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I was wondering today why use mbstring rather than iconv in Dokeos, and honestly I didn't remember exactly why I had chosen mbstring in the past, but finding information about the *differences* between the two. mbstring is a library that deals with multi-byte character strings iconv is also a library that deals with multi-byte character strings However, their respective documentation doesn't mention the other one. Searching a bit more, I found a

For professional testing, I needed a test installation of an LDAP server. This has never been easier on an Ubuntu (and it's as easy on Debian Etch):

sudo apt-get install slapd

The installer asks you for a password twice (I've put "ldap" as it's just a test install) and then writes a config file in /etc/ldap/slapd.conf and starts the service. If you go into the config file, you will see that, by default (if it didn't find any domain name definition) it will put you a cn=admin,dc=nodomain. To use it easily, why not install phpldapadmin?

sudo apt-g

I've updated the 1.8.5 page, basically to mention that although I had initially planned the beta to be released last Friday, I failed on that predicament and I'm trying to make it ready for tomorrow or Wednesday the 16th. Obviously, the official release date for Dokeos 1.8.5 stable will be pushed back (a lot more, this one) as we want to have a beta, then a release candidate, then a stable release, each of them separated by at least one week to let you guys try it out and report things that are *still* not working.

I've already touched the topic slightly earlier, and there is a nice Dokeos 1.8.5 page in the tabs above that give a global idea, but Dokeos 1.8.5 comes packed with a lot of tiny but practical new features, and tiny but practical improvements. Some of the things we are working on at the moment are listed below

Regional Managers and Human Resources Managers

It's been a repeated complaint among our users that the flexibility of Dokeos roles was not complete enough for medium to large-size companies.

A few days ago, after talking with Manuel Ruiz Hurtado and Ernesto Quiñones Azcárate in a small meeting to see what was the current status of large e-learning push projects in Peru, I realised the importance of having an e-commerce tool related to course contents for Dokeos and other e-learning systems.

I'm back on track now and preparing Dokeos 1.8.5 which release has officially been announced for 19th of April 2008 in the March Newsletter. As usual, there will be a Beta and possibly some Release Candidates one and two weeks before that. We are trying to release a beta next week, I will keep you updated here. Note that an alpha version with many bugs has already been released internally, and we are submitting the last bugfixes at the moment, but we still have one or two new features to integrate before the beta, which is what is going to take the most time.

I´m currently on holiday in the Galapagos Islands (for 3 more days). The weather is excellent and the local wildlife is just as expected, wonderful. If anybody wants to contact me here about Dokeos, I´m in Puerto Ayora, hostal Los Amigos, room 1. A few pictures, in no particular order...

In the Evolution e-mail client (and groupware) application, there is a plugin called "Face" (or "Portrait") in French.

Translations are an important part of the Dokeos offer. The interface is translated, to date, in more than 34 languages. Of course, these translations vary in quality and completeness, but we are trying to provide you the best tools to help us get them better. That's why, around 2 years ago, we have created the DLTT (Dokeos Language Translation Tool).