Re: [Gnumed-devel] Gui-Designers was the id_name debate

[J Busser]

At 6:23 PM +1000 9/9/04, Horst Herb wrote:
> I don't dislike Richards design. I believe it suits most users well. It just
> doesn't fit my personal workflow, so I won't use it myself, that's all. I
> strongly suspect that my personal preferences will not suit any sizeable
> number of users.

Should we maybe take the view that even if though the organization 
and content of "Richard-space" widgets will be different from 
Horst's, the method of building widgets (wxGlade etc) that Horst used 
can/should be more closely followed? This could allow Horst, though 
he does not have time to do the coding, to comment when he can on any 
posted problems he has already had a chance to figure out. Moreover, 
by pursuing the same approach, we may catch up to places where Horst 
had to stop, and may together dig up solutions that will serve the 
needs of both sets of widgets (Horst space and Richard space) - IMO 
just an extension of the approach taken so far with non-widget 
aspects of gnumed.

If the above has any merit, do we still need 2 things (adding to Karsten):

1) a statement by individuals or groups of what it would take (the 
minimum requirements) for gnumed to begin to serve *some* limited but 
useful *real* function, i.e. while continuing to use other 
applications for what gnumed cannot do (iwhich BTW is what Horst did)

2) seeing what these people are willing to do to get gnumed to meet 
the minimum requirements (do = coding and/or financially supporting 
coding and/or helping with  the legwork to get it done)

In the past 3 months, purely as an experiment to try to move toward 
an EMR (and for no other reason) I have spent about $Can 5,000 on a 
server and hardware firewall and $Can 4,000 on support for server 
set-up (Debian, packages, Apache/Tomcat and the firewall, also 
security/performance/reliability testing, documentation), 
trouble-shooting my pesky ISP and helping me to learn what I need to 
co-administer the server.

Installation of OSCAR has so far been a small part. The (lack of) 
open project management has become a terrible concern. I do not yet 
have it working to the point of doing anything useful, and everything 
to this point has been a gamble, but I have been taking a chance on 
it, and certainly want to pitch in whatever support I can to get 
gnumed implemented. This includes at least *trying* gnumed once it is 
closer to minimum function and seeing what can be done to help it get 
to minimum function. I would contribute to code funding to get a 
solution to work for me, but I would prefer to have some realistic 
possibility that the time and money will not be wasted. I cannot yet 
tell for example, even if I were to ask local people to code 
something for me, if their product can truly contribute usefully to a 
growing code base. While it may be possible, I am concerned that 
these people would need some active direction on what and how to 
build the modules and it is direction that I am unable to give,