This text: (May 29 at11:07 ; your contact form):
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Hi:
Having now spent more time reviewing the manual etc I am almost sure of two things:

1 - there probably is a way to do what I want but I don't know what it is; and,

2 - the best approach may be a plugin.

Since your bio says you do plugins can we have an off-line conversation (rudy at winface.com ) about that?

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What I want to do is:
1 - avoid creating anything requiring local maintenance
2 - automate as much of the process as possible
3 - start with a list of classes: Term, University course ID (number), Faculty course ID (number), Course Name (50), Section ID, Instructor first/last names ; where Term is a date grouping like "Spring 2020". (Usually 300+ classes per term)
4 - foreach class a list of: students: first/last name, student email (usually 20+)
5 - email each student a questionaire with class id info (3 above) preloaded as the answer to a hidden question (I think, better idea??)
6- generate an email to the instructor giving the names of students whose email address failed (bounced or missing)
7- output basic stats for the class response and a csv file containing class responses and faculty wide averages (but blank out those where there are 3 or fewer responses)
8 - preserve anonymous response throughout

I believe I can do all but #8 by adding five attributes to the participants table so something like {token:term} will work (am I right?) but that seems to give up on response anonymity. Is a plugin creating a new table the right answer? or something simpler possible?
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I have refined the requirement since and have been exploring the code a bit to see how hard this might be and it doesn't look too bad - however:

1 - I don't have the skills or adequate knowledge of the code base to do it quickly; and,

2 - I am inclined to think that adding the required functionality to the core product may be both easier and smarter - particularly with respect to maintenance.

My email : contact@sondages.pro

1 - avoid creating anything requiring local maintenance

? You can not create a system without maintenance. It's impossible.

3 - start with a list of classes: Term, University course ID (number), Faculty course ID (number), Course Name (50), Section ID, Instructor first/last names ; where Term is a date grouping like "Spring 2020". (Usually 300+ classes per term)
4 - foreach class a list of: students: first/last name, student email (usually 20+)
5 - email each student a questionaire with class id info (3 above) preloaded as the answer to a hidden question (I think, better idea??)

Seems totally unrelated to log here.

7- output basic stats for the class response and a csv file containing class responses and faculty wide averages (but blank out those where there are 3 or fewer responses)
8 - preserve anonymous response throughout

Contradiction …

1 - I don't have the skills or adequate knowledge of the code base to do it quickly; and,

Then don't try to search how to do : explain what you want with clear sentence.

2 - I am inclined to think that adding the required functionality to the core product may be both easier and smarter - particularly with respect to maintenance.

See the previous 1 … and clerarly : a lot of things you put are totally unrelated to Survey …

Else : www.limesurvey.com/customization

You are mixing conversations here. That note is dated May 29th. At the time I wanted to know if you could help by making the plugin. This has nothing to do with logs or guis.

The point of having someone else build and maintain a plugin is that it avoids any need for local maintenance.

Rudy, I also think that a plugin is the way to go. And despite his sometimes "rough" outside, I think Denis is probably the best way to go. He is THE guy, when i comes to LS plugin development. No one has more (often free) plugins for Limesurvey than him.

The bug tracker is the way to go for feature requests, but I also don't want to get your hopes too high, because most feature requests never make it anywhere and some are never even aknowledged.

Thus why I recommend to go down the plugin route.

However, I think what Denis means: a plugin will always require maintenance. If it is by you, by the university or by an external developer. and they external developer will most probably charge not only for the development of the plugin, but also for maintenance.

And one other thing: LS 4 is not yet ready for production, in my opinion (and I think most of the frequent posters in the forum like Denis, Tpartner, Jelo and Joffm will most probably agree). I am not sure if LS 4.x will be ready for production until the end of 2020.

We managed to convice them to take away the "stable" from 4.x, but I think it is still not clear enough in the download section that the current way to go for production is 3.x. Tried my best.

0 - thanks for the comments

1 - I know LS4 isn't really production ready, but don't much care. It does what I need doing and is better than 3 in many ways. The bugs I know of (particularly the fact that some things simply don't show on a debian/gnome/firefox system are incredibly frustrating and generally evil, but don't really amount to much once you figure them out - I've used expensive commercial software that's much worse for those kinds of undocumented "features."

2 - I'd very much like to talk with a developer about making something more people could easily use to deal with the survey problem I was looking at (rudy at winface dot com) - however, undoubted expertise aside, Denis isn't going to be the guy: between the obvious hostility and the mis-interpretation of everything I say, I can't see us working together on anything more difficult than "hello erde".

I have since gotten the requirement straight - but I'm still unclear on whether this is a plugin (with the implication that plugins extend existing functionality) or a wrapper (with the implication that wrappers provide better ways of using existing functionality ). Right now, I'm leaning toward wrapper and therefore to the idea that this belongs in the core package rather than in an add-on - would love to discuss it with someone knowledgeable.

1 - I know LS4 isn't really production ready, but don't much care. It does what I need doing and is better than 3 in many ways. The bugs I know of (particularly the fact that some things simply don't show on a debian/gnome/firefox system are incredibly frustrating and generally evil, but don't really amount to much once you figure them out - I've used expensive commercial software that's much worse for those kinds of undocumented "features."

Great, if you are aware of that and you are fine with it, no problem. I was just writing this, because we volunteers are getting quite a couple of frustrated comments with 4.x and I can understand why. Once it is ready, 4.x is for sure a good piece of software, but currently for most users there are just too many bugs and hickups. If it works for you, go for it. It will become stable eventually.

2 - I'd very much like to talk with a developer about making something more people could easily use to deal with the survey problem I was looking at (rudy at winface dot com) - however, undoubted expertise aside, Denis isn't going to be the guy: between the obvious hostility and the mis-interpretation of everything I say, I can't see us working together on anything more difficult than "hello erde".

Well, this is up to you and based on the current communication between you two in this thread and at the bug tracker, I can somehow understand it. I am just saying, that he is not always like that.

In any way, there are a number of Limesurvey Partners that might be able to help you. You can find them here: www.limesurvey.com/
I think Gabriel from Encuesta.biz has also a lot of experience in developing plugins for Limesurvey.

By the way: I have not worked with Denis nor with Gabriel, so this is not recommendation based on first hand experience working with either of them. I am judging based on what I see from them here in the forum and on their amount of available plugins.

Based on your name I am inclined to think you are Dutch, thus you might also want to have a look at the (2?) dutch Limesurvey partners.

I have since gotten the requirement straight - but I'm still unclear on whether this is a plugin (with the implication that plugins extend existing functionality) or a wrapper (with the implication that wrappers provide better ways of using existing functionality ). Right now, I'm leaning toward wrapper and therefore to the idea that this belongs in the core package rather than in an add-on - would love to discuss it with someone knowledgeable.

Well, I am not a programmer and can't really help with that. You might want to speak to Daniel or maybe you can try to get in touch with Limesurvey Gmbh as well. Not sure if they are available for this kind of work though.

Good luck!