Help Activity refresh/2012 doc sprint planning chat

Transcript from 7 to 8 PM EDT (and a bit more) from Wed Apr 4, 2012

See related planning @ http://j.mp/xomanual

* christophd  has joined #olpc-help
* tonyforster  has joined #olpc-help
* garycmartin  has joined #olpc-help
* isforinsects  has joined #olpc-help
<isforinsects> Hey CanoeBerry
<christophd> isforinsects: hey
<christophd> isforinsects: adam is just trying to call you
<christophd> isforinsects: :)
<isforinsects> Hey christophd
<isforinsects> I am still at my office.
<christophd> ack
<isforinsects> I didn't get in until late, so I am putting a few extra hours in to give me some cushin for later this week.
<christophd> makes sense :)
<CanoeBerry> isforinsects: got an etherpad "TOC" evolving out of Caryl's out TOC yet?  (no rush! but tomorrow latest..from http://booki.flossmanuals.net/xo-users-manual-rev-2011/_edit/ )
* jt4sugar  has joined #olpc-help
* NtugiMark  has joined #olpc-help
<christophd> let's shoot for starting in 3~4min so people have time to arrive and settle in
* walterbender  has joined #olpc-help
<CanoeBerry> 7pm!
<CanoeBerry> Invite to all to go drinking 9pm in Hvd Sq if poss..Shay's
<CanoeBerry> 58 JFK St
* GrannieB  has joined #olpc-help
<NtugiMark> Christoph is buying!
<CanoeBerry> Hah
<christophd> Ntugi is buying!
<christophd> Christoph is only drinking
<CanoeBerry> Craig joining?
<NtugiMark> he's coming now
<CanoeBerry> Who else?
<christophd> ack
<NtugiMark> (browser version)
* CraigPerue  has joined #olpc-help
<CraigPerue> nick /IronyBoy
<CanoeBerry> isforinsects: want to start introducing your/our 3 main recommendations?
<CraigPerue> nick/ IronyBoy
<CanoeBerry> or others want to inject agenda points?
<isforinsects> CraigPerue: you lead with the /
<NtugiMark> heeee
<CanoeBerry> Agenda:
<CanoeBerry> 1. Tool Chain
<CanoeBerry> 2. Content Choices
<CanoeBerry> 3. Artifact Deliverables
<CanoeBerry> All surrounding April 6-10 Docs Sprint
<isforinsects> ^ CanoeBerry thanks, I don't have our notes in front of me.
<CanoeBerry> isforinsects: Want to start with #1?
<isforinsects> Let's go in reverse order actually.
<CanoeBerry> OK
<christophd> +1
<isforinsects> 3.) Artifacts
<christophd> GrannieB: you there?
<GrannieB> Yep
<christophd> excellent
<isforinsects> We have a short list of mediums: Video, Html, Print, and Wiki
<CanoeBerry> WWW too
<CanoeBerry> OK
<isforinsects> Video, you are all probably aware at this point of the work that NtugiMark has done and will be doing around video documentation.
<CanoeBerry> Help Activity & WWW are almost equivalent, but you should explain why!
<isforinsects> I was getting to that.
<CanoeBerry> Help Activit(ies) if you prefer.
<isforinsects> If we can generate raw html by the end of the event of what is written, it can be put in the help activity, put online, sliced and formatted a number of different ways using css.
<isforinsects> We have the current help activity (which is in the midst of being ported to webkit)
<GrannieB> webkit?
<isforinsects> And refreshing the content in it is one of my highest priorities.
<isforinsects> Webkit is the technology that google chrome and apple safari is built on.
<GrannieB> ok
<isforinsects> web browsing in 12.* and on will be based on it rather than the mozilla based system we have now.
<isforinsects> And of course, if we can generate new and expanded content, we can render it at laptop.org/manual
<isforinsects> Print, comes in a few forms.  We no longer have a recent g1g1, and an american audience that wants to purchase a physical manual.
