-- Start log: Wednesday, March 28, 2001 9:33:06 pm ASI Meeting Server time-- 

Scottyg says, "I had one other thought Randall. When an existing member
goes to the registration system, it would be nice to let him initialize his
info by putting in his member number and validating his username and
password." Scottyg says, "Ian, P.O. Box 940825, Plano, TX 75094-0825"
Scottyg says, "(Assuming he has a Team Director account)" irs says,
"Thanks, Scotty."
Severy says, "Shouldn't be a problem, Scotty, there is already a Team
Director API call to retrieve member info based on a member number" Severy
says, "And username and password validation can be done against the
password file" Scottyg says, "I plan to restructure the registration
database to match the Team Director user fields, unless you want to move
the whole system into Team Director, in which case I need a number of
fields related to the credit card processing." Severy says, "It might be
easier to move it into Team Director" Severy says, "I've got the Account
Request processing in there already, which could be cloned to provide most
of the stuff needed for pending memberships" Severy says, "And the payment
screens already have most of the information you need, it wouldn't be
difficult to add a few fields" Scottyg says, "The only down side to moving
it into Team Director is that you become the bottleneck in getting any
changes made. :=)" Severy says, "True, but I'm usually more responsive than
Jim has been ;-)" dcarson says, "not that hard"
Severy says, "And minor changes are usually pretty easy to do quickly, what
I get bogged down on is adding major new features, which tend to be put off
for far too long" Severy says, "It helps that the sales account version of
Team Director is becoming critical to our sales effort, and we've got a
commercial installation of it managing a medical association in the
Netherlands" Severy says, "If I was dependent on ASI activity as the sole
incentive to work on Team Director, I'd have to admit that it would be a
rather low priority most of the time :-(" Severy says, "It also doesn't
hurt that the Mars Society will be starting to use Team Director in a few
weeks as well...." Scottyg says, "Well, think on it for a couple of days.
I'm willing to do an external interface if we go that way. I've gotten my
feet wet with php over the last few days, and I can get it done. But doing
it all in one system is a lot cleaner." Scottyg says, "And I can also do
PERL, but I'm relatively inexperienced." Severy says, "Let me go through
the outline you sent in some detail and I'll see if I see any issues that I
can't figure out" Scottyg says, "Ok, I'll put any other work on hold for a
few days." Scottyg says, "(Except for a few tweaks to what's already
there.)" Scottyg says, "And I'll go back over my previous outline. I've had
a few new ideas that I should work into it." Severy says, "Ok, I'll work on
drafting up an implementation outline and run it by you for comments before
I start work on it" Scottyg says, "Such as...If a member elects mail-in
registration, let him fill out the form and then create a printer-friendly
page with all the data filled in that he can print out and mail in."
Scottyg says, "Instead of sending him to print a page with blank spaces he
has to fill in by hand. That form could also bring up his existing
information from the database." Severy says, "Yup, that sounds like a
worthwhile thing to do" Scottyg says, "If you do this in Team Director, The
presentation to the user needs to be customized for each client, so you'll
need some sort of template capability." Severy says, "Let me see how I can
design that in a fairly generic fashion, since I suspect the LDC
registration system (another implementation of Team Director) could use
that, and probably the NVALT (that medical association) as well" Scottyg
says, "Or else an API to hook to." Severy says, "Yes, it would need to be
template-driven" dcarson says, "can probably use most of the WSD template
stuff, fill in form, click printable button and print resulting page"
Severy says, "Actually, Team Director already has some pretty robust
template routines, better in some ways than WSD" Severy says, "Our sales
system generates several dozen e-mail messages a day to sales prospects,
and they are all template-driven" Scottyg says, "Yep, thats what I was
thinking. And use macro tags to place the fields." dcarson says, "idealy
they should be the same tempates language, makes learning easier" Scottyg
says, "Uh-huh."
