User talk:Howard Miller

Hi Howard, sorry for taking ages to respond - haven't been here in a while. You're right, a2enmod is a bit debian-specific, but the directives to be placed in the configuration are not. I think apache 1 and 2 differ on how to enable modules and a2enmod applies to version 2, but I'm more of a tinkerer than an expert there :) I'll edit it in again, but with that caveat. - Matt Gibson 08:37, 12 October 2006 (CDT)

Hi Howard, thanks for your work improving Docs continuously! Hyper-cool! Eloy Lafuente (stronk7) 13:02, 14 March 2007 (CDT)

Moodle XML

Hello Howard,

I learned from http://www.qedoc.org/en/index.php?title=Moodle_XML_format that you are the creator (maintainer, guru...) of the Moodle XML format. I have started a XML FAQ page (https://docs.moodle.org/en/XML_FAQ) and an Import and export FAQ page (https://docs.moodle.org/en/Import_and_export_FAQ) to collect all the scattered information regarding importing and exporting Moodle content namely in XML format.

I think it is really important for Moodle to have a well defined, standardized Import/Export API so one can easily create content outside of Moodle.

(Period was missing, that might have led to some misunderstanding. Hope you see the point now ;-) --Frank Ralf 02:00, 11 December 2008 (CST))

XML is the obvious candidate for such a format.

At the moment I am working on creating a XML Schema for Moodle XML incorporating all the information from the Moodle XML documentation. That would help users and third party tool developers to validate Moodle XML files before importing them into Moodle.

I have further plans for creating some XSLT stylesheets for converting quiz content via Moodle XML into human readable formats as this is a frequent request in the forums.

And it would be very useful to have tools for using word processing or spreadsheet software to create Moodle XML (there are already some tools out there for this; and some using the GIFT format for export).

As this is very much still work in progress I would appreciate any advice. For example for the best place on docs.moodle.org to document this ongoing work.

Kind regards --Frank Ralf 04:22, 10 December 2008 (CST)

I think it is more important that Moodle XML format can continue to evolve as we add new features to Moodle. An important design goal for Moodle XML format is lossless way to transfer questions from one Moodle to another.

We will never break it gratuitously (fortunately it is easy to extend XML formats in backwards and forwards compatible ways - providing people using the format ignore stuff they don't recognise and use sensible defaults for anything that is missing), but the format will never be frozen either.

However, with that understanding better documentation of the format would be greatly appreciated.--Tim Hunt, Quiz Module Maintainer.

Thanks for the feedback, Tim! I totally agree with you. The faulty punctuation above might have led to some misunderstanding. --Frank Ralf 02:00, 11 December 2008 (CST)