1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
|
<!--startcut ======================================================= -->
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN">
<html>
<head>
<META NAME="generator" CONTENT="lgazmail v1.3E.t">
<TITLE>The Answer Gang 65: Making the Connection</TITLE>
</HEAD><BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000"
LINK="#3366FF" VLINK="#A000A0">
<!-- ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: -->
<P> <hr>
<CENTER>
<!-- *** BEGIN navbar *** -->
<!-- *** END navbar *** -->
</CENTER>
</p>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: -->
<center>
<H1><A NAME="answer">
<img src="../../gx/dennis/qbubble.gif" alt="(?)"
border="0" align="middle">
<font color="#B03060">The Answer Gang</font>
<img src="../../gx/dennis/bbubble.gif" alt="(!)"
border="0" align="middle">
</A></H1>
<BR>
<H4>By Jim Dennis, Ben Okopnik, Dan Wilder, Breen, Chris, and the Gang,
the Editors of Linux Gazette...
and You!
<br>Send questions (or interesting answers) to
<a href="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com">linux-questions-only@ssc.com</a>
</H4>
<p><em><font color="#990000">There is no guarantee that your questions
here will <b>ever</b> be answered. You can be published anonymously
- just let us know!
</font></em></p>
</center>
<p><hr><p>
<!-- endcut ======================================================= -->
<!-- begin 7 -->
<H3 align="left"><img src="../../gx/dennis/bbubble.gif"
height="50" width="60" alt="(!) " border="0"
>Making the Connection</H3>
<p align="right"><strong>By Anthony E. Greene
<br></strong></p>
<p><em>Somewhere in the shuffle the original querent's message has been
lost, but basically, they asked about connecting their hospital together,
so that the doctors could communicate with ER and ICU, staff could access
suitable records or charts, etc. The doctors are not dumb people, but
they already have a specialty and a job to do, so it has to be a pretty
clean setup.</em></p>
<!-- sig -->
<!-- ::
Making the Connection
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
:: -->
<BLOCKQUOTE>
You could setup a PPP server and use the modems to make dialup PPP
connections. This would allow you to use graphical network applications
such as browsers, FTP clients, and network file managers such as <A HREF="http://www.gnome.org/">GNOME</A>'s
GMC.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<H4>Distributions and Packages</h4>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
Without knowing more about what resources you have available, I cannot
make specific recommendations. <A HREF="http://www.redhat.com/">Red Hat</A>, Mandrake, <A HREF="http://www.slackware.org/">Slackware</A>, <A HREF="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</A>, SuSe,
and <A HREF="http://www.caldera.com/">Caldera</A> all come with the tools you'll need to setup a network. I have
not used <A HREF="http://linux.corel.com/">Corel</A> but I've read that they left some server and development
packages out. That may be fine for home desktops, but in a business
environment I'd want a distribution that includes everything I might need
and lets me choose what to leave out or disable. You <EM>will</EM> need some
server packages to implement a solution and you will want development
packages available in case you need some tools that are not available in a
package.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<h4>Data Entry</h4>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
First you need to figure out what applications will be used for data
entry. Eventually, you may find you need a database application, but it
sounds like what you need right now is something that generates documents
that can be shared. If the results are to be typed out as free text, a
text editor is probably the best way to go. The text editors that ship
with GNOME (gedit) and <A HREF="http://www.kde.org/">KDE</A> (kedit) are both adequate, but something like
Nedit has fewer bugs and more power. If you need to use templates for data
entry, you could either create some read-only files as templates or create
templates in a StarOffice for use with its word processor.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
For something with a little more familiarity to GUI users, AbiWord can
edit plain text, RTF, and simple DOC files. It has a toolbar that any Word
user could use with no problem and is fairly lightweight. AbiWord is part
of GNOME Office and ships with the Ximian (Helixcode) desktop.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
There are some Open Source medical applications available. Try searching
for them at Freshmeat <<A HREF="http://www.freshmeat.net/>"
>http://www.freshmeat.net/></A>;, Sourceforge
<<A HREF="http://www.sourceforge.net/>"
>http://www.sourceforge.net/></A>;, and Google <<A HREF="http://www.google.com/>"
>http://www.google.com/></A>;.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<h4>Desktop Applications</h4>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
If you really need an integrated solution for Linux desktops at a minimal
cost, StarOffice is a good choice. The latest version (5.2) is still a
