[sakai2-tcc] Entity picker to core

[Matthew Jones]

I was looking at entity picker for the first time recently, and the code
looked like it was abandoned around 3 years ago by Josh Ryan. Longsight
recently worked on to make a few minor bug fixes to get it working in 2.8.
I agree a commitment to support would need to be there going forward, and
I'm not sure if Longsight or someone else is going to make that commitment.
While having it in core would be more convenient for those using it, I
don't know yet if it's functional or useful enough as is to be in core.
Perhaps others who have used it for a longer time could comment on this.

Back 4 years ago when entity picker was created there weren't that many
entity providers, there wasn't that many things it could link to. A few
were actually created as part of the tool creation and later merged into
trunk. I believe the ideal was there would eventually be a ton of things to
link to. Flash forward to today; looking at 2.9 nightly, there really
aren't *that* many more providers than there were in 2008 in trunk and not
every tool would be able to be linked to. When I added every tool to a 2.9
test system with with content, the picker (which currently only supports
FCKEditor, so the default had to be changed) I was only able to pick from
assignments and tests & quizzes. I couldn't figure out how to get it to
pick from forums or other tools which seem to have a provider (polls).
Perhaps it needs some configuration?

I was recently investigating how much effort it would be to to port the
picker to CKEditor, and the plugin system for CK is entirely different so
could take a little time and mostly a total rewrite, but having done the
movie plugin it should be faster. I'm not sure if there's other work that
would be required for 2.9 to make it functional.

It does seem like it has a lot of good ideas, being able to put a direct
link to an assignment in an announcement, a forums post in an assignment.
It also feels like it makes a very good complement to Lesson Builder, being
able to create create items there and cross-link them from within. Having
it in core could drive the creation of more entity providers and continue
to push this functionality.

-Matthew

On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 9:26 AM, Beth Kirschner <bkirschn at umich.edu> wrote:

> I'd like to have some objective measure for moving tools into core -- in
> the past we had a checklist:
> https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/SCORE/Tool+Status+Requirements
>
> How does Entity Picker measure up to this checklist? Who is supporting it?
>
> - Beth
>
> On Jan 18, 2012, at 7:22 AM, Steve Swinsburg wrote:
>
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I'm after your opinions on whether or not we should promote entity
> picker to core. I've just been playing around with this and it looks like
> really useful functionality. I know a lot of people are using it and it has
> been sitting in contrib for a very long time.
> >
> >
> https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/SAKDEV/Entity+Picker+Installation+Guide
> >
> > It would go a long way to increasing inter tool linking, as it all works
> via entity broker.
> >
> > It supports FCKEditor but there is a Jira for a CK Editor plugin:
> > https://jira.sakaiproject.org/browse/SAK-21667
> >
> > In any case, it is a silent addition we can get in and work on in trunk.
> >
> > Thoughts/flames?
> >
> > cheers,
> > Steve
> >
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