<christophd> fwiw: CraigPerue said he might take whatever we produce until the end of the week and turn it into a book as it's considered important for Jamaica teachers
<christophd> CraigPerue: I hope I'm correctly repeating you here :)
<GrannieB> easy to do with a cut and paste of selected chapters into Booki
<CraigPerue> +1
<isforinsects> I coudl go a few different ways when it comes to print, but my feeling today is that we can create a print.css file (or borrow one of the many print formatting css files from the web) to immediately be able to create a 8.5"x11" (or your various A* for people from rational parts of the world) printable version.
<isforinsects> One last option as a medium that I would like to bring up as a possibility
<christophd> such as a print.css would be great!
* Mokurai  has joined #olpc-help
* NtugiMark  Quit (Quit: NtugiMark)
<isforinsects> Once we have a recent and up to date web browser widget for Sugar, and now that we have GUI for a frame to pop over an activity, it is possible we could include a single page of documentation in activities alongside view-source.
* NtugiMark  has joined #olpc-help
<isforinsects> And this can be the html content generated from activity documentation.
<christophd> okay, but this in-activity help is more of a nice perspective for the future but not necessarily something thats going to happen tomorrow or this week
<Mokurai> isforinsects: That would imply that we need to design activities to require minimal help.
<CanoeBerry> Great, can we recap recommendations for #3 and move on?
<Mokurai> isforinsects: That works for some activities, as I have documented on The Undiscoverable in the wiki, but not for all.
<isforinsects> Agreed. But it is something I wouldlike to work on in the next six months.  So the html medium is a little sweeter IMO.
<isforinsects> Mokurai: agreed
<isforinsects> documentation should only be included at the discresion of the activity developers/creators.
<isforinsects> Did I cover the mediums as others see them?
<Mokurai> isforinsects: So for those that require more help, we need to design more elaborate tutorials, and make them separate activities or Web pages, or whatnot.
<garycmartin> isforinsects: if the source view can support html content (via web kit) it could be cheap for developers to include some html documentation as part of their 
activity bundle (but localisation will raise a few implementation details).
<isforinsects> garycmartin: again, I agree.
<isforinsects> Recommendation: we focus on HTML as the output format, and from that most other formats will follow.
<CanoeBerry> +1
<christophd> +1
* isforinsects pauses for a moment for additional comments 
<Mokurai> Would that include EPUB?
<GrannieB> so... you want to include some documentation in the Activities themselves, in the future, eventually?
<walterbender> anything we do this week should take into account i18n... our (and everyone else's Achilles' heal)
<walterbender> my recent conversion to Mallard is that it is very i18n friendly
<isforinsects> Mokurai: distributed proofreaders has a very nice html to epub system.
<Mokurai> walterbender: I have some ideas on non-linguistic help
<GrannieB> i18n???
<christophd> walterbender: good point
<Mokurai> walterbender: on the model of Roy Doty's Wordless Workshop.
<walterbender> i18n is shorthand for internationalization
<isforinsects> GrannieB: internationalization i, 18 letters, n
<GrannieB> gotcha
* ghunt (~60fad698@olpc.osuosl.org) has joined #olpc-help
<christophd> isforinsects: thanks, hadnt know what i18n stood for until now
<Mokurai> GrannieB: Since we are working in about a hundred languages so far, with many more to come.
<christophd> garycmartin: hi george
<garycmartin> GrannieB: We (Activity Team) are already looking to include some level of 'getting started' help in a help toolbar widget in Activities. Additional HTML documentation would be a step deeper for those who need it.
<CanoeBerry> ghunt: welcome!
<ghunt> hi
<walterbender> GrannieB: for future reference, l12n is localization :P
<GrannieB> nice idea
<isforinsects> GrannieB: and yes, If we create stand-alone html pages for activities, we migh be able to get them into activities, but that idea need not block other work we do.
<CanoeBerry> ghunt: manyh have welcomed the possibility of an XS "chapter" over the past 24hrs..
<christophd> garycmartin: can you give us a 30 second overview of where these discussions are (in-activity help): timeframe, considerations relevant for now, etc.
<Mokurai> I have a model for non-linguistic help in my Wiki page on Turtle Art with icons instead of labels on the blocks.
