September 2000 - openSUSE Edu - openSUSE Mailing Lists

Help, Please -- re Databases
by Edgehill E-Mail Service 14 Sep '00

14 Sep '00

Hi, all. Daft question: Can anyone help with any ideas about databases? Specifically, we need something intermediate between the "looks like a spreadsheet" and the mega-fully-featured SQL systems. I haven't had much time to play with the SQL systems on SuSE to figure how well they will suit (so I'm asking advice). Having been raised on standalone Image, dBase, Paradox etc. systems, the SQL server-client architecture is a bit of a mystery to me, yet. Reasons: Our pupils are currently using Access - which has a very gentle learning curve from first contact, and rapid development time to first database. The educational requirements are that the database table-set is created entirely by the user, and the Windows optimum has been Access. I would like to find a Linux equivalent. This lies as our current sticking-point to migration to Linux next summer, and I would like to be able to get things moving soon. Thanks, in advance, Paul. Paul P. Ellison, Information and Communications Technology Manager Edgehill College, Devon <SysAdm(a)edgecoll.clara.net> -------------------------------------------------------------- Legal Advisory: Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, 2000. --------------------------------------------- You are warned that all electronic communications are subject to interception for regulatory, quality control and crime detection purposes. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Edgehill IT Department Email Service. Please check sender's address from body of Message for return address. Find us at: www.edgecoll.clara.net ------------------------------------------------------------------------

3 2

Word perfect
by James H. Carter & Cybèle de Jong 14 Sep '00

14 Sep '00

Don't want to keep an almost (hopefully) dead thread going but with all this mention of Word as the best of a bad Win bunch I'm surprised no one has mentioned Word Perfect, particularly considering its availability on Linux. There isn't one task I do that I would use Word for over Word Perfect. The Interactive help is excellent for children and the DTP graphics and more truly WYSIWYG screen is great..... James Carter South Lee School

1 0

Re: strange IP problem
by Chris Davies 14 Sep '00

14 Sep '00

My thanks to those who contibuted. The problem was soved using route, specifically: route add default gw <IP address of router> eth0 This is the "default route". Once again, thanks. Chris Chris Davies Head of IT Epsom College College Road Epsom Surrey KT17 4JQ tel.: 01372 821178 fax.: 01372 821005

1 0

XML (was Doc formats)
by kevin.taylor＠powerconv.alstom.com 14 Sep '00

14 Sep '00

> interesting as this debate on formats is, what about the future, is this not > XML? Given that this will allow the flexibility for people to view (and > compose) documents as they want, it seems to be the way forward Don't forget that XML is a protocol - a framework. You still need to agree and make available your document definitions, and you still need applications that understand them. (I am not an expert, but this is how I always understood XML to work). Just because you define an XML document, does not mean that everyone with an XML reader will be able to use it. They will be only able to use it if : 1. They have access to your document defn (ie you are using a published one) 2. Their reader supports the contents of your tags in the same was as you defined them in the first place. Is there any work around for educational XML definitions (in the same way as definitions for medical records, maths, etc at the moment) for teacher records, student data, etc ? Kevin.

1 0

[suse-linux-uk-schools] Doc formats
by adrian.wells 14 Sep '00

14 Sep '00

> > But the point is not whether we can read the things if we have to, it's > > whether they are a sensible format for document exchange. And they're > > not, both because they are a proprietary format and because they are binary. Because they are binary? Do you have an analog computer Roger? Actually the point IS whether we can read it, a bit pointless otherwise, and this in turn is controlled by which software the majority of people have on their desktops and as much as you and I hate it, uncle Bill wins hands down. As to PDF, is this not owned by Adobe? (I may be wrong here so bare with me) If so, are non adobe versions of PDF compilers not illegal? That's why the readers are free, to encourage compilers to be paid for by people who wish to disseminate documents to any user (they know that the end use can download the reader if they do not have it), otherwise one is shooting one's own foot (as a software house). Kind regards Adrian Wells.

