Survey Software

Sun Jan 31 20:30:17 UTC 2010

I've been trying out the demo that they have linked on their webpage -

http://phpesp.sourceforge.net/demo/admin/manage.php

It's unbearably slow when copying / editing other tests (this may be
due to the demo being hosted / running on sourceforge, might not be
the best infrastructure setup) - and firefox has locked up on me on
two different computers trying to make a test survey.

I've been trying to get past the first screen of making a survey; i've
filled out required fields, and it's returning me to the same page.
It says I should be continuing to the "Fields" tab, but there is no
Fields tab to click on. I tried copying another survey which appears
to work (has two questions) - when I go to edit that copy, on the
questions page, it won't show the list of questions, or let me add a
new question (on the "help" page it indicates that I should have a
fillable box in which I can type things).

Anyway, it is uninspiring at the moment, but I'm going to play with it
some more. Is there any way we could get it up on a publictest
machine? (In case any problems are just "running on a machine designed
to serve up downloads and not so much demos of survey software.")  I'm
also going to try it out with some "alternate browsers" on some
"alternate operating systems" just to see if that is an issue.

I TOOOOOOOOOOOoooootally appreciate your help! Seriously. Truly. I owe
you many pwnies.

Oh, I also saw that they are looking at using pear in phpesp in the
future; it was in the list for limesurvey as well, and I'm not sure if
it was one of the "problem packages" or not.  In any case, just an FYI
in case we may be working around a problem by picking out something
else where eventually we may be facing the same problem. :)

You rock!

-Robyn

On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 12:56 PM, David Nalley <david at gnsa.us> wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 2:50 PM, David Nalley <david at gnsa.us> wrote:
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> Hash: SHA1
>>
>> At the Events FAD we spent a good chunk of time looking at and working
>> on some of the Lime Survey dependencies. Unfortunately, they have
>> modified some (and they claim most) of the bundled libraries,
>> effectively forking them. We talked about a number of different
>> mitigation strategies. We can get a number of people involved and try
>> and get these modifications accepted upstream, however that is likely
>> at least a month and likely many months of slow moving work, with no
>> guarantee of success.
>>
>> I've included the IRC conversation below that I had with one of the
>> limesurvey devs.
>>
>> We talked about a number of solutions at events FAD, with suggestions
>> ranging from, pushing patches upstream, to using different software,
>> to forking.
>> The path of least resistance is using different software, and I found
>> one package called phpESP which looks ok, I haven't found any bundled
>> libs at all in a really brief perusal of source. The community seems
>> somewhat active (the latest version was released in Janary)
>>
>> Soooo - please take a look and see if it meets MKTG's needs. I may try
>> and package this tonight regardless of MKTG's decision, but if someone
>> wants to beat me to it, I have a 4 hour trip back, so feel free to
>> pick it up.
>>
>>
>>
>> 09:35  c_schmitz: sorry for the lag - basically the issue is that you
>> guys bundle libraries (which every web app
>> does, and we break them out and bundle the package separately) but you
>> guys have modified at least one of
>> those libraries, so packaging the upstream library doesn't really
>> help, as we are missing those changes.
>> 09:42  yes, ke4qqq
>> 09:42  we modified almost all liberaries
>> 09:42  due to bugs etc
>> 09:43  we communicated these bugs to the devs of these these libraries mostly
>> 09:43  but they are very slow to fix
>> 09:44  so I don't recommend to break out any of teh packages
>> 09:44  unfortunately our packaging guidelines don't permit us to not -
>> (and debian is the same way)
>> 09:45  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:No_Bundled_Libraries
>> 09:45  well, then you have a problem
>> 09:50  I would not know how to solve this
>> 09:51  using your bundled libraries will introduce certain bugs
>> 09:51  bundled libraries=separate packages
>> 09:51  yes
>> 09:52  which on the other hand will mean that we will have bogus bugs
>> reported to us
>> 09:52  for which we can't really give support
>> 09:52  well we are actually discussing this at a Fedora Activity day -
>> and hopefully we can add an extra voice to
>> get those patches accepted upstream
>> 09:52  won't be a short process unfortunately
>> 09:53  but in the long run hopefully better for everyone
>> 09:53  sure, but this is a huge problem with every packaging
>> 09:53  Ubuntu packaging is a little more relaxed about that
>> 09:53  yes it is (/me packages a number of webapps for Fedora and deal
>> with it a lot)
>> 09:54  I totally appreciate your effort
>> 09:54  It will help the LImeSurvey project to have to as a Linux package
>> 09:54  better: Fedora package
>> 09:55  you should also get in touch with nijaba
>> 09:55  (Nicolas Barcet)
>> 09:55  since he is the Ubunut packager
>> 09:55  Ubuntu
>> 09:55  ok, I'll do so
>>
>>
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
>> Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux)
>> Comment: Use GnuPG with Firefox : http://getfiregpg.org (Version: 0.7.10)
>>
>> iEYEARECAAYFAktl3wwACgkQkZOYj+cNI1cpdACfSO+tmU+lgnIzAkHEIhWNGqS4
>> Vw0AoK/QwYMUWXRPpRvlYd9QWUg4oJ3K
>> =anrn
>> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>>
>
>
>
> Meant to include a link:
> http://www.butterfat.net/wiki/Projects/phpESP/
> --
> marketing mailing list
> marketing at lists.fedoraproject.org
> https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
>