Electronic Agenda for the Department of Computer Science
Eric G. Dondelinger
Diploma Thesis Winter 1999/2000
Supervisors: F. Rauch, Prof. T. Stricker
Institute for Computer Systems, ETH Zürich
Objectives
The Department of Computer Science has used several different mediums for
announcing special events (such as guest lectures, talks, and
seminars). Information regarding these events has been disseminated via
email, Usenet, and posting signs in public places.
These techniques are fairly unreliable because, as email volume increases,
it becomes more difficult to review messages quickly to learn of events in a
timely manner. Also no overviews are available.
Results
In this thesis, an electronic agenda was implemented to connect the mediums
of email, Usenet, and the world wide web. The developed backend system allows
the user to submit an announcement in any of the above mentioned mediums and
have that same announcement published simultaneously in any of the other
above mentioned mediums. Furthermore, daily, weekly, and monthly overview
of announcements is available through the world wide web.
The backend uses procmail and a number of Perl scripts and modules,
which parse incoming e-mails, store the information in normal files
using XML format and publish the data using standard protocols such
as HTTP/HTML, NNTP, SMTP. Some cron jobs (implemented using Perl)
do regular work such as updating links to current indexes.
Additionally, the possibility of implementing a touchscreen-based
Infostation with free software is explored, a prototype has been
implemented. This Infostation should allow access to the agenda
system from a public place.
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ETH Zürich: Department of Computer Science
Comments to Felix Rauch <rauch@inf.ethz.ch>
27-03-2000