3 3

Re: [suse-linux-uk-schools] Strange IP problem
by Bill Antonia 13 Sep '00

13 Sep '00

Is there not a problem with this? I'm not completely sure about this, but access to the server from the internet, if the server has a public IP address, will not happen. WWW requests for example will be directed to the router not the server. Packets with public IP addresses will not traverse the internet. Or is it possible to configure a router to forward all packets for it's IP address to another machine for processing? The connection between the router and the server is considered to be a subnet so will require an IP address space which will be different from the internal network. However this connection will need real world side IP addresses for the real world to connect to the server. Or am I wrong? Regards Bill ----- Original Message ----- From: Derek Harding <derek(a)lagham.zetnet.co.uk> To: Bill Antonia <bill(a)beaconhillcott.freeserve.co.uk> Sent: Wednesday, September 13, 2000 6:00 AM Subject: Re: [suse-linux-uk-schools] Strange IP problem > If your new connexion provides an automatic IP address ( or you have one > hard-coded in) for the real world side, set up a small Linux box to act as a > masquerade/firewall between your internal network (using the standard > 192.168 series of IPs presumably) and the outside. You'll need a more > substantial RAM/CPU spec to run a proxy (which saves the need to > masquerade). Masquerading will need a new kernel build to allow forwarding > etc. and to build the appropriate masquerading modules. > > -- > Best wishes, Derek Harding > derek(a)lagham.zetnet.co.uk > hardingd(a)warlingham.surrey.sch.uk >

1 0

Doc formats
by James H. Carter & Cybèle de Jong 13 Sep '00

13 Sep '00

Don't want to keep an almost (hopefully) dead thread going but with all this mention of Word as the best of a bad Win bunch I'm surprised no one has mentioned Word Perfect, particularly considering its availability on Linux. There isn't one task I do that I would use Word for over Word Perfect. The Interactive help is excellent for children and the DTP graphics and more truly WYSIWYG screen is great..... James Carter South Lee School

1 0

Document Formats (was OSE Development Meeting)
by kevin.taylor＠powerconv.alstom.com 13 Sep '00

13 Sep '00

> PDF and PS are proprietry but open formats for which there are > freely available readers for /all/ platforms. There are few tools > for dealing with .doc's on nix and none to produce them. There are free tools for creating these too. The LDP uses tools to take the SGML source, apply a suitable document definition and produce : - HTML (multi-page) - HTML (single-page) - ASCII - pdf - RTF - PS All using freely available tools. I think the PS and PDF formats use TeX though - so they are quite beefy tools, but they are available. It is possible to convert PS files (print to file) to pdf using adobes distiller (if you have the money) - but also using ghostscript (if you have the time). Never used these tools myself, but I have seen the outputs on a document of mine (written for the LDP). Kevin. Northants LUG

2 1

Re: [suse-linux-uk-schools] OSE Development Meeting --- .DOC argument.
by Edgehill E-Mail Service 13 Sep '00

