Introduction

DyboApp (short for Dynamic Book Application) is an educational software layer designed to streamline and enrich the teaching and learning experience. Developed in Smalltalk and built to run on a GNU/Linux system, it acts as a digital "cash register" for education — optimizing daily tasks for teachers and students through interconnected workflow management and interactive dynamic tools.

The app combines stylus-annotated PDF documents with pluggable dynamic knowledge models (interactive tools) that can be easily customized or retrieved from existing libraries, empowering users with an agile, distraction-free environment for organizing and creating study materials.

Check out our short video demonstrations.

Installation

For a quick test, download a bundle from the relase page.

Extract the bundle in your user directory then start the application by executing start.sh. At the first start-up, a Wizard GUI asks minimal information to get you started.

Installation from source

Instructions to install the DyboApp in a Cuis-Smalltalk developer environment.

1. Set-up the Cuis-Smalltalk Environment.

mkdir Cuis
cd Cuis
# Install Cuis image and packages
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Cuis-Smalltalk/Cuis-Smalltalk-Dev
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Cuis-Smalltalk/Cuis-Smalltalk-UI
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Dynamic-Book/NeoCSV
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Cuis-Smalltalk/SVG
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Cuis-Smalltalk/Numerics
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Cuis-Smalltalk/OSProcess

cd Cuis-Smalltalk-Dev
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Dynamic-Book/DyboLib
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Dynamic-Book/DyboApp
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/istoa-eu/app.git

2. External Dependency.

Optionally, to be able to import/export PDF document, back-up your data, install the needed packages poppler-utils, ImageMagick and rsync. On Debian based distribution:

sudo apt install poppler-utils imagemagick rsync

3. Prepare Data.

For quick testing, you can installs preset data. These data contain a school entity, a teacher with his schedule and courses.

These data are created directly from the DyboApp, with the settings tool (the gear button at the right of the toolbar).

cd DyboApp/resources/
cp refData/data_sample.obj myData/data.obj
cd -

3. Start the DyboApp IDE.

cd Cuis/Cuis-Smalltalk-Dev
./DyboApp/startIDE.sh

A new image dyboIDE.image is built. This is the development environment for the DyboApp.

In the Workspace window, execute the statement DySystem beDevelopment, it will set up the paths to the resources to test appropriately the application.

Then, execute Dybo load to start the application with the data sample previously installed.

Alternatively, execute Dybo new to start the application with no initial data, you will have to create it with the settings tool (the gear button at the right in the toolbar).

Have an interesting exploration!