Organisation

It's still a bit premature because we'd like to try it out a few times more before officially announcing it on the website, so if you want to help, feel free to download your version from here: http://www.dokeos.com/download/dokeos-1.8.5.zip In a few hours from now we will make the official announcement, so the official release date will be the 12th of June anyway. If you happen to witness some wierd thing in the install or upgrade procedure, please, let me know as soon as possible! Otherwise, just enj

Not that I've been too busy on Dokeos lately (I tend to take my mind off Dokeos for a couple of days after a release), but it's going to come back very fast now as we are warming up for the last run to Dokeos 1.8.5 stable. So, what's on the menu? Well, apparently there are still *some* bugs about the course copy and SCORM export somehow. Thomas filed a bug for me about this.

I've updated the Dokeos 1.8.5 page to reflect the fact that we now have a Release Candidate and are very close to the stable release. This is a time for us (developers) to take a deep breath and analyse things with the satisfaction of someone having done a nice job.

We officially released 1.8.5 RC1 tonight, although we might alter the package just for two little microscopic changes tomorrow morning (one concerning SCORM export on Dokeos installs that use a subdirectory of the web server document root, and the other implementing a default hiding of the audiorecorder for the learning path building tool). I think there's not much to say, other than it's a *great* unstable release. I find it amazing how much we can progress with a good team.

Next week, we will be releasing an RC1 for Dokeos 1.8.5. The main targets for this version are:

• fixing SCORM (import, export and reporting)
• fixing audio recorder and some videoconference minor bugs
• improving the templating system
• adding repetitive events to the agenda (and iCal import, as well)

I'm quite annoyed because I will have to update the database structure to allow for repetitive events, but we're still before RC1 so it is still an "acceptable" change, and apparently it's been said it would be in 1.8.5, so...

[digg=http://digg.com/programming/Dokeos_1_8_5_Beta_2_Released] Alright, so I did release a little brother for Dokeos 1.8.5 Beta today.

[digg=http://digg.com/programming/Dokeos_Drupal_link_in_the_making] I had an interesting talk with Marco Antonio Villegas Vega the morning of 19th April 2008 about a possible link between Drupal and Dokeos in the medium-term future (a few months). The idea is that Dokeos lacks one thing that Moodle has (but that we don't want in Dokeos itself): the possibility to build a widget-based website with your content. Dokeos has a strong structure, which Moodle lacks of, making it simpler for new users to get around

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'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.