<isforinsects> walterbender: can you talk to us about mallard translation?
<ghunt> I'd be up for writing a XS chapter
<isforinsects> ^^ christophd 's request before mine plz
<CanoeBerry> ghunt: you will be well-supported, it sounds like!
<Mokurai> walterbender: l10n
<walterbender> isforinsects: nothing too much to say except that it lets you mark text for translation in a way that is compatible with our POT files
* walterbender cannot spell or count
<christophd> :)
<ghunt> who else would like to work with my on an xs chapter
<GrannieB> some of the folks you met at SCaLE might be interested
<Mokurai> ghunt: Give me more of an outline. I might be.
<GrannieB> we could ask
<walterbender> isforinsects: I am not sold on Mallard per se, just on making sure whatever text generation we do is in a form that allows for translation. (and allows for SVG images, which are much easier to localize)
<isforinsects> SCaLE ++
<Mokurai> SCaLE++ ++
<isforinsects> walterbender: can we get sugar to dump us an svg screenshot?
<GrannieB> SCaLE 10X LA in JAn
<christophd> isforinsects: I think we now jumped from the artifacts right into the tool discussion :)
<garycmartin> christophd: So some Activities are already landing a help ? toolbar icon that shows a palette of getting started steps, nothing to deep, but tries to cover that 'what is this', 'what do I do' moment (walterbender has just landed a version of this in TurtleArt, there are also versions for Finance from Gonzalo http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Design_Team/Proposals/Help_In_Context).
<isforinsects> christophd: I paused for Medium comments :-P
<christophd> ;)
<Mokurai> isforinsects: The problem with screenshots is getting the text out of the bitmap.
<CanoeBerry> hunt: i will support you personally, when are you arriving? we're on a 10am - 5pm schedule primarily
<christophd> garycmartin: okay, thx
<christophd> garycmartin: any big changes in that area with 12.* releases?
<walterbender> christophd: Turtle Art uses "Help in Context" (v137) and it is all i18n
<isforinsects> The help-palette is nice for quick help. But it is hard to give a lot of large-format images or text, if an activity created desired it
<Mokurai> iforinsects: We can do OCR of Latin alphabet text if the background isn't too cluttered.
<ghunt> I will arrive late thursday
<christophd> walterbender: thx, I will try to check v137 out on an XO tomorrow morning
<walterbender> Mokurai: that is why we should be using SVG
<isforinsects> There was something I heard, years ago probably, about being able to get gtk or some other part of the rendering stack dump an svg version of what is being rendered on the screen.
<Mokurai> isforinsects: I just scanned and OCRed a math book, and it was a grade-A pain.
<walterbender> isforinsects: with Cairo, it is not very hard...
<isforinsects> Mokurai: ^^ I am referring to sugar giving us an svg, not a bitmap.
<Mokurai> walterbender: The question was about converting a bitmap screenshot to SVG.
* walterbender wonders if he could hack up something for the Sprint
<isforinsects> Mokurai: otherway around
<garycmartin> christophd: Well 12.* is probably where you'll start to see the more complicated Activities that need this feature, though I guess no reason 11.* can't run them as well if gtk3 isn't a deal breaker for the Activity.
<walterbender> Mokurai: since Sugar is SVG, we should be able to get SVG for free (as in beer)
<Mokurai> isforinsects: How? Do you mean that every activity is to compose its screens in SVG, so that we can ask for it to be dumped?
<walterbender> Mokurai: yes
<christophd> walterbender: interesting thought. so could we get an SVG screenshot capability hacked together in 48 hours??
<walterbender> christophd: I think I might be able to... will look at it tonight
<Mokurai> walterbender++
<christophd> AWESOME
<christophd> very cool indeed
<christophd> :)
<walterbender> so I guess I know what I am working on...
<tonyforster> screenshots need cropping and editing, any svg screenshot tool would need this
<walterbender> inkscape
<christophd> ^^
<christophd> tonyforster: we dont need to edit the images on XOs or within Sugar so somethin such as inkscape should be more than fine I think
<isforinsects> tonyforster: post processing