Research log proposal

john habermann john.habermann at wilderness.org.au
Sun May 20 23:57:26 UTC 2007


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 <martin.gustafsson at chalmers.se> 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
Internet Programmer, System Administrator
The Wilderness Society Inc
http://www.wilderness.org.au




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