Re: KNomos

[Barbara <barbara@bariloche.com.ar>]

Hi!
(Is the message I've just received uptodate? - In any case, the project
deserves some looking at, especially for latin-languages environments &
legal system, although the fact that the files are about 4 years old
doesn't seem very promising, does it? It's a pitty that the screenshots
on the homepage don't have a resolution that allows for bigger images).
Barbara F.

On Mon, 2009-11-02 at 10:22 +1100, Darryl Barlow wrote:
> 
> 
> 2005/10/16 Darryl Barlow <dgbarlow@gmail.com>
>         I have just installed the latest version of Knomos and want to
>         share a
>         few preliminary comments from an Australian perspective.  At
>         this
>         stage I have done little more than install the package, and
>         this
>         should be borne in mind.  I would like to thank the developers
>         for
>         making such a comprehensive package available.
>         
>         Firstly, the program was I understand developed originally for
>         Italy.
>         Although it does support English such support is not yet
>         complete.
>         For example, I could not find any English Installation
>         instructions
>         and had to resort to machine translation of the install
>         document that
>         accompanies the package.  This did cause some difficulties but
>         eventually I did end up with a working installation.  The next
>         problem
>         was that the menus were unusable.  Some searching revealed
>         that the
>         problem was the package was unable to find the relevant style
>         sheet,
>         which it was expecting to find in /var/www/ rather than
>         /var/www/Knomos.  This was overcome by placing appropriate
>         symlinks in
>         /var/www.  The language of the admin user defaults to Italian
>         and I
>         changed this directly in the mysql database, which seemed to
>         work.
>         
>         I then created a normal user.  A brief tour of the interface
>         reveals a
>         wealth of options.  However, the design is of course tailored
>         to
>         Italy.  Some pages of the interface are not completely
>         translated to
>         English.  There is a list of items for costing purposes which
>         is only
>         in Italian and apparently relates to some sort of Italian
>         costing
>         tariff.  The items may well be easily translated, but I'm not
>         yet sure
>         how useful this will be in Australia.  Likewise, the fields in
>         the
>         database also seem to be at least partially tailored to the
>         Italian
>         Law and Courts.
>         
>         I intend to have a closer look at the package but my initial
>         reaction
>         is that it will need some customisation to realise its
>         potential in
>         Australia.  This is not to say that it will not be useful at
>         all
>         without.  For example, I am looking forward to testing the
>         document
>         generation features, which may present some alternative to the
>         expensive proprietary packages currently available.
>         
>         I'd be interested in any thoughts others may have on this
>         package,
>         particularly on using it in an English language environment
>         and in
>         Australia or other common law jurisdictions..
>         
>         regards,
>         
>         Darryl Barlow
>