Portable version of your programs

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frederic consavela

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Jun 20, 2024, 8:59:50 AM6/20/24
to hotpotatoesusers
Hello,

here is my problem:

I'm workin in an professional environnement which use   Windows machines that are very locked. You can't install a program. I'm a trainer on various applications and I really use HP and Quandary.

At the moment I do everything on my personal computers using Linux -> Wine. This solution isn't practical and forces me to copy everything to the cloud so that I can then transfer them to shared disks to which the Windows computers at work have access.

If HP and Quandary were portable I could use them on my work computer. I'm already doing it with a few applications from https://portableapps.com/

Please don't delete this message without replying. If it's not technically possible to make them portable I'll understand.

Thanx for your time

Regards.

frederic consavela

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Jun 22, 2024, 1:08:53 PM6/22/24
to Colin Consiglio, hotpotatoesusers
Hello Colin 

thx for your answer. Well

1. Have you  asked the administrators to include the HP system into the production environment?  You might be surprised with the answer.
I've done that for an open source prg that ease the making of tutorials and docs, and one or two others like alternative browsers. The answer was always no. That's why I use portable apps at work.

2. I'm lucky cause I work remotely at home half of the week so it's not on my time. The solution I've found, when I'm at work is to bring one of my Linux Mint laptop with me but that's two laptops to carry instead of one. And I use a USB key to transfer. I don't like the fact that as a trainer organising formations and support they don't want to provide the appropriate tools. The only reason is they don't know the soft and its authors.

I'm also a long time user. I used to be a teacher and I had a website with exercices. The children liked the fact that there was no rating from an adult, that they could try again any exercices. And later they did some quizzes themselves (9 and 10 yo children using HP). http://exercices.free.fr/divers/quizz/harry/chap1.htm (in french). I quit teaching in 2004 so the site hasn't been maintained since and a lot of pages are no longer working.

Have a nice day and thx for your time.





Le ven. 21 juin 2024 à 01:08, Colin Consiglio <colin.c...@gmail.com> a écrit :
Hello Frederic,
I am only a longtime user of the HP. I use it in it's basic form, and don't use anything past the creating the Q&A Multiple choice type quizzes. It is excellent  for my ( now mainly hobby) uses. Since my use was sporadic, development on my own personal equipment was not unreasonable and not an issue for me.
I understand the concept that work environments "lock down" their systems, and the difficulties that lowly users experience when trying to get a "new" programme' installed into such a locked done environment.
1. Have you  asked the administrators to include the HP system into the production environment?  You might be surprised with the answer.

2. I suspect you are trying to solve the "inconvenience" of having to do the development on your own equipment , and in your own time.  If the HP tools are as valuable to the business environment as we know they can be, then may I suggest the business provides you with a single " off the network / standalone" machine at the place of work. This means the only inconvenience that exists will be the transferring of the results to the shared drives that you mention.    Plus you will be able to do what ever development you  need at the place of work..

Just a couple of ideas from left field that may be of assistance..
Best Regards,
Colin



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Colin Consiglio

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Jun 22, 2024, 1:08:53 PM6/22/24
to frederic consavela, hotpotatoesusers
Hello Frederic,
I am only a longtime user of the HP. I use it in it's basic form, and don't use anything past the creating the Q&A Multiple choice type quizzes. It is excellent  for my ( now mainly hobby) uses. Since my use was sporadic, development on my own personal equipment was not unreasonable and not an issue for me.
I understand the concept that work environments "lock down" their systems, and the difficulties that lowly users experience when trying to get a "new" programme' installed into such a locked done environment.
1. Have you  asked the administrators to include the HP system into the production environment?  You might be surprised with the answer.

2. I suspect you are trying to solve the "inconvenience" of having to do the development on your own equipment , and in your own time.  If the HP tools are as valuable to the business environment as we know they can be, then may I suggest the business provides you with a single " off the network / standalone" machine at the place of work. This means the only inconvenience that exists will be the transferring of the results to the shared drives that you mention.    Plus you will be able to do what ever development you  need at the place of work..

