• Are there any php-based MOO clients? Could be possible to build the client into Drupal.
• Not likely that this could be integrated in, but designing a module that would work like Hydra would be a great tool for the writing classroom.
• Are there any grading/testing modules written in PHP which could be integrated into Drupal as modules? I know this wasn't quite what you had in mind with the post, but administrative tools are something teachers look for.

I've been scurrying around to find some seamless weblog integration tool with Word - seems that there are some API tools that work for that. I know it's not true weblog-karma, but integration of posting would in my view lower the (for me low, but for others high)technical barrier to using weblogs. Also I often encounter resistance towards weblogs solely because it is a new technology - a resistance that would be eased if the interface was already known. Of course that again leads to some thinking on formatting options etc.
At the same time the resistance often stems from an uncertainty towards the use of weblogs due to lack of understanding of whether a weblog is a technology, a medium, or both.

PaulH - thinker of things
www.heick.nu/blog/

Personally, I'm against using Word or making it more available for anyone to use as an interface for intellectual property reasons.

But that aside, consider that weblogs are a disruptive technology. To what extent is the disruption useful since it encourages people to use other, more appropriate writing interfaces? I would rather see education about and easier installation of tools like mozblog or w.bloggar. Or widespread integration of htmlArea into most blogging applications. The right tool for the right job :)

This also goes back to the discussions, only a couple of years ago, against using anything but the standard color set and underlines with links in page and site design. Do we simplify the Internet for late adoptors or move forward with thinking which privileges more advanced literacies?

Besides, and this is just a minor gripe, Word makes some of the worst HTML out of all possible WYSIWYG's. I think it good to keep novice users away from thinking that Word is useful for composing web texts.

Your'e absolutely rigth on the dreadful html output form Word - but I came from an idealistic point of view, not considering the imperfectness of the world ;). But the html-issue comes when word generates web-pages, which is not the case when blogging; what I need/hope for is some plugin-ish thing to grab the ascII output from word and send it to a blogging-application.

Also, as I said, although wanting a blogging interface in Word is not at all a (blog)-politically correct, it would lower the hurdle a lot of people feel that learning new applications is. My goal is not to conform or standardize blogging in any way (except maybe for trackbacking), but to be able to present it palatably to as many as possible; the late adoptors may be brought faster up to speed if they can cut down on the number of applications/programs needed to get by on the internet.
I wasn't aware of htmlArea - it looks interesting; moving the interface from blog to text editor or vice versa accomplishes the same goal for me.

Is there a commercial interrest in weblogging on the rise? I half suspect that the next version of word or windows will contain the MS Blogging kit with passport.net and all... :O

PaulH - thinker of thoughts
www.heick.nu/blog/

"I wasn't aware of htmlArea - it looks interesting; moving the interface from blog to text editor or vice versa accomplishes the same goal for me."

It's probably much better for blogs to move toward this type of interface, rather than a Word integration, since it's platform independent. As it is, I've seen two quite different implementations for this. One is Java and the other Javascript (not sure which one htmlArea is).

The main disadvantage to these editors is that they can be quite slow to load on a 56K machine.

One module I'd love to see for drupal is some sort of live annotation tool, whereby I could highlight/copy relevant portions of text, and either extract them to a new window to add my own comments, or some means by which I could do a side-by-side "original text" and "commentary/response". I've seen this on proprietary systems (Daedalus), but never something in the OS realm. I think this kind of thing would be tremendous for writing courses. I've seen wiki used, and it looks like the best available tool, but I would love one where commentary and response was integrated more fluidly.

What would you say where the main differences/advantages when choosing between wiki and weblog?
I use movable type a lot and am considering using some plugins for wiki/tiki formatting; I sort of like the idea with open editing, but it seems to me that fully using a wiki would need a great deal of instruction time; the user interface doesn't rely on common textinput-interfaces, allowing intuitive use -- And there is the whole wiki-language/logic thing.
Maybe I just me projecting my daftness onto other people...

PaulH - thinker of things
www.heick.nu/blog/

HTML AREA is java script..Really nice open-source ware made by a commercial company. The latest version promises to be platform-indepedent, but old versions require explorer

Can you tell me more about this annotation tool, Domovoi? It sounds like something I could really use on my wiki!

the latest version is platform independent. but i know from following the drupal dev list that javascript is a problem for opera. and, the implementation of it with drupal was not checking properly (if at all) to see whether the browser sending the http request would support htmlarea. so it's not quite there yet with drupal, but i don't know about other releases of it.

Drupal has an annotation tool. I haven't tried installting it myself, but from an example I've seen, it inserts a marker into a blog/story post which acts as a link to the responders comments.

Is there a site somewhere that will let me see this tool? I'm VERY curious now.}:)

yes.

here's a site which is using it. put your cursor on the i or the ii. the annotations are written into a title tag which appears as a baloon when you hold your cursor over it (well, at least it does in mozilla; don't know about ie).

This is precisely what I had in mind, so far as it goes. I want to be able to insert annotations on other people's wiki/blog posts. A simple CSS declaration on "annotated text is changed in this fashion" can't be that hard. And yes, Matt, I had your deployment of tavi in mind. This kind of module would be the killer app in OS collaborative writing software, in my opinion.

I wouldn't use TAVI if I were you. For some unknown reason, the whole thing slows down to the speed of a three-legged turtle whenever more than 3 or 4 people are online at once. I moved the whole site to a new server, and it worked fine for awhile, but now I'm back to slow-mode.

Can't figure it out. I turned on GZIP, etc., but i'm not proficient enough yet to seriously optimize the code. The TAVI guys never respond to my requests for help..ARGH!

I've been looking more and more at TWIKI lately. Cosmetically, it needs work, but i've found that cosmetics are generally the easiest things to manipulate in these setups.

PHPWIKI also has some pretty good support. I don't know. I've been basically begging every PHPBB modder I know to devise a wiki mod, but no one has bitten. Maybe one of my projects over the break will be to learn enough php and mysql to implement some of my ideas.

Cool. How do they enter these tags? Do you have to "edit" the post itself to put them in, or is this part of a comment feature? I'm perplexed.

Although this thread seems long time dead, I thought I'd drop a link on a Blogger toolbar for Word http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=1180
Having moved on to wordpress, I now hope to see the same toolbar for that blogging platform... :-)

PaulH - writer of whatnot
www.blog.heick.nu