Scottyg says, "Ok, any more discussion on this topic?" Severy says, "Yes,
they're pretty much the same template language, I don't like doing the same
thing several different ways ;-)" Severy says, "I think I know what I need
to do, I should have something sketched out by Saturday, if not before"
Severy says, "But don't hesitate to pester me about it, Scotty, I need all
of the incentive I can get ;-)" Scottyg says, "Does the template language
support edit fields (FORMS)" Severy says, "It doesn't need to, those can be
handled with regular HTML form fields" Severy says, "I can grab some of the
code of the code from our guestbook processing for the form processing, you
saw how that worked when you signed up for the license on our site" Scottyg
says, "Ummmm, yeah. A little messy to code, but doable." Severy says, "I've
gotten quite used to parsing HTML pages, and I've got a lot of code that
does that ;-)" Scottyg says, "If the field names can be the same as the
tags, its a lot easier." Scottyg says, "(template tags)"
Severy says, "Yeah, that's the way we handle the guestbook forms, the field
names usually match the database field names, although I use a mapping
process when there isn't always a one-to-one mapping" Severy says, "I need
to head out for a little while with my daughter, is it all right if I
disappear for 15-30 minutes?" Scottyg says, "The other major headache is
escaping the quote marks. You end up with some very wierd looking stuff in
the print statements." dcarson says, "fine with me"
Severy says, "Tell me about it! I think over half of the HTML parsing code
I've written is just to deal with optional quote marks..." Scottyg says,
"Sure. The only other topic I was gonna bring up was Greg's email about
publishing MMM in pdf format." Severy says, "Ok, I'll be back as soon as I
can..." dcarson says, "Scottty, had a friend of mine in the filk community
want Tims email. There is a CD of space filk coming out and he wants to sel
some to LT." Scottyg says, "BTW Ian, I never said thanks for putting me in
touch with Nova for the credit card processing." irs says, "No problem.
Glad to help (and I'm sure they're glad for the business, since I haven't
yet started throwing as much at them as I thought. Soon, soon....)" Scottyg
says, "They had no problem at all with handling our account." Scottyg says,
"I started processing orders this month...Have done about 20 so far."
Scottyg says, "Yeah Dana, Tim might be interested. No-overhead products are
nice." Scottyg says, "Greg suggested starting a discussion on artemis-list
about MMM. I agree, except that we need an equivalent list on Moon
Society." Scottyg says, "And I don't subscribe to artemis-list, so someone
else will have to kick it off." dcarson says, "when did greg send this
email?" Scottyg says, "This afternoon. I don't remember who was copied on
it. Let me look it up." irs will be right back.
Scottyg says, "I forwarded it to you Dana." Scottyg will be right back.
irs says, "back"
irs says, "Greg's e-mail is in my in-box (on the other server). Haven't
read it yet." irs says, "Oh, and I may be ditching this account: RCN
decided to raise the rates 30%, so I may be paying Panix more for full
access." irs says, "Would it take long, Dana, to redirect the lrcpubs
address I have forwarded to erols to another address (when I figure it
out)?" dcarson says, "a couple of minutes"
dcarson says, "or we can setup a POP box and leave it on qs33 until you
pick it up with your mail reader" irs says, "Good. Thanks. I'll let you
know." Scottyg says, "Another topic just occurred to me....Greg is on a
crusade against using php on Moon Society." irs says, "Qu'est-ce que php?"
dcarson says, "Greg and new things to learn is interesting" Scottyg says,
"I agree that it should not be used where there is a better alternative,
such as for general static headers and footers." dcarson says, "a web
language to generate pages on the fly" irs says, "ah, ok"
Scottyg says, "But php is quite easy to use, and more convenient in many
cases than cgi scripting." irs will be right back.
Scottyg says, "So, my input is....lets convert the headers and footers to
WSD templates, but continue to use php for dynamic content." dcarson says,
"sounds about right to me scotty" dcarson says, "we want the news and moon
phases etc dynamic" Scottyg says, "He complains about maintainability, but
I think php is easier to maintain than cgi." Scottyg says, "The difference
is....Someone else has always done the cgi, so Greg hasn't had to deal with
it." Scottyg says, "And since php is handled by the web server, its a lower
server load than loading PERL to run every script." Scottyg says, "Of
course, C language cgi is efficient, but requires a system login and more
knowledge of the system API." Scottyg says, "In either case, debugging the
cgi without a system login can be difficult." irs says, "back"
Scottyg says, "Ian, did you get Greg's message about MMM?" irs says, "I
think it's waiting in my in-box. What about it?" Scottyg says, "Since I'm
the one interacting with Peter, I need to know if anyone has any inputs."
irs says, "Not right now."