Just a couple of ideas from left field that may be of assistance..
Best Regards,
Colin



On Thu, Jun 20, 2024 at 10:59 PM frederic consavela <frederic....@gmail.com> wrote:

Martin Holmes

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Jun 22, 2024, 1:21:21 PM6/22/24
to hotpotat...@googlegroups.com
Hi Frederic,

I think even if we were able to produce a portable version (and I'm not
sure what that entails, frankly), a lot of functionality would be lost
and you would be seeing error messages frequently. Hot Potatoes was
written a long time ago, when applications were allowed to do many
things they're no longer supposed to do. Also, nowadays, installers and
application code and installers are supposed to be signed using approved
certificates, which is expensive.

I only use Linux these days, and that makes my life a lot easier,
especially with Windows programs. :-) One option might be to ask your
sysops to allow you to install the Linux Subsystem for Windows, and then
install Wine on that and run your apps that way; another possibility
would be to fully script the cloud-based sharing of your materials so
that (for instance) every time you save a file on your Linux machine it
gets pushed to the cloud, and you can just run a script on your Windows
machine to pull things down from the cloud.

One day, probably after I retire in five years or so, I have a vague
plan to create a browser-based version of Hot Potatoes that you could
just visit as a web page, hosted on my site, or if you like, on your own
site. It would allow you to create and edit exercises, and download
them. But that will be a long time in the future, if it happens.
Technically there are no barriers against it, but it would take a
complete rewrite of all the Hot Potatoes code in JavaScript, which would
likely take a couple of thousand hours. If I do that, I'll allow
creation of mixed-question exercises, so that you can have matching
followed by multiple-choice followed by gapfill in the same exercise,
for instance. So it might be worth waiting for. But I might not live
that long. :-)

Cheers,
Martin
> <mailto:colin.c...@gmail.com>> a écrit :
> <frederic....@gmail.com <mailto:frederic....@gmail.com>>
> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> here is my problem:
>
> I'm workin in an professional environnement which use   Windows
> machines that are very locked. You can't install a program. I'm
> a trainer on various applications and I really use HP and Quandary.
>
> At the moment I do everything on my personal computers using
> Linux -> Wine. This solution isn't practical and forces me to
> copy everything to the cloud so that I can then transfer them to
> shared disks to which the Windows computers at work have access.
>
> If HP and Quandary were portable I could use them on my work
> computer. I'm already doing it with a few applications from
> https://portableapps.com/ <https://portableapps.com/>
>
> Please don't delete this message without replying. If it's not
> technically possible to make them portable I'll understand.
>
> Thanx for your time
>
> Regards.
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the
> Google Groups "hotpotatoesusers" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from
> it, send an email to
> hotpotatoesuse...@googlegroups.com
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>
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frederic consavela

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Jun 22, 2024, 6:08:35 PM6/22/24
to hotpotatoesusers
Hello Martin,

I only use Linux too at home and I couldn't agree more. HP7 and Quanday work fine with wine.

There's no way my work sysops wil do anything like that.

For the portable side, the idea is that there's no install, so no signature, no fee. 

Thx for your answer.

Best regards

Martin Holmes

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Jun 23, 2024, 12:09:34 AM6/23/24
to hotpotat...@googlegroups.com
Hi there,

Have you tried copying the Hot Potatoes program folder into your home
directory on the Windows machine? I see no reason why it wouldn't just
work. You would have to run the executable files directly; nothing would
be on the start menu, of course.

Cheers,
Martin
> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/hotpotatoesusers/80719968-e560-4afb-b243-a138327f17e8n%40googlegroups.com <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/hotpotatoesusers/80719968-e560-4afb-b243-a138327f17e8n%40googlegroups.com> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/hotpotatoesusers/80719968-e560-4afb-b243-a138327f17e8n%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/hotpotatoesusers/80719968-e560-4afb-b243-a138327f17e8n%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>>.
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