Research log proposal

[Martin Gustafsson-2]

Hello everybody,

I would like to suggest a project that could be useful to a lot of
people, in a context that's a bit off from what web CMS:es usually are
for. I wasn't sure where to put a proposal like this, but since the
product is intended primarily for university employees, I figured this
is the most suitable of the Plone lists. If you think otherwise, please
let me know.

What I have in mind is a Plone-based system for keeping scientific
notes. As a scientist, you need to keep a detailed log of what you do,
of the data you collect and the pictures you take. Today, everybody does
this on paper, simply because there is no good digital solution. Paper
logbooks are hard to search, you must keep several in parallell or
remember to always take one with you if you work in several labs, and
you can't easily go back and comment or modify previous notes.
Additionally, almost all measurement data is taken by computers these
days and pictures are taken digitally. Having pictures, data and notes
all in one place, searchable and categorizable, would be tremendously
useful. I have told some colleagues about the idea of setting up a
web-based note taking system, and they've all been very interested. If
nicely executed, a system like this could be adopted pretty widely, and
I think Plone would be an excellent platform to do it.

The general characteristics of such a system would be:
1) Fast adding and editing of content. A lab journal is more for writing
than for reading, as opposed to an intranet or a regular website. The
number of clicks required should be minimized, and this area that might
require some special adjustments.
2) Views that show the full text of each note in a folder, filtered by
keywords and dates.
3) Pre-defined Marshalling so that files can be uploaded in batch and
notes/data files be appended programmatically.
4) Simple installation and most special features removed. No workflow,
events, news etc; everything set up for one-person use.

I have a pretty good idea of what this should look like, and nearly all
the important parts can be done in Plone. The problem is, I don't have
the skills to do it by myself without somebody more experienced helping
me out. How do you suggest that I turn this into a real project and get
others to join me and help out with the coding?

If anyone here is interested, I would be happy to post a more technical
proposal, describing how I think this should be implemented. And again,
if you know of a better place to post it than here, that would be highly
appreciated too.


Best regards
Martin Gustafsson


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[Tim Churches]

Martin Gustafsson wrote:

> Hello everybody,
>
> I would like to suggest a project that could be useful to a lot of
> people, in a context that's a bit off from what web CMS:es usually are
> for. I wasn't sure where to put a proposal like this, but since the
> product is intended primarily for university employees, I figured this
> is the most suitable of the Plone lists. If you think otherwise, please
> let me know.
>
> What I have in mind is a Plone-based system for keeping scientific
> notes. As a scientist, you need to keep a detailed log of what you do,
> of the data you collect and the pictures you take. Today, everybody does
> this on paper, simply because there is no good digital solution. Paper
> logbooks are hard to search, you must keep several in parallell or
> remember to always take one with you if you work in several labs, and
> you can't easily go back and comment or modify previous notes.
> Additionally, almost all measurement data is taken by computers these
> days and pictures are taken digitally. Having pictures, data and notes
> all in one place, searchable and categorizable, would be tremendously
> useful. I have told some colleagues about the idea of setting up a
> web-based note taking system, and they've all been very interested. If
> nicely executed, a system like this could be adopted pretty widely, and
> I think Plone would be an excellent platform to do it.
>
> The general characteristics of such a system would be:
> 1) Fast adding and editing of content. A lab journal is more for writing
> than for reading, as opposed to an intranet or a regular website. The
> number of clicks required should be minimized, and this area that might
> require some special adjustments.
> 2) Views that show the full text of each note in a folder, filtered by
> keywords and dates.
> 3) Pre-defined Marshalling so that files can be uploaded in batch and
> notes/data files be appended programmatically.
> 4) Simple installation and most special features removed. No workflow,
> events, news etc; everything set up for one-person use.

It might be useful to add digital notarisation of log book contents to
make it easier to prove that work was done at particular times -  see
http://www.gnumed.net/gnotary/ for the general idea.