Scottyg says, "I think we will offer members two options...Receive MMM
electronically at a reduced rate, or receive MMM by mail at a higher rate
for domestic mail or a much higher rate for international." irs says, "I
think that may not be a great idea. Even though it will make membership
cheaper, people attach more value to something physical, like a paper
magazine, rather than an electronic magazine (same reason people won't pay
for ficiton magazines online, but will buy 'em on paper)." Scottyg says,
"($2.30 to mail international copies = $27.60 higher annual costs for us.
Plus the envelope)" irs says, "Again, it's the type of thing that people
will say "Oh, cheaper, sure!" the first year. But when it comes time to
renew, they won't remember the electronic communication, and simply won't
renew." irs says, "Offer it electronically to international members, OK,
but not as the first choice. For domestic members, no. Mind you, that $28
increase in dues, solely for postage, is completely in line with every
other US magazine they receive (maybe it's time to start complaining to
Congress about the USPS)." dcarson says, "well SJGames has a couple
thousand subscribers to their online magazine now" Scottyg says, "In that
case, our dues would need to be $35.00 domestic and $60.00 international
for hard copy. We already offer a no-MMM option at $25.00. That could
change to include web access to on-line copies at no added cost." irs says,
"I think those are reasonable numbers, Scotty. And Dana, SJGame" Scottyg
says, "(In a members-only area.) Plus maybe a publicly-viewable sample."
irs says, "SJGames' audience is probably the most web-savvy around. We're
aiming at a much wider, potentially less web-aware audience. Many of them
are going to need paper newsletters. Besides, it won't cost us anything
more if they take the higher paper rate." dcarson says, "true"
dcarson says, "(which remindes me, I need to renew)" Scottyg says, "We may
need to subsidize LRS a bit on buying Acrobat." dcarson says, "its not
horrible in price" Scottyg says, "According to our bylaws, we need to
nominate officers soon for the next election. Anyone remember whose terms
expire this August?" irs says, "In the absence of anyone who even looks
like a candidate for officer, I think it might be better if we either let
it slide, or renominate everyone." dcarson says, "lets make one more call
for nominees" Scottyg says, "Yep, we need a call for nominees and/or
volunteers." Scottyg says, "I would especially like to see a new Vice
President. Jim has only ever attended one or two of these meetings, and has
virtually disappeared." dcarson says, "very true"
Scottyg says, "So even a do-nothing replacement wouldn't be a loss. Nothing
to lose, much to gain." irs says, "I'm not saying we shouldn't find
candidates for office. Simply that I don't see any coming forward. And to
be blunt, the best candidates usually come from the ranks of the most
active and/or experienced volunteers. Do we have either?" Scottyg says,
"Sure wish we could twist Margo's arm." Scottyg says, "She's good at
keeping things moving and generating interest." dcarson says, "yep"
Scottyg says, "And I understand that her career demands are easing up
some." dcarson says, "Arthur Smith might be possible" Scottyg says, "I
don't know Arthur."
Scottyg says, "Dick Steffans might be possible too." dcarson says, "he
works as for The American Physical Society " dcarson says, "has been on the
MOO a bit and is going to do some of the old MMMs in electronic form"
Scottyg says, "Any evidence that he keeps his commitments? That's the
single most important qualification." dcarson says, "he hasn't been around
long enough to be sure" Scottyg says, "Well, I was trying to wait for
Randall to get back, but I haven't had supper yet and its getting late, so
I need to go." irs says, "Yeah, Kit just got home (subway delays), so I
should see to her, too." irs says, "goodnight?"
Scottyg says, "G'night!"
dcarson says, "gnight all"
Scottyg says, "Dana, will you stop the recorder?" irs has disconnected.
Scottyg has disconnected.

-- End log: Wednesday, March 28, 2001 11:21:20 pm ASI Meeting Server time--