[LON-CAPA-admin] Change history between LON-CAPA 2.10.0.RC2 and 2.10.0

[Stuart Raeburn]

New Version 2.10.0 Released

Please refer to my "LON-CAPA Version 2.10.0" posting to the
lon-capa-admin mailing list:

http://mail.lon-capa.org/pipermail/lon-capa-admin/2011-June/002489.html

or the README file in the uncompressed tarball for the release
notes and installation instructions for 2.10.0.

Below I summarize changes between the Testing release: 2.10.0.RC2
and the official 2.10.0 (final release).

Thank you to all domains who installed 2.10.0.RC2 and provided
valuable feedback.

It is highly recommended that domains running 2.10.0.RC2 update to
2.10.0 (final).


Changes from 2.10.0.RC2


General User Interface
   - The "Menu Display" item has been reinstated in the
     User Preferences page so LON-CAPA users who have previously
     set it may change it. Although the "buttons + text" option
     is deprecated, the" icons" and "icons + text" options are
     available for selection.
   - Inclusion of a "Course Contents" item within a folder for
     which "URL hidden" is set no longer results in "access denied"
     for student access to the Course Contents page.
   - Users with math display set to mimetex will no longer be
     affected by occasional "quoted execution" errors which prevent
     vertical alignment of inline math expressions on Apache/SSL servers.
   - A bug is fixed which could corrupt the course environment cached
     for a user session causing a "course is empty" message.
   - Linked dropdown lists for official courses in the catalog now
     work when categories differ from the standard names:
     Year, Semester, Department, Course.
   - Subject for notification e-mail uses subject line from
     corresponding LON-CAPA message, with [LON-CAPA] prepended.
   - Appropriate text in Previous Tries pop-up for optionresponse
     submissions (where graded "leniently").


Course Coordination
   - A message is sent to the requestor of a course when a
     request for an official course, queued pending validation
     of instructor of record, is validated and created.
   - A bug is fixed which could occasionally cause grading
     discrepancies for case sensitive/insensitive string
     response items, when a student submits the same response
     to the same problem part more than once.
   - Edit link to coursepreferences for Course Coordinators
     if external syllabus replaces LON-CAPA syllabus.


Authoring
   - The testbank import interface to support import of a testbank
     of questions in plain text/RTF or HTML format works again.
   - Externalresponse supports award of partial credit for
     submissions graded partially correct by external grader.


Domain Coordination/Domain Settings
   - A script is available for running from the command line
     (as root) to expire DC roles for domains/users on server.
   - Co-ownership information is available when a customized
     localenroll.pm module negotiates access to classlist data
     for an official course from an institutional data source.
   - E-mail sent by the "Ask Helpdesk" form includes correct
     header information again.


Documentation
   - Domain Coordinator Manual has been updated.
   - Advice provided for use of SSL with Apache, and also use of
     SSL for internal communication between LON-CAPA servers.
   - Contextual help added for Course/Community requests.


Internals/system behavior
   - Latency eliminated when retrieving data from other servers
     where an existing connection in the LON-CAPA network
     had been silently dropped (e.g., by an intermediate router).
   - An Apache config file is available to rewrite external
     requests for http:// to https:// for servers running SSL.
     The default is for no rewrites.
   - LONCAPA is now supported on additional Linux distros/versions:
     Debian 5 and 6, Ubuntu LTS 8 and 10, SuSE 11.4, Fedora 15,
     Scientific Linux 6
   - A unified server set-up script is available for all supported
     Linux distros: http://install.loncapa.org/linux/install.tar
     This script is used to prepare a server for LON-CAPA, and is
     run after installing the LONCAPA-prerequisites package, but
     before running ./UPDATE to install the LON-CAPA application.
   - /etc/init.d/loncontrol restart will check firewall status for
     port 5663, (in the same way as the nightly run of loncron does)
     and will open up the port for any new additions to the cluster
     since the last loncron run.
   - Updates to cluster host tables for LON-CAPA "DNS" servers run
     by Academic Consortium  institutions can be completed remotely
     by the LON-CAPA network manager.
   - CHECKRPMS used to check if package updates are needed now
     uses zypper for SLES11

Localization
   - New translations and improvements for German interface.
   - A few remaining German defaults for untranslated phrases
     in simplified Chinese interface switched to English.


Specific bugs addressed by changes between 2.10.0.RC2 and 2.10.0 final.
5531, 5925, 6287, 6320, 6333, 6348, 6356, 6377, 6413, 6417, 6419,
6424, 6429, 6430, 6434, 6453

Stuart Raeburn
LON-CAPA Academic Consortium