[sakai2-tcc] Knowledge Base tool replacement for Online Help?

[John Bush]

I assume we are talking about what's in:
https://source.sakaiproject.org/contrib/edia/knowledgebase/trunk/ ?

I don't think converting the search stuff would be very hard.  Its a
bit of a leaky abstraction as they are returning solr QueryResponse
objects.  But other than that, its just index and search stuff.  You
would just create a new ES index for help, and it would be pretty
straightforward.  Probably few days of dev I'd say (for me anyway).

On Thu, Mar 7, 2013 at 2:03 PM, Matthew Jones <matthew at longsight.com> wrote:
> Short of retyping everything, I don't think there was any path that didn't
> require a code conversion. The current KB code isn't compatible with
> anything > 2.7.1 either, so it doesn't compile OOTB without some
> modifications
>
> The current help system uses XML definition files and separate i18n html
> files. So you'd have to write something that would go through all these xml
> files and either dump it into the database or use the api to add new items.
>
> Some other limitations
> - There's no way to import/export other that a database dump (which kind of
> ties into this issue above) It seems like you'd really want to be able to
> import help for a new tool, especially stuff like contrib tools, ideally
> automatically. I'm guessing it would work with the current xml and html
> files and autodiscover/import them if they're new (not previously added
> modified, like if you just added evaluation or something)
> - There's no support for i18n, that's on the future directions. It seems
> like you'd need a separate column to indicate the language and some more
> work to display only files in a particular language
> - It looks like it uses SOLR (one per instance). The current path in Sakai
> seems to use Elastic Search with possible optional setup for SOLR, so this
> search would probably need to be rewritten
>
> I don't know the effort required to get any of that fixed/implemented. Maybe
> a week for the import/export/current help compatibility? A few days for
> i18n? Not sure on search.
>
> This solution would also have the problem of the help files getting out of
> date between releases, even if we kept a central source up-to-date. People
> would either have to wipe their changes from the db and re-apply their
> customizations or update based on some diff we put out. This is a problem
> with the current system too though.
>
> The other alternative to this would be centrally hosted help, like one that
> Sam wrote in Drupal. I think he had some mechanism for importing already,
> not sure about export. I don't think it has any support for i18n other than
> running multiple sites and it does do searching.
>
> I'm not sure what would be better/faster for the community. I'm sure some
> people would want to take what's there and have a way to customize it in
> either case which could be an advantage for a built in tool like this if
> these issues were addressed.
>
>
>
> On Thu, Mar 7, 2013 at 3:35 PM, Steve Swinsburg <steve.swinsburg at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> This looks really good. Any idea of the level of effort required to get
>> existing help into this system?
>>
>> cheers,
>> Steve
>>
>>
>> On 08/03/2013, at 3:36 AM, Neal Caidin <nealcaidin at sakaifoundation.org>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Hi All,
>>
>> Edia has created a nice summary of their Knowledge Base tool at
>> https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/HELP/Future+plans+for+The+Knowledge+Base+Tool
>>
>> This tool has potential for replacing the existing Sakai context sensitive
>> Help system. The current online help system is not currently on a
>> sustainable path and we need to figure out how to either update it or find a
>> replacement.
>>
>> Take a look and see what you think.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Neal Caidin
>>
>> Sakai CLE Community Coordinator
>> nealcaidin at sakaifoundation.org
>> Skype: nealkdin
>> AIM: ncaidin at aol.com
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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--
John Bush
602-490-0470