JourFixe-2014-04-28

The Jour Fixe takes place at Monday, April 28, 2014, from 10h00 - 16h30 at Databay office in Würselen. Participants:

• Max Becker, Björn Heyser, Michael Jansen, Alexander Killing, Matthias Kunkel (Minutes), Jörg Lützenkirchen, Guido Vollbach, Fabian Wolf

1 Appointments

2014-04-30: ILIASuisse at Interkantonale Hochschule für Heilpädagogik in Zürich
2014-05-12: Jour Fixe
2014-05-16: ILIAS-Nord at Hochschule Bremen
2014-05-23: ILIAS-NRW at Fachhochschule Dortmund
2014-05-26: Jour Fixe
2014-06-23: Jour Fixe (no Jour Fixe at June 09 due to Pentecost)
2014-07-01: Annual meeting of ILIAS Advisory Council, Fürth
2014-07-02: ILIAS-Süd at Uni Erlangen in Fürth
2014-09-29: ILIAS Development Conference in Bozen

2 Bugfixing for maintained versions 4.2, 4.3 and 4.4

Last releases:

• ILIAS 4.4.2 published at March 26, 2014
• ILIAS 4.3.7 published at March 21, 2014
• ILIAS 4.2.9 published at September 04, 2013

• 4.4.3 is scheduled for May 2014
• 4.3.8 is scheduled for June 2014
• 4.2.10 is scheduled for April 2014

We went through Mantis and had a overlook about all open issues reported or modified since the last Jour Fixe. All issues were screened and assigned to the responsible developers. We discussed in detail:

1. Mantis 13099: Test certificates : Björn will provide a method that delivers that basic set of users that "started" a test. With this set and canShowCertificate Jörg can fix the feature.
2. Mantis 12227: Latex symbols \legg and \geqq are not displayed in preview : Tiny data seems to store latex always with span delimiters, these should be replaced for editing to allow mathjax rendering, but be siwtched to spans before data is saved again. Mathjax support has priority, it's ok, if mimetex/blahtex rendering is abandoned.
3. Mantis 13231 - general method for shortening URLs : We would like to have a counter "Re(4):" instead of the repetition of the string. A migration of existing postings is not necessary.
4. Mantis 10710: Survey pool obligatory : Survey pools get a new column for "Obligatory" status.
5. Online/Offline Guideline : It is not possible to identify your comments. Please put your name in front of all your comments/suggests, better would be to use the discussion section, if possible.
6. Mantis 13187: Blog permissions are not consistent - The current behaviour is the intended behaviour. It does not conflict with any existing guideline. So we do not consider this being a bug. We think it is important to identify the authorship of postings clearly, since many times these contents are graded by tutors. If we change anything, we would prefer to change the behaviour in forums, not in blogs. Please open a feature request, if you would like to change the behaviour and continue the discussion.
7. WAC: Enable Web-Access-Checker by default : We consider this being a feature request. Please add it to the 4.6 list, if being opened (appx. July).
8. Mantis 13126: race conditions on usr_session table : We do not have a perfect solution for this. If framesets have been the cause, this problem should go away with 4.4. For ajax calls, it could be an option to prevent session writing in general for ajax calls.
9. Mantis 13096: end date of temporary account : The preset for these date fields should be an "empty value".
10. Improve RBAC Handling in Object Copy Processes : We consider this being a feature request. Please add it to the 4.6 list, if being opened (appx. July).

3 Feature Requests for ILIAS 4.5

3.1 ILIAS 4.5 Statistics
 

According to the presentation at the last Development Conference we want to improve the documentation of the development process. The data of the following overview of development activities for the next upcoming major release is taken from the page Release 5.0. All developers are requested to update the status of their features.

3.2 ILIAS 4.5 Development Issues

• none

3.3 Feature Requests for 4.5

The following list contains features that have been added to the Feature Wiki before feature freeze and are supported by the responsible component maintainer, see also Feature Requests 5.0. Please do not add new features on this list.

