[Building Sakai] Kernel Changes to support SAK-16600

[Beth Kirschner]

This email is primarily for the kernel team/committers...

We've created a kernel JIRA (https://jira.sakaiproject.org/browse/KNL-989) describing the changes needed to support SAK-16600 (see below). I've reviewed the code for backward compatibility and would like to invite comments from others. There are several issues worth raising:

1) In order to support both old and new toolOrder.xml format, there was a change to parameters of an existing private method. While I think we all can agree that changing APIs of public methods is bad practice, I'm not sure this applies to private methods.
	- private void loadToolOrder(InputStream in)
	+ private void loadToolOrder(Element toolOrder)

2) In order to support the new functionality, we've created three new methods, and this impacts several "Mock" classes created for unit testing in polls and search. When we're ready to commit these changes, there will be a timing issue to avoid breaking the nightly build. We'll need to commit the changes to kernel and the unit-test code for polls & search and then quickly refresh the kernel snapshot. 

I'm happy to coordinate/ any changes people may propose and commit the code, but will need to work with someone (Steve S?) to refresh the kernel snapshot.

Comments?
- Beth

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Beth Kirschner <bkirschn at umich.edu>
> Date: October 19, 2012 9:03:54 AM EDT
> To: "sakai-dev at collab.sakaiproject.org sakai" <sakai-dev at collab.sakaiproject.org>
> Subject: Re: [Building Sakai] Proposed changes to Site Info Tool Selection Page (SAK-16600)
> 
> Thanks for everyones comments! I've aggregated several questions & comments below.
> 
> - Beth
> 
> On Oct 17, 2012, at 4:56 AM, Adam Marshall wrote:
> 
>> I have three thoughts, which is two more than usual.
>> 
>> 1/ It would be good to have a system-wide property that forced the accordion to be displayed fully opened up. I like the idea of headings but I'm not sure our staff would know which section a tool is situated within. They'd get annoyed opening each one up to search.
>> 
> Seems like a popular idea -- I'll ask Gonzalo if this is easy to do.
> 
>> 2/ Comment in Aug 2012 " Only one instance of one type of BasicLTI tool is supported in one site. " is this still true? Unless I'm misunderstanding this seems like a very annoying restriction
>> 
> This doesn't appear to be true (I was able to add multiple instances).
> 
>> 3/ we use a different classification to categorise our tools, we have 5 areas and have already mapped our tools to these area in a lovely diagram: http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/weblearn/images/pentagon_new1.jpg  We would want to redefine the categories that you have listed. Is this possible? (We will also change the colours of the headings, do they each have their own class/id?)
>> 
> Definitely configurable, and the classifications can be completely turned off as well.
> 
> On Oct 17, 2012, at 7:17 PM, Steve Swinsburg wrote:
> 
>> Hi Beth,
>> 
>> Looks good. Will the relevant sections be expanded by default if there are tools configured within them?
>> 
> Our initial thinking is to expand only the "core" group, but we'll look into optionally expanding all by default.
> 
> On Oct 17, 2012, at 8:43 AM, Bryan Holladay wrote:
> 
>> +1 I think this looks good... as for the accordion question, there is
>> probably a skilled enough developer out there that could figure out
>> how to add an expand all feature to the accordion library.  Also, this
>> category feature would be a step towards categorizing the tool menu on
>> the left hand side (which the xsl portal can do, but not in 2.9.x+).
> 
> 
> We had thought about the left tool menu as well, but for now feel that it's out of scope.
> 
> 
>> 
>> On 17/10/2012, at 5:21 AM, Beth Kirschner <bkirschn at umich.edu> wrote:
>> 
>>> Michigan is proposing changes to the Site Info (aka Worksite Setup) Tool Selection page, to group tools to address several concerns:
>>> 
>>> * The tool list for courses/projects is already long and growing
>>> * The addition of Basic LTI tools to this list will make this list even longer and more unmanageable for users (https://jira.sakaiproject.org/browse/SAK-22108)
>>> 
>>> We feel that adding configurable "groups" will help users visually select the correct tools for their site. We'd also like to provide optional screenshots of the the tools ("more") to help users with tool selection.
>>> 
>>> See the following screenshot for the new proposed layout:
>>>      https://jira.sakaiproject.org/secure/attachment/34127/Screen%20Shot%202012-10-08%20at%204.28.04%20PM.png
>>> 
>>> In order to implement this, we're proposing optional additions to the toolOrder.xml file to define these new groupings. These groupings only impact the Site Info Tool Selection page. 
>>> 
>>> Please let us know your thoughts!
>>> 
>>> Thanks,
>>> - Beth
>>> 
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>> 
>