13 Sep '00

Hi, Frank > From: Frank Shute <shute(a)esperance.demon.co.uk> > To: Edgehill E-Mail Service <EdgehillIT(a)edgecoll.clara.net> > Subject: Re: [suse-linux-uk-schools] OSE Development Meeting --- .DOC argument. > Date: 12 September 2000 20:23 > > On Tue, Sep 12, 2000 at 05:45:14PM +0100, Edgehill E-Mail Service wrote: > > > > This thread is the stuff of Holy Wars. Surely we can agree on something? > > > > I have to say, and it may be a daft comment, that in the "OLD DAYS" <cue: > > violins etc.> the .DOC extension was just that - a document (formatted > > ASCII Text) rather than the .ASC or .TXT of unformatted text. I still > > occasionally forget... > > But the problem is that it is not a format that is even standard > across different versions of Word. Agreed - even different language variants of the same version - but there ARE 'free' readers available. > > > Word _is_ an excellent piece of software <cue: cash register. "Thanks, > > Bill.> for producing finished documents under Windows - *PROVIDED* that you > > know that your reader has a suitable viewer or will be getting hard-copy. > > The fact that a vast number of users produce/read Word files as their main > > document format makes the .DOC format, like it or not, a de-facto standard > > - even if it is a proprietary one. The same goes (went) for Lotus files! > > I don't think it is quite the de-facto standard that everybody likes > to believe. Yes 90% of people use Windows but what percentage of > that 90% have the /correct/ version of Word to read documents that > are produced with another version of Word? What's for sure is that > 100% of linux users such as myself can't deal with it and I'm damned > if I'm going to buy software to read and write some `de-facto' > standard that isn't really a standard anyway. Also agreed - but many businesses use the dinosaur anyway - and at least the later versions will produce documents in other formats, although it wasn't allways thus. > > > Agreed, if you want a cross-platform document, you use a cross-platform > > format (text, RTF(many systems will sort-of render it, at a pinch), PDF or > > even HTML!) > > ascii, PDF, HTML and TeX are all cross-platform. Everybody can deal with > the first three, if not creating at least reading. Exactly, but much (not all, happily) of the besuited business world denies the existence of anything not according to the default for their software :( > > > Thankfully, for those of us who use Word OR recieve .DOC's, more and more > > systems are now willing to view (if not write) the Word format files, which > > makes it easier for the Windows user to communicate (and later, migrate) to > > more open standards. > > > > Rather than booing and shouting, please try to have a little sympathy with > > those of us who havn't managed to migrate yet. I am scheduling the > > changeover for (hopefully) the summer holiday 2001. > > I don't mean to criticise those who do or have to use Word, what I'm > getting at is it's essentially useless to me and a lot of others. But, as a user of the behemoth in question, I have to say - it's the best of a bad (Windows)lot, and I accept that it is pretty useless to anyone not possessing a suitable piece of software - hence my comments about ASCII, PDF etc. Sadly, we don't seem to be in the majority :( > > I'm glad to hear that you're planning to migrate. I'd recommend you > try and get into LaTeX. I believe that Lyx is fairly easy for > beginners and as you get comfortable with that you can start perhaps > marking up LaTeX directly using an editor such as Vim which is > available for both Windows and Linux/unix > > Once you familiarise yourself with the benefits of LaTeX you'll dump > Word with the realisation of just how limiting and clumsy it is. Surprisingly, it isn't *necessarily* terribly clumsy to an experienced user with 23 fingers and a full BuckRogers keyboard <wry grin>, but there again, I use keyboard commands for most things. I don't use the "full feature set" or anything like it, after all - and nor does anyone else I know, and that is the main problem - rampant featuritis. I really would like to be able to afford the time (right now) to use something else - but we are an educational establishment, after all, and our 300+ young users need something at least vaguely familiar to start with. Sadly, this currently means Word, but we have started introducing StarOffice as part of the run-up toward migration to Linux - this is in order to maintain compatability between current work files (Word 7, Excel etc), their home computers (Office, Works etc, occasionally Linux systems!) and our future plans. Again, hardly an ideal solution, but it appears to be working. <crosses fingers and grabs a lump of wood> Once we have migrated fully, we will be in a position to think again about our primary teaching software. Most of my departmental/internal documents are being converted to HTML (for the ephemera, using the word converter directly from the .DOC, but that's just laziness on my part :/ ) > > > Incidentally, I can't read .DOC's from the machine I use for e-mails. I > > have to save to the network and open the file from the administration > > workstation! > > > > Let's just agree that things need to change, and avoid .DOC attachments :) > > Here, here! > > -- regards, Paul

1 0

Starnge IP problem
by Chris Davies 12 Sep '00

12 Sep '00

I set up a Linux machine last Feb as a webserver, the idea being to use it this year as a teaching aid or a means to publish pupils work. It worked fine within and without our network. I could access it from home. We had then an ISDN line and a simple router. I switched the machine off until last week. Now I can see the machine within the network, but not from without. From this linux machine I can ping anywhere within our network, including the router, but no further into the outside world. The only change is that we have installed a new leased line and new router. Would the problem possibly be with this or I have I inadvertantly made some change which is causing this problem? Any ideas? Chris Chris Davies Head of IT Epsom College College Road Epsom Surrey KT17 4JQ tel.: 01372 821178 fax.: 01372 821005

2 1