Subject: [LON-CAPA-dev] Draft of Release Notes for 2.9.1

From: Stuart Raeburn <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2010 22:23:34 -0500

Draft release notes for the forthcoming LON-CAPA 2.9.1

Stuart Raeburn
LON-CAPA Technical Director

***********

New Version 2.9.1 Released

This is primarily a bug fix release for version 2.9.0.
It is recommended to update 2.9.0 installations to 2.9.1.

Changes from 2.9.0

Student interface
    - Course catalog: display of subcategory names containing spaces  
works again.
    - Browser detection updated for IE for consistency in charset used  
for rendering
      symbols with TeX-to-HTML (TTH).
    - Remove HTML tags and decode HTML Entities in message excerpt  
sent as e-mail,
      (unless user preference set to retain HTML tags), and encode in  
utf8 before sending.
    - Ability to post to discussion based on "discussend" parameter  
takes precedence
      over the ability to post based on problem's open status for student.

Instructor interface
    - Description for roles-based and user-based course-wide blocking of
      discussion or chat no longer reversed in course settings interface.
    - Resource-specific parameter for discussend setting (closes discussion)
      applies to standalone boards (i.e., those not associated with homework).
    - "Edit this resource" link shown on servers besides home server of
      resource, if user has co-author privileges for resource.
    - Restriction of a slot to use with a specific resource now works  
correctly.
    - Speed-up in processing enrollment of users from an uploaded CSV file.
    - Leading and trailing spaces trimmed from email, domain,  
institutional status
      and username entries from uploaded CSV file of users.
    - Reverse association for columns in file of users works again.
    - Improvements in feedback when enrolling from CSV file if institutional
      rules for format of usernames and/or studentIDs prevent user creation.
    - Names of users affected by bulk access date changes made with  
"Manage Users"
      utility displayed correctly.
    - Automated adds and automated drops settings stored correctly for  
course requests.
    - Display when changing parameters in table mode rendered correctly.
    - Course Coordinator can now use the role switcher to change to a role
      in cases where the user's own assigned roles include an expired role
      of the same type/section in the course.
    - If user has advanced role (and hence discussion is always open),
      note appended to discussion link, if discussion is closed for  
other roles.

Authoring resources
    - Publication of raw XML files (i.e., with .xml extension) allowed again.
    - Warning that alt-tag is still output, even for encrypted URLs;
    - Can assign a co-author role to a username containing an underscore.
    - Updates to problem templates (Custom Response, and plot data) to:
      (respectively) extend recognized number types, and limit execution time.

Printout generation:
    - TeX errors eliminated when printing .sequence files with answers
      (or only answers) from Construction Space.
    - TeX errors eliminated when printing HTML tables created dynamically
      within a script block.
    - Table border settings now enforced when printing tables.
    - Text in table cells with align="right" attribute kept vertically aligned.
    - Support restored for the TeXwidth attribute in <td> tags.
    - TeX errors eliminated when generating printouts with answers only,
      or in a composite page.
    - Printing of folders containing simplepage(s) works again.

Domain Coordination
    - Domain Coordinator can override course-specific cloning rights.
    - Selection of clonable courses based on wildcard within a specific domain
      possible again.
    - When ad hoc co-author access acquired via "Edit resource' in a course,
      original role context is preserved.
    - Display of roles in hot list for Domain Coordinator readability restored.
    - Auto-creation of courses via command line call with arguments  
(legacy method)
      works again.
    - Domain Coordinators can filter courses by creation time when selecting
      a course.
    - Warning displayed if clone selection is attempted when no course  
owner specified.
    - Domain Coordinator can display cloning information in course  
creation requests.

Internals/system behavior
    - Changes to reduce the incidence of timeouts when large amounts
      of data are sent between LON-CAPA machines across the network.
    - Frequency/times for new entries being added to lonapa cron now saved
      by ./UPDATE
    - Improvements to filtering for Community roles when assembling roles
      supported on LON-CAPA version installed on server hosting user's session.
    - Scientific Linux version checking for updates to RPMs works again.
    - Processing of requests for creation of official courses queued pending
      automatic validation of instructor status now supported.

Localization
    - New translations and improvements for Spanish interface.

Specific bugs addressed in this release:
2703, 5372, 5435, 6067, 6175, 6233, 6245, 6288, 6294, 6295, 6300, 6301, 6304,
6312, 6313, 6317, 6331, 6332, 6335, 6363, 6366, 6373, 6378, 6381

Installation Notes:

To use this release you need to have version 1-18 of LONCAPA-prerequisites
installed. (This is the same version as required for LON-CAPA 2.9.0).

To install this update:

1) You will need to be running Fedora Core 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 or 12,
RHEL (AS|ES) 4 or 5, SUSE 10.2, 10.3, 11.1 or 11.2, SLES 9, 10 or 11,
CentOS 5, or Scientific Linux 5.
(Fedora Core 5 should continue to work but is deprecated.)

2) Update LONCAPA-prerequisites to 1-18 if necessary.

(a) Fedora
yum update

(b) RedHat Enterprise 4

up2date -u LONCAPA-prerequisites

(c) Red Hat 5/Centos 5/Scientific Linux 5

yum update

(d) SuSE/SLES

Use yast-> Installation Source to refresh the LON-CAPA repository
Use yast->Software Management->Search to update LONCAPA-prerequisites

On all distributions, it is recommended that you check that you have
the correct versions of LONCAPA-prerequisites installed before proceeding.

rpm -q LONCAPA-prerequisites

should report:
LONCAPA-prerequisites-1-18.X

(where X is a distro identifier e.g., fc12.lc)

3) Download the new LON-CAPA tarball from
wget http://install.lon-capa.org/versions/loncapa-2.9.1.tar.gz

and untar it

tar xzvf loncapa-2.9.1.tar.gz

4) stop the LON-CAPA system services

/etc/rc.d/init.d/loncontrol stop

5) stop the webserver:

Fedora/RHEL/Centos/Scientific Linux
/etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd stop

SLES 9:
/etc/init.d/apache stop

SUSE 10.2,10.3,11.1,11.2/SLES 10,11:
/etc/init.d/apache2 stop

6) Run the UPDATE script as root
cd loncapa-2.9.1
su
./UPDATE

7) restart the LON-CAPA system services
/etc/rc.d/init.d/loncontrol start

8) restart the webserver:

Fedora/RHEL/Centos/Scientific Linux
/etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd start

SLES 9:
/etc/init.d/apache start

SUSE 10.2,10.3,11.1,11.2/SLES 10,11:
/etc/init.d/apache2 start

----NOTES
1) Many questions are answered at http://help.lon-capa.org
2) Defects reports, and enhancements requests can be entered at
        http://bugs.lon-capa.org
3) Mailing lists can be joined and left at http://mail.lon-capa.org

Stuart Raeburn
LON-CAPA Academic Consortium