1. xAPI Activity: xAPI Activity Repository Object : We support the request and schedule it for 4.5. We think the whole scenario would work even better, if ILIAS provides LRS functionality (the activity could listen to the LRS stream and set the learning progress itself). We think the "Get Activity Results" process needs more settings that define the determination of the learning progress states based on the records/values delivered by the activity.
2. xAPI Activity: xAPI: Integrated LRS : We do not think that we need two different repository object types for the xAPI support. We only support the development of one (External Activity). We would like to make this page the "Integrated LRS" feature request and schedule this for 4.5. The development of xAPI Activity Repository Object would be a prerequisite for this one.
3. Accessibility: Improving Accessibility : We support this request and handle it as an ongoing usability improvement during the 4.5 development.
4. Core / General: Drop IE8 Support : We support this and schedule it for 4.5.
5. Core / General: Object Terminator : We support this idea and schedule it for 4.5. Before the implementation, a detailed technical concept should be written and be discussed with the developers.
6. Forum: Up / Down Voting for Forum Topics : We support the idea and schedule it for 4.5, but the existing fixe star rating should be used.
7. Forum: Preview of forum postings : We still suppport the idea and schedule it for 4.5.
8. Exercise / Personal Desktop: Administration Setting: Add exercise to Personal Desktop : We support the idea and schedule it for 4.5.
9. Exercise: Tutor Feedback in Peer Feedback Mode : Alex/Jörg will provide a proposal for the different tutor feedback handling. Until then this request is postponed.
10. Exercise: File as Peer Feedback : We postpone the decision. Alex/Jörg will make a proposal for the presentation/workflow.
11. Exercise: Usability improvement in adding members to team solution :We support the idea and schedule it for 4.5.
12. Exercise: Preserve solution teams in exercises with multiple assignments :We support the idea and schedule it for 4.5. If a new assignment is created and type "Team Upload" is chosen, ILIAS can ask in a second step, if teams of an older team upload assignment should be reused.
13. Flashcards : After reading through the initial documents provided above, we think that the general functionality of the pool requirement is close to existing test question pools. We see little reason to introduce a new additional repository pool object for flash cards. Please contact the question pool maintainer Björn Heyser (bheyser@databay.de) and ask him if he sees any possibility to support your outlined collaborative question authoring in the test question pools. For the presentation mode, please evaluate if the Continuous Testing Mode of ILIAS 4.4 could be a starting point. We postpone any decision until a detailed concept is available.
14. Glossary: Notes and comments in Glossaries : We appreciate this feature and schedule it for 4.5.
15. Guidelines: Explorer Tree Guideline : We still appreciate this guideline and schedule it for 4.5.
16. Comments: Additional Settings for Public Comments : We appreciate this feature and schedule it for 4.5.
17. Comments: Sorting Comments : We appreciate this feature and schedule it for 4.5.
18. Learning Progress: Additional Options and Usability : We appreciate this feature and schedule it for 4.5, except point three "making entries sortable". Please clarify this request, which screen/column is meant here?
19. Course: Course relevant User data - Edit mode for admins : We support the request and schedule it for 4.5, except that the "Passed Status Changed" timestamp should not be set here, since this timestamp is about the "passed" status and has nothing to do with other user data.
20. Survey: Status of a survey (finished or nor) in participant tab : We support this idea and schedule it for 4.5.
21. Survey: Labels in Print View of Survey : We support this idea and schedule it for 4.5.
22. ILIAS Page Editor: Accordeon behavior : We support the idea to make this consistent, however the preference of the core team is to always use
    • Arrow to the right: The area is collapsed and can be expanded.
    • Arrow downwards: The area is expanded and can be collapsed.
    • For tree explorers, vertical and horizontal accordions (also in learning modules).
23. Competence Management - Set minimal and desired level for competences in job profile : We postpone the decision to the next JF.
24. Portfolio: Search Portfolios used as Personal Profiles : We appreciate this idea and schedule it for 4.5.
25. Bibliography / Portfolio: Showing Bibliography in Portfolio : We tend to support this feature, but are not sure how the presentation in the porfolios should look exactly. Should the complete list be embeded directly in a portfolio page? This would require a presentation interface on the side of the bibiography list object. We postpone the decision until Martin Studer has provided a feedback on this.
26. Wiki: Wiki Page List Page Element : We appreciate this idea. Please coordinate the development with the feature More Types for Advanced Metadata (if this is scheduled for 4.5, too).

3.4 Postponed

The following features requests have been postponed to the next Jour Fixe due to missing time.

1. Personal Workspace: Improve Usability of My Workspace - needs to be discussed in Jour Fixe
2. Personal Desktop: Usability Improvements of the Personal Desktop - needs conceptual discussion in Jour Fixe
3. Plugin Slots: Shorter Table Prefix for Plugins - needs conceptual discussion in Jour Fixe and feedback from other plugin developers
4. ILIAS LM: Learning Progress on visited pages - needs to be discussed in Jour Fixe
5. ILIAS LM: LM Chapters / Pages as Preconditions in ILIAS LM - needs to be discussed in Jour Fixe
6. ILIAS LM: Transfer of changes to embedded questions in LM to the original question in question pool - needs to be discussed with maintainer in Jour Fixe
7. ILIAS Page Editor: Add comments to single text-/media elements - needs to be discussed with Suggestions for an Improved ILIAS Page Editor (outdated)
8. ILIAS Page Editor: (Advisory Council) Linking_in_ILIAS_Editor - needs to be discussed with Suggestions for an Improved ILIAS Page Editor (outdated)
9. ILIAS Page Editor: Media object image/media: custom size in percent - technical discussion needed in Jour Fixe
10. Wiki: Extending Linking Options in Wiki - needs conceptual discussion in Jour Fixe
11. Wiki: Extending User Activities for Page Editing, Protecting and Deleting - needs conceptual discussion in Jour Fixe
12. Core / General: Use minify to combine javascript and css - No existing maintainership.
13. File Handling: Filename Encoding - Not related to one distinct maintainership.
14. Administration: Default object settings - Not related to one distinct maintainership.
15. Logging: Log-Level - No maintainer yet
16. Logging: Object History - No maintainer yet

4 Miscellaneous

• Next Developer Meeting: Every developer can add suggestions for an upcoming core developer meeting in the Core Developer Group. We will schedule a meeting if we have two or more topics for the agenda: Two topics have been proposed for a meeting: a) Data Types/Active Records and b) Jenkins CI. We will setup a doodle or poll for the meeting date 13 or 27 of May.
• Next Jour Fixe: Monday, May 12, 2014, from 12h30 until 17h30 at the office of ILIAS-Verein in Cologne.