Client side error checking is complete

I have now checked all the scripts and added our client side form verification into them.

This uses a mixture of HTML 5.1 validation, JavaScript validation, and if both of these fail then server side error checking. This also uses Tim's new dialog boxes which makes the interface look so much nicer. An example of this is:

I am sure everyone will agree this looks so much nicer than the standard browser message boxes.

Any fields that are mandatory are highlighted in a different colour. Here you can see that the customer name field is mandatory, whereas the first line of the address is not.

Now if I try to submit this form with the customer name field empty, in an HTML 5.1 compatible browser this happens:

As you can see the browser surrounds the input box in a red border and provides us with a nice error message telling us what needs doing.

If we had used a non HTML 5.1 compatible browser, then the browser automatically checks using JavaScript and gives us the following message.

and the incorrect field is again highlighted in red.

If the browser has neither HTML 5.1 compatibility or JavaScript then the form will still be checked on the server side, and this message will be provided:

So as you can see all bases should be covered. This gives KwaMoja a nice modern form checking system, that looks nice, is quicker to respond, and provides helpful tips to the user as to how correct the problem.

Thanks to Tim Schofield for his help and patience on this.

No doubt Phil Daintree will copy this work into webERP and claim that he was the author of it.

Bringing the code in line with the coding guidelines

I have spent the last few weeks sorting through the entire KwaMoja code base, and bringing it in to line with the coding guidelines. I have finally finished this marathon work, and have just pushed it to my git repository. Hopefully it should be pulled by Munir soon.

The webERP code has been allowed to drift away from the coding guidelines, as the guidelines were seemingly not applied equally across the developers.

The code should now be much easier to read for any developers new to the code. I urge everyone to look.

The next job is to look at the client side form checking that Tim has started doing, and using it in all the scripts. This should be a lot easier!!

#KwaMoja IRC channel is launched

This article was originally published here on 30/5/2013

We are pleased to announce that our Freenode IRC channel is now finally online. Please drop by for a chat, or to ask any questions at anytime.

Just point your IRC client to the Freenode network, and join the #KwaMoja channel. If nobody is around to help you when you join, just leave a message and someone will be there as soon as possible to help, but even we have to sleep!!

KwaMoja manual released in multiple formats.

This article was originally published here on 27/2/2013

I have taken advantage of my enforced exile to convert the KwaMoja manual into several different formats for offline reading, not just while you are logged into a KwaMoja instance.

There are now html, pdf, epub and mobi formats of the manual and they can all be found at our download page at http://www.kwamoja.com/downloads

If anybody has another format they would like (and its possible to convert) then just let me know and I will do my best to get it done.

The plan is to carry on the revising of the manual that I have been doing, and to keep these formats up to date with the changes.

Lies Damn Lies and Phil Daintree

This article was originally published here on 23/2/2013

Recently Phil Daintree from the webERP project started an email discussion with me and during this discussion I asked him why if he was so in favour of forks he had taken our project domain name (kwamoja.org) and was using it as part of his personal vendetta against Tim Schofield. As he seemed to be behaving in a reasonable manner I had hoped that he would come back with some statement such as "sorry about that I was being a bit silly I will take the page down and set a redirect to the official KwaMoja site. Therefore I was quite shocked to get his reply which I reprint in full with his permission below. Phil's email is in italics and my comments are in normal type.

Hello Fahad,
That page was really a defence of the untrue statements on the Kwamoja.com web-site about my purported attempt to steal the copyright!! and the "dishonest" management of webERP.

This is clearly untrue as the kwamoja.org domain name was registered on 24-Nov-2012 according to the official records, whilst kwamoja.com was not registered until 29-Nov-2012 according to the same source. Therefore to claim that his taking kwamoja.org is a response to our kwamoja.com website is clearly a lie, as it was another 5 days till kwamoja.com was even registered and the site itself was not live for some time after that.

The KwaMoja web-site was originally written by Tim - according to the git hub repository where the web-site was being developed

This is untrue, as anyone with a knowledge of Git will be able to tell you from looking at this repository: https://github.com/MarthaMadjack/KwaMoja-website/commits/master. Having spoken to Martha she tells me that there was a brief time when the web site code was pushed to Tim's repository, as she had messed hers up, but Git keeps an accurate record of who actually committed, and this cannot be falsified without corrupting the entire repository. Therefore this is another very obvious lie.

- I see you have moved to Joomla subsequently
 
Yaaay!, we now have the first thing in this email that is not a lie :-)

- it still has these comments in it and the blog though.

If Phil has any comments to make regarding the accuracy of any statements in these blogs he is free to make them. There is no censorship in this project unlike in webERP. The comments section was opened to all to use. As far as I can see he has made no attempt to dispute any the comments.

