Re: Upcoming 2.0 of LedgerSMB

["David A. Bandel" <..hidden..>]

On Sat, Jul 24, 2010 at 17:08, David F. Skoll <..hidden..> wrote:
> Joshua D. Drake wrote:
>
>> Latex may be great for you but if I walk into an office and say, "Sue,
>> here is how you customize templates" and its tex? I might as well walk
>> back out, cause she will have none of it.
>
> If you are dreaming of a situation in which LedgerSMB is used *and
> customized* by "average" office workers, I'd say LaTeX is the least of
> your worries.
>
> Realistically, installing and customizing LedgerSMB is currently done
> by Linux and FOSS geeks, and I don't see that changing any time soon.
> So I would say it's best to use the best tools for the job, and LaTeX
> is about the best there is for generating printed output.
>
>> We *need* at least as an option to provide simple, easy to modify,
>> preferably from the browser, templates.
>
> How many people have asked for that?  (Just curious.)
>

OK, well, I haven't asked lately, and I haven't been very active on
the list either of late.  But I would like to see better use made of
AJAX.  Whether we simplify by using an API (my favorite at the moment
is jquery and the jquery-ui), these are not necessary.  But they sure
make some things easier.

Both AJAX and Javascript interfacing make for some very flexible CSS
layouts that you can change on the fly.

I've been thinking a lot about some of this lately, but I need to take
time and dig into the code.  One of the reasons I'm looking at this is
I run several Asterisk servers and am looking at extracting call data
(kept in PostgreSQL) into LedgerSMB using AJAX to query the Asterisk
CDR table and a rate table to populate a bill and post and print it.

Anyway, while I can hack tex when I need to, I'd hardly call it fun.

Hmmm. Git.  Time to hit the howto's and docs again.

Ciao,

David A. Bandel
-- 
Focus on the dream, not the competition.
            - Nemesis Air Racing Team motto
Visit my blog at: http://www.pananix.com/cgi-bin/blosxom