JourFixe-2020-10-12

Date and place

Monday, October 12, 2020 from 13:00 – 17:40 as VC meeting only, see below. 

If you like to participate at the Jour Fixe, please join our Big Blue Button VC meeting! To access the room you need the following access code: 144888

We recommend to use BBB in Chrome (or Firefox).

1 Appointments

• 15 OCT 2020, 12:30 - 14:00: Weekly of Working Group Page Editor Revision

If you want to participate at one of the above mentioned workshops, please register for the related session. This helps to organise the workshop. Thanks!

2 Maintained Versions

2.1 Roadmap

Last releases:

• ILIAS 6.4 published at September 04, 2020
• ILIAS 5.4.17 published at September 04, 2020
• ILIAS 5.3.23 published at August 21, 2020 (final release – end of maintenance of ILIAS 5.3)

• ILIAS 6.5 scheduled for October 16, 2020
• ILIAS 5.4.18 scheduled for October 16, 2020

2.2 Mantis Bug Reports

All open issues reported or modified since the last Jour Fixe were screened by the product manager before the Jour Fixe and assigned to the responsible developers if necessary. The following issues were discussed in detail:

1. #28645: Archive export does not include files from file upload questions: We do not see any reason not to include the files from the file upload questions. So please fix this bug and restore the feature status as implemented originally for ILIAS 5.0. Max checks if there is a related test case available. We should provide a related one for the beta testing of ILIAS 7.
2. #29023: Usability Issue: Join action is not obvious enough: We would like to extend the PropertyFormsGUI and allow primary buttons in it. In addition, Matthias will join the KS discussion about the different purposes of the PropertyForms and future steps to improve their use.

1. …

2.3 Bugfixing Statistic

Bug reports[1] set to status 'open' and not been touched by responsible maintainer for more than 21 days (checked this morning) as well as bug reports with priorisation voting:

Due to a technical problem we cannot provide the comparative figures from the last JF today.

* New votes: bugs priorised within the last 14 days   ** Old votes: priorised bugs before last JF (older then 14 days)   *** Resolved: Resolved or closed bug reports in the last 14 days

Bug reports with status 'Fixing according to priorisation' should be fixed before other bugs are tackled. Priorised bugs very important for one or more institutional members of the ILIAS society. Handling this reports with low priority contradicts the intention of the established bug fixing process.

2.4 Open Pull Requests to Discuss

The following pull requests in the ILIAS GitHub repository were marked with 'Jour Fixe' this morning:

1. PR2920 • file storage service: Fabian wants to merge this PR on Wednesday. If any developer has a comment or an objection, please contact Fabian until tomorrow.
2. PR2929 • exclude plugin vendor directories from autoload: We highly appreciate this suggestion and accept the PR for ILIAS 7 / trunk. Please merge.

2.5 Continuous Integration

Overview on current status and reports from CI-server at http://ci.ilias.de and https://travis-ci.com/ILIAS-eLearning/ILIAS/builds:

• Dashboard: https://ilias-elearning.github.io/CI-Results
• automated tests: 5150 (+87) passing unit tests in trunk on PHP 7.3 and PHP 7.4 since JF 2020-09-28
• results of dicto architectural tests
  • +/-0 violation resolved/added since 2020-09-14
• Please run unit tests locally and apply the style fixer before committing.
• Fabian (ILIAS e.V.) and Laura (CaT) are working on automating the packaging via Travis
• Next meeting of CI-Group will be announced. Please contact richard.klees@concepts-and-training.de if you like to join.
  • If you know anyone who is somewhere between developer, administrator and hacker, maybe knows bash and likes to play with obscure tools on the internet: softly nudge her or him to join the group. We need (wo)man-power to make our developers more effective by automating stuff for them!
  • Richard still doesn't find time to run this. Is there anyone who wants to step up?

2.6 Performance monitoring:

Postponed until Pascal joins JF again.

3 Developing ILIAS 7

3.1 Status of Development

This is the current status of development of ILIAS Release 7 – based on the metadata of the scheduled feature requests.

We ask all maintainers to update the metadata of their feature requests reguarly to get a proper impression of the progress of development of ILIAS 7!

3.2 Development Issues

Development issues and topics related to ILIAS versions 7

1. Page Editor » Page Editing : We have noticed a side effect on the editor-slate when using existing forms in the content area. 
   Therefore, the editor slate should receive a generic hint text (unsing a message box) in these periods, in which the form in content area is shown.

   JourFixe, ILIAS [jourfixe]: We accept the introduction of a placeholder in the slate to prevent an empty slate in certain editing workflows. This "workaround" will disappear with ILIAS 8 when the editing process in the page editor is extended.

2. Page Editor » Multiple Actions to Page Elements : During the implementation phase, a problem with the insertion of page elements has become apparent.
   Therefore we would like to concretise the behaviour description and have it confirmed by the JourFixe. Informations in the linked Request.

   JourFixe, ILIAS [jourfixe]: We highly appreciate the suggested changes in the editing behaviour and accept them as outlined on the feature wiki page by Oliver.

3. Local Competence Profiles for Courses and Groups :  Discussion and approval of business rules related to development of feature (see wiki page)

   JourFixe, ILIAS [jourfixe]: We highly appreciate the suggested business rules and accept them for this feature.