I discovered KwaMoja prior to any announcements because I became curious about the aggressive stance of Munir towards me

Reading all of Munir's postings to the webERP mailing lists he seemed to be equally critical of both Tim and Phil, and this was one of his major reasons for starting KwaMoja. Munir has shown me some of the private correspondence from Phil, and the aggression seems to come from Phil who says that everyone should believe everything he says, because he is Phil Daintree, and made some threats regarding anyone who didn't support him.

- and saw that he was very closely aligned with Tim (I even suspected that he may in fact be Tim!)

The idea that Tim dresses up as an Indian caused a great deal of laughter!!! However, being serious, at the time of this correspondence Tim and Munir had never met. I wonder what evidence Phil has for this assertion, presumably it is yet another of his lies? Phil, maybe you would like to use the comments section to reveal the evidence that Tim and Munir were closely aligned before KwaMoja?
and Munir advised me that Martha and yourself were in fact on the payroll of webERPAfrica

This is another lie, I have read the email correspondence, and at no point did Munir say this.
It is also a lie that Martha is, or has ever been on the payroll of webERP Africa Ltd, and the payroll records will show that. In fact at the time of this correspondence I don't think that either Martha or Munir knew the other one existed.

- hence this is in all reality an initiative of Tim's

Phil has no evidence to back up this statement and can't find any because it is a lie. As seems typical of Phil, it is just a vague statement with no evidence for it that we should all believe purely because he is Phil Daintree.

- my beef is with the untruths about the management of webERP.
 
If Phil has any beef with anything written by any KwaMoja team member he is welcome to refute it with a valid argument. This is not webERP and open discussion is encouraged. I am assuming he is referring to his 'attempt to steal the copyright!! and the "dishonest" management of webERP.' Anybody approaching webERP for the first time will see the statement made by Phil in the footer of every webERP page, that the copyright belongs to weberp.org, and if that person then looks up the ownership of weberp.org they would find it belongs to Phil Daintree. I have asked a lawyer friend of mine regarding this and he tells me that "the courts will look at what a reasonable person would believe when shown the project". I think therefore we can safely say that Phil's assertion that he didn't try to claim ownership of the copyright is another lie. As for the "dishonest management of webERP there are many examples. To take just one I have had it proven to me and in front of about 100 people that Phil rejects Tim's attempts to help people on the webERP mailing lists. However Phil still asserts Tim can post freely to those lists. That is clearly a lie and dishonest.

The fact that this was THE major reason for KwaMoja's birth
 
What would Phil know about the major reason for KwaMoja's birth, as he wasn't involved? This is another lie.

means that the project's foundation is corrupt and has been born of lies
 
This is just a silly statement, even if his previous statements had been true (and I have shown them to be lies) what matters in a project is that the code is good, and people can discuss openly any matter about the project, in a friendly environment.

- which is a pity as I suspect good people have been taken in and it ends up diluting the effort that could have been concentrated on webERP.

I can't comment about others but a project where people are banned from forums for submitting a bug report is not one I would like to join. I also think it is important that whoever writes the code should own it, and that nobody should try and take that away from me. If Phil wants more contributors to his project he must learn to be open and honest.

When people work constructively together it is to be applauded - I applaud your efforts. I suppose ironically if it has motivated people to get up and develop when they would not have done so otherwise then this is actually a win win
 
Hurrah!!, I think we agree here. If we in KwaMoja can provide a more open and honest project that encourages others to develop then webERP can take that code as well, and can benefit from it.

- if some good can come of the lies then that is great.

Again Phil comes out with another statement about lies without backing it up.

Best Regards Phil

I am going to assume his best regards are true, and that his name is Phil (though I am told he has many aliases he uses on the web), so this at least is true :-)
So there we are, a long post, but it shows I hope why Mu and I decided to try our luck at a fork of webERP, and to work on KwaMoja. I count 8 very obvious lies told by Phil in this one email.

Why are we doing KwaMoja?

This article was originally published here on 24/11/2012

I can imagine a lot of people are wondering why we are doing yet another open source ERP system. So why are we doing it?

WebERP has long been a popular ERP in developing countries as it has low a footprint and fast speed even on old hardware.However webERP has long had management issues, and many arguments on the mailing lists.

I believe to be really successful an open source project needs more openness and honesty in its management. It must try to actively encourage participation, not just at the lowest levels but all through the project. In webERP those who have disagreed have tended to get shouted down, and if they persist they have been banned from the mailing lists. Technical discussions can get heated, but are an important part of open source, and should be encouraged. If you find you have lost a discussion then you should give in gracefully and accept the general opinion. This has not been the case with webERP.

The final spark that caused us to make this fork was when the webERP admin Phil Daintree decided to claim the copyright on the whole code base for himself. We firmly believe that the copyright should belong to the individual contributors, and this will always be so on KwaMoja.

So what we are trying to do at KwaMoja is to take the good points from webERP, throw away any bad points, and look to build the project for a successful future. We plan to take any contributions to webERP and integrate them into KwaMoja whilst also incorporating our own new features.