Tim C

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[Laurence Rowe]

Hi Martin,

I'd ask on the plone-users list, it's got much higher traffic.

Have you seen CMFBibliographyAT and it's accompanying products (search
for bibliography on plone.org)

http://plone.org/products/cmfbibliographyat

Hope that helps,

Laurence

Martin Gustafsson wrote:

> Hello everybody,
>
> I would like to suggest a project that could be useful to a lot of
> people, in a context that's a bit off from what web CMS:es usually are
> for. I wasn't sure where to put a proposal like this, but since the
> product is intended primarily for university employees, I figured this
> is the most suitable of the Plone lists. If you think otherwise, please
> let me know.
>
> What I have in mind is a Plone-based system for keeping scientific
> notes. As a scientist, you need to keep a detailed log of what you do,
> of the data you collect and the pictures you take. Today, everybody does
> this on paper, simply because there is no good digital solution. Paper
> logbooks are hard to search, you must keep several in parallell or
> remember to always take one with you if you work in several labs, and
> you can't easily go back and comment or modify previous notes.
> Additionally, almost all measurement data is taken by computers these
> days and pictures are taken digitally. Having pictures, data and notes
> all in one place, searchable and categorizable, would be tremendously
> useful. I have told some colleagues about the idea of setting up a
> web-based note taking system, and they've all been very interested. If
> nicely executed, a system like this could be adopted pretty widely, and
> I think Plone would be an excellent platform to do it.
>
> The general characteristics of such a system would be:
> 1) Fast adding and editing of content. A lab journal is more for writing
> than for reading, as opposed to an intranet or a regular website. The
> number of clicks required should be minimized, and this area that might
> require some special adjustments.
> 2) Views that show the full text of each note in a folder, filtered by
> keywords and dates.
> 3) Pre-defined Marshalling so that files can be uploaded in batch and
> notes/data files be appended programmatically.
> 4) Simple installation and most special features removed. No workflow,
> events, news etc; everything set up for one-person use.
>
> I have a pretty good idea of what this should look like, and nearly all
> the important parts can be done in Plone. The problem is, I don't have
> the skills to do it by myself without somebody more experienced helping
> me out. How do you suggest that I turn this into a real project and get
> others to join me and help out with the coding?
>
> If anyone here is interested, I would be happy to post a more technical
> proposal, describing how I think this should be implemented. And again,
> if you know of a better place to post it than here, that would be highly
> appreciated too.
>
>
> Best regards
> Martin Gustafsson

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[John Habermann]

Hi Martin

There is an application called elog which was originally developed as
a shift logbook  for particle experiments at the PSI institute
http://midas.psi.ch/elog/ which matches a lot with what you are
describing. It is not a plone application but might be worth looking
at to see how someone else has approached this problem.