serious memory and resource hog and takes time to startup. But once it's
running, its speed is reasonable, considering its large feature set.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
I haven't used Applixware, but it is supposed to be very usable and
programmable. The latter may prove useful to you if you plan to use it for
data entry. Applixware is not free, but is a lot less expensive than MS
Office.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
For intranet browsing and email, I still recommend Netscape Communicator
4.7x. It works fairly well, is stable on non-Java pages, and supports LDAP
and HTML mail. These last two features are very useful in an
organizational mail client. Netscape 6.x does not support LDAP and
StarMail's LDAP interface is too difficult to be useful. An LDAP server is
not too hard to setup for small organizations and is great for maintaining
an organizational address book.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<h4>Sharing/Publishing</h4>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
After the data is entered, you will need to make it sharable. I suggest
each department have a directory that only they can write to and any
authorized use can read. Setting up these groups and permissions is not
too complicated, but is more than I want to cover here.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
The key thing about sharing is deciding what protocols you will use to
share. Client applications for FTP and HTTP are easy to use. Both servers
are easy to install. But the permissions scheme for HTTP is separate from
the system user and groups settings. That makes it complicated to setup if
you have multiple groups of users that need different permissions. So I
don't recommend using <A HREF="http://www.apache.org/">Apache</A> and HTTP to share the documents.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
You can use FTP, but the WuFTPd server that has shipped with many
distributions is an almost constant source of security problems. Just make
sure you disable anonymous logins if you choose to use FTP. Web browsers
are great FTP clients because they can launch external applications to
view documents. The only real problem with FTP is that passwords are sent
over the network unencrypted. On a small, closed network this should not
be a problem.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
This is probably more than you expected, but it's just enough to get you
started. Running a network will mean learning a lot at first, but it
should run well after it's setup.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<!-- end 7 -->
<!--startcut ======================================================= -->
<P> <hr> </p>
<!-- *** BEGIN copyright *** -->
<H5 align="center">This page edited and maintained by the Editors
of <I>Linux Gazette</I>
<a href="http://www.linuxgazette.com/copying.html"
>Copyright ©</a> 2001
<BR>Published in issue 65 of <I>Linux Gazette</I> April 2001</H5>
<H6 ALIGN="center">HTML script maintained by
<A HREF="mailto:star@starshine.org">Heather Stern</a> of
Starshine Technical Services,
<A HREF="http://www.starshine.org/">http://www.starshine.org/</A>
</H6>
<!-- *** END copyright *** -->
<P> <hr>
<!-- begin tagnav ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::-->
<p align="center">
<table width="100%" border="0"><tr>
<td align="right" valign="center"
><IMG ALT="" SRC="../../gx/navbar/left.jpg"
WIDTH="14" HEIGHT="45" BORDER="0" ALIGN="middle" border="0"
><A HREF="..//"
><IMG SRC="../../gx/navbar/toc.jpg" align="middle"
ALT="[ Table Of Contents ]" border="0"></A
><A HREF="../lg_answer65.html"
><IMG SRC="../../gx/dennis/answertoc.jpg" align="middle"
ALT="[ Answer Guy Current Index ]" border="0"></A></td>
<td align="center" valign="center"><A HREF="../lg_answer65.html#greeting"><img align="middle"
src="../../gx/dennis/smily.gif" alt="greetings" border="0"></A>
<A HREF="1.html">1</A>
<A HREF="2.html">2</A>
<A HREF="3.html">3</A>
<A HREF="4.html">4</A>
<A HREF="5.html">5</A>
<A HREF="6.html">6</A>
<A HREF="7.html">7</A>
<A HREF="8.html">8</A>
<A HREF="9.html">9</A>
<A HREF="10.html">10</A>
<A HREF="11.html">11</A>
<A HREF="12.html">12</A>
<A HREF="13.html">13</A>
<A HREF="14.html">14</A>
<A HREF="15.html">15</A>
<A HREF="16.html">16</A>
<A HREF="17.html">17</A>
<A HREF="18.html">18</A>
<A HREF="19.html">19</A>
<A HREF="20.html">20</A>
<A HREF="21.html">21</A>
<A HREF="22.html">22</A>
<A HREF="23.html">23</A>
<A HREF="24.html">24</A>
<A HREF="25.html">25</A>
<A HREF="26.html">26</A>
<A HREF="27.html">27</A>
<A HREF="28.html">28</A>
<A HREF="29.html">29</A></td>
<td align="left" valign="center"><A HREF="../../tag/kb.html"
><IMG SRC="../../gx/dennis/answerpast.jpg" align="middle"
ALT="[ Index of Past Answers ]" border="0"></A
><IMG ALT="" SRC="../../gx/navbar/right.jpg" align="middle"
WIDTH="14" HEIGHT="45" BORDER="0"></td></tr></table>
</p>
<!-- end tagnav ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::-->
<P> <hr>
<CENTER>
<!-- *** BEGIN navbar *** -->
<!-- *** END navbar *** -->
</CENTER>
</p>
<!-- ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: -->
</BODY></HTML>
<!--endcut ========================================================= -->
|