4. SCORM Offline Player :  As mentioned already at the Advisory Board 2019 the ILIAS SCORM-Offline-Player depends on the deprecated web-caching technology "AppCache".
   Fortunately most browsers did support the AppCache for a long time (Chrome < 85, currrent Firefox Version 81). The only valuable alternative technology for offline storage is the ServiceWorker Cache-API. After consultation with Alex Killing who is actually leading the Elaboration of the "Concept ILIAS Offline" a service worker implementation might be available soonest in ILIAS 8. Until then the usage of the SCORM-Offline-Player must be restricted to limited browser versions.
   The already implemented AppCache feature detection should be extended with current compatibility informations.
   The TestCases can be performed with a still functional Firefox version 81.

   JourFixe, ILIAS [jourfixe]: Thanks for pointing us on this general problem of browser support. We recommend to add a short notice in the releases notes of the currently maintained releases that notifies user that the SOP works only with a selected number of Fireforx browsers. Also a mail to the admin list is highly appreciated. In addition, we support the efforts to change the underlying code of the SOP and use service workers once and in case they are introduced with ILIAS 8.

5. Page Editor » Transformation of Advanced Table ( former »Abandon the Advanced Table«) : Request by Hilbert, Mirco [mirco.hilbert] to rethink the JF decision and to discuss it in the light of new findings (see chap. 5)

   JourFixe, ILIAS [jourfixe] : Thanks to Mirco for the different examples. We see that not all of the current usecases for an Advanced Table can be realised with a Column Layout or a Data Table. We would like to keep our decision to get rid of two different types of table implementation in the Page Editor on a long run. But we skip the decision to create new Advanced Tables and to edit existing ones with ILIAS 7 to have more time to discuss how such a new table could look like. This requires that we find a reasonable solution for the editing view of the Advanced Table until Coding Completed. Otherwise, we will prevent editing and creating new tables with 7. We kindly ask Mirco to contribute to this discussion within the Page Editor Revision group to find a good solution for ILIAS 8.

6. Current implementation of "Multilingualism": the language selection in "Multlingualism" is not related to the supported languages in ILIAS but to the long list of existing languages in the world. No doubt that the current implementation works. But it is a bit weired. Shouldn't we modify this feature in the nearer future and offer just the languages ILIAS really supports and that a user can choose?

   JourFixe, ILIAS [jourfixe]: Postponed because not relevant for ILIAS 7.

7. Splitting up File Object into Object and Service : Position of WebDAV folder and Download folder

   JourFixe, ILIAS [jourfixe]:
   Concerning the future position of the WebDAV tab and the option to allow the entire content of a folder we would like to have:

   • a new administration node "WebDAV" in "Extending ILIAS"
   • adding the setting "Download folder..." as a new setting in administration node "Repository" (as suggested above).

3.3 Suggested Features

1. Setup - Let update-Command change configs : We highly appreciate this suggestion and schedule the feature for ILIAS 7.

2. Introduction of Administrative Notifications : We highly appreciate this suggestion and schedule the feature for ILIAS 7. We prefer to call the feature: "Administrative Notification" (because only admins can add such notices). We discuss the content and look of the new KS element HeadInfo in the related PR https://github.com/ILIAS-eLearning/ILIAS/pull/2251 (when re-opened). For this PR we need to clarify:

   • Do we use the Close glyph for closing the Headinfo? Or do we use a textual representation?
   • Will the HeadInfo display more than one text line? Or does it only shows the title and the body is presented in a modal (where enough place would be available to add also a button "Got it!" (or something similar).
   • What happens if more than one notification is presented?

3. xAPI: Statement Reducer : We highly appreciate this suggestion and schedule the feature for ILIAS 7.

4. Appointment Modal - Access to other materials : We highly appreciate this suggestion and schedule the feature for ILIAS 7.

5. Presentation Type Sessions View for Groups : We highly appreciate this suggestion and schedule the feature for ILIAS 7.

6. Show Session Date in Role Assignment : We highly appreciate this suggestion and schedule the feature for ILIAS 7. The title of the session will be build according to Stefan's notice in Technical Information. And additionally we als add a new column "Context" where the path of the session is presented.

7. Page Editor » Column Layout : We highly appreciate this suggestion and schedule this feature for ILIAS 7. More improvements for the column layout come with ILIAS 8.

8. Activate/Deactivate notifications of deleted, censored and edited postings : We highly appreciate this suggestion and schedule the feature for ILIAS 8.

4 Miscellaneous

Information about Security Fixes

Kohnle, Uwe [ukohnle]: How can we improve the communication about fixed security bugs in ILIAS? The mails to the admin list do not contain hints about concrete bugs and fixes. And the Mantis reports are not accessible for persons not involved in the security project.

JourFixe, ILIAS [jourfixe]: Releases with security fixes are highlighted appropriatelly. Admin should always update to published security bug fix releases. We do not want to publish too much information to prevent that this information is used by hackers. The TB will pick up the issue and discuss how the current procedure could be improved.

Next Jour Fixe dates

• Monday, October 26, 13:00 - 18:00 (last JF before 'coding completed')
• Monday, November 09, 13:00 - 18:00
• Monday, November 23, 13:00 - 18:00 – Main topic will be "Planning of Big Projects for ILIAS 8". Suggestions can be made here!
• Monday, December 07, 13:00 - 18:00
• Monday, December 21, 13:00 - 18:00
• Monday, January 11, 13:00 - 18:00