki for documentation, specs and document storage. This is today’s model.
I don’t think moving the forum to phpbb3 should be the goal, I think not using a forum for development discussion should be the goal or we might as well stay right here on SF and not disrupt the process just to redo the same 'ol thing for a slightly better user experience.
Mailing lists let you pick your preferred user interface, ie: mail client. Ultimate flexibility. We can keep the User/Help forum here and just move development discussion to a mailing list. That list can be reached thru a searchable web archive for public use.
-Tony
aethelwulffe wrote on Tuesday, July 19, 2011:
Ah yes.
We are re-inventing the list-serv. I know.
I refer you to Red Hat knowledge base:
https://access.redhat.com/kb/en
I recommend you don’t try to read it. It is like picking up the mixed contents of 500 tech journals mixed in with some theology texts. Try searching for the word “needle” or perhaps “haystack”. I am not intelligent enough to learn a damn thing from that site. Yes, I am sure I can ask a question there noobishly, get abused a bit, and have someone spout off a very correct, and completely useless answer.
It’s just that programmers don’t do documentation so good sometimes, so wiki’s and the like kinda get left behind. Chats, once done, are rarely saved and cataloged for anyone new to get any data out of them when joining the project. Mailing lists and uncategorized forums like this one are searchable, but only by someone who knows what to search for (such as yourself), and what it is called, not to mention having knowledge of the thing in the first place. Everyone OUTSIDE the project (joiners, student types, as well as those in need of help) are just looking at a pile of words. I know. I was that person a few months ago, and I am STILL that person after all that time. Ever heard of being too close to the situation?
or…
You could have the mail go out to let you read through 30 e-mails a day (and delete etc… even for parts you don’t want to subscribe to)……
……and have it come from a forum where the topics and threads are strenuously regulated and moderated so that is serves needs for others as well……
……in addition the perfect and complete in every way set of open source documentation that we currently have.
(*hint*) I am saying that all that “new way” stuff is great, but I have not seen a functioning example, I I bet I won’t ever. M$ documentation/knowledge base follows that model. It is pure useless wonk-wonk to anyone that actually needs the info.
EXAMPLE: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q230457/
It all works for the developers that are IN the project, and have been with it all along. It cuts out everyone else.
Forums are for help/support, but having the developer data out there would assist the casual developer greatly. When you are using OpenEMR, and you have a problem, you instantly become a casual developer. (myself as case in point).
We may not come to an agreement on this point. I am just stating what I think from what I hope is a holistic standpoint.
tmccormi wrote on Tuesday, July 19, 2011:
I’m just sharing what I see out there and the conversations I’m having with the folks that run most of the major, successful open source projects, I’ve been to a lot of FOSS conventions this year (OSCON next week) and talked to a lot of people that run the collaboration projects. Like GitHub, Drupal, Apache.org, Microsoft, Wordpress, Debian, etc. I’m fine with what ever works out to be the best path for US.
Our wiki is pretty good and since I pay someone to write documentation for us, at least we have some. I’ve used news groups/list servers for year as searchable archives, certainly not any worse that forums (in fact really the same thing except for the part about getting to use the client of your choice).
Note: IRC is not intended to be logged. It’s just a way to meet and discuss and then make formal plans.
-Tony
sunsetsystems wrote on Tuesday, July 19, 2011:
There are lots of ways to have discussions. One of my goals for the project has always been to make it one of the “most open” of the open source EHR projects. Thus I would strongly favor discussion methods that are always published and available to everyone.
aethelwulffe wrote on Tuesday, July 19, 2011:
Of course. Most times the chat gets a lot done, 'cause talking more directly serves as a social convincer where in a forum or mailer you get to think too much (and the reverse is also sometimes true!). The “formal plans” you mention have to get documented though, right? (Uh, what did we plan? Where’s the to-do list? Who’s on what project?)
I am also all for having clean sets of documentation from a professional tech writer. I am a tech writer/instructor myself, and I appreciate being able to gain clear understanding through logical progress in a tutorial or walkthrough, and I value well written API’s and the like as well.
My intent is to collect, protect, organize and display information that will more quickly assist the community as a whole. For developers who are in the mix, keeping up with the flow, and know exactly what they are looking for when they need to look up a bit of intercourse for reference…well I wouldn’t want to bog them down.
At the same time, if we can keep topics “moderated” i.e. organized into trains of though with cataloged threads, people having related issues can usually find what they are looking for. For that, you need multi-level cataloging, and a forum display that shows clear naming conventions, start date, version references, as well as most recent activity so folks can direct themselves to where either the answer to their particular unusual or very common issue might be discussed.
How great would it be if someone setting up the EMR can look at USERS/HELP_with_BILLING/X12_PARTNER/AVAILY_SETUP to find a list of topics, and can see a sticky topic at the top of the list that contains an annotated screenshot of what their set-up should look like? Sure, this could be done with a wiki…but not in a superior manner. These folks don’t want to do research, they want clean specific answers. How to achieve this? Well, all this data must come from folks that know. The people that know the most are the developers. The person ensuring that the organization of data must have ready access to it, and be able to copy and past stuff, move topics, and monitor the conversations. There also has to be “thread discipline” maintained. I feel this actually promotes the quality of the discussion.
My other goals for a forum:
1. To be able to use a forum as information to easily alter/revise other forms of documentation, and be able to request and review explanation of certain points as well as provide a resource that very nearly functions as the user documentation itself.
2. To be able to eventually organize code references so that sort of an API of functions (“Build a list of Providers”) can be created and standardized for the code, as well as descriptions and references for the includes. An API would help standardize things greatly.
EXAMPLE: Why don’t all date selection calenders look the same throughout the EMR (the billing manager’s is better than the others)? Why arn’t all report displays of patient ID’s, Invoice #'s, Encounter #'s etc… linked like they are in some areas (Like in the billing Manager). Really, they should use the same classes and includes when doing the same thing, or at rock -bottom worst use duplicated standard code.
Since I have not been able to follow the non-linux GITHUB documentation to actually figure out when/where/how/why I should update my forks and submit stuff properly to the project, I figure I can best contribute by helping make this stuff not-so-hard to learn.
aethelwulffe wrote on Tuesday, July 19, 2011:
@ Rod
-That plain old just makes a godawful lot of sense. Well said.
drbowen wrote on Sunday, July 24, 2011:
I have been looking into authentication for drupal, phpBB, and Mediawiki. All three projects appear to support LDAP authentication making it possible to have single signon for the oemr drupal web page, phpBB, and the wiki. All three projects appear to support this better than the the more tight integration of letting drupal authenticate for phpBB or for Mediawiki.
Sam Bowen, MD
http://www.oemr.org
bradymiller wrote on Tuesday, July 26, 2011:
hi,
Now that http://www.oemr.org/oemr/ is linked in the wiki, rec at least yanking the forum there before confusion starts to set in.
-brady
drbowen wrote on Tuesday, July 26, 2011:
Whoo! Hooo! I’m having fun with Drupal. Check it out!
Sam Bowen, MD