cheers
John

On 5/21/07, Martin Gustafsson <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Hello everybody,
>
> I would like to suggest a project that could be useful to a lot of
> people, in a context that's a bit off from what web CMS:es usually are
> for. I wasn't sure where to put a proposal like this, but since the
> product is intended primarily for university employees, I figured this
> is the most suitable of the Plone lists. If you think otherwise, please
> let me know.
>
> What I have in mind is a Plone-based system for keeping scientific
> notes. As a scientist, you need to keep a detailed log of what you do,
> of the data you collect and the pictures you take. Today, everybody does
> this on paper, simply because there is no good digital solution. Paper
> logbooks are hard to search, you must keep several in parallell or
> remember to always take one with you if you work in several labs, and
> you can't easily go back and comment or modify previous notes.
> Additionally, almost all measurement data is taken by computers these
> days and pictures are taken digitally. Having pictures, data and notes
> all in one place, searchable and categorizable, would be tremendously
> useful. I have told some colleagues about the idea of setting up a
> web-based note taking system, and they've all been very interested. If
> nicely executed, a system like this could be adopted pretty widely, and
> I think Plone would be an excellent platform to do it.
>
> The general characteristics of such a system would be:
> 1) Fast adding and editing of content. A lab journal is more for writing
> than for reading, as opposed to an intranet or a regular website. The
> number of clicks required should be minimized, and this area that might
> require some special adjustments.
> 2) Views that show the full text of each note in a folder, filtered by
> keywords and dates.
> 3) Pre-defined Marshalling so that files can be uploaded in batch and
> notes/data files be appended programmatically.
> 4) Simple installation and most special features removed. No workflow,
> events, news etc; everything set up for one-person use.
>
> I have a pretty good idea of what this should look like, and nearly all
> the important parts can be done in Plone. The problem is, I don't have
> the skills to do it by myself without somebody more experienced helping
> me out. How do you suggest that I turn this into a real project and get
> others to join me and help out with the coding?
>
> If anyone here is interested, I would be happy to post a more technical
> proposal, describing how I think this should be implemented. And again,
> if you know of a better place to post it than here, that would be highly
> appreciated too.
>
>
> Best regards
> Martin Gustafsson
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> NGO mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/ngo
>

--
John Habermann
Internet Programmer, System Administrator
The Wilderness Society Inc
http://www.wilderness.org.au

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[Martin Gustafsson-2]

Hello Tim,

> It might be useful to add digital notarisation of log book contents to
> make it easier to prove that work was done at particular times -  see
> http://www.gnumed.net/gnotary/ for the general idea.

If that could be done nicely, it would certainly be a useful feature,
but wouldn't it be hard to implement directly in Plone? Maybe it's
better to hasch the ZODB and any filesystem files at the end of each day
or something instead, as a process outside of Plone.

Laurence: Thanks, I followed your suggestion of reposting the message on
the Plone-Users list.

Best regards
Martin Gustafsson


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[Nynke Kruiderink]

Hello,

I have a little challenge and I'm not sure where to post my question.
I'd like to add links to social bookmarking tools (delicious, magnolia,
dig, etc) in the footer of my website.

I could use javascript links which grab the domain name and document
name to allow the visitor to easily tag the page but to do so I need to
know how to post javascript in the footer. Anyone know how to do this or
now where I can post my question or find relevant info?

Or maybe there's a "plone-way" of doing this which is more elegant than
javascript links?

Thanks for your feedback,
Nynke



Ms. Nynke Kruiderink
Officer Knowledge Sharing
International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD) P.O.
Box 11586, 2502 AN The Hague, The Netherlands
Visitors: Raamweg 5, 2596 HL, The Hague, The Netherlands
tel:[phone] Fax:[phone] www.iicd.org
www.iconnect-online.org www.dgroups.org www.itrainonline.org
 
People - ICT - Development

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[Winn King]

There's a product called PloneBookmarklets that might do what you want.
http://plone.org/products/plonebookmarklets
Winn

Nynke Kruiderink wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I have a little challenge and I'm not sure where to post my question.
> I'd like to add links to social bookmarking tools (delicious, magnolia,
> dig, etc) in the footer of my website.
>
> I could use javascript links which grab the domain name and document
> name to allow the visitor to easily tag the page but to do so I need to
> know how to post javascript in the footer. Anyone know how to do this or
> now where I can post my question or find relevant info?
>
> Or maybe there's a "plone-way" of doing this which is more elegant than
> javascript links?
>
> Thanks for your feedback,
> Nynke
>
>
>
> Ms. Nynke Kruiderink
> Officer Knowledge Sharing
> International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD) P.O.
> Box 11586, 2502 AN The Hague, The Netherlands
> Visitors: Raamweg 5, 2596 HL, The Hague, The Netherlands
> tel:[phone] Fax:[phone] www.iicd.org
> www.iconnect-online.org www.dgroups.org www.itrainonline.org
>  
> People - ICT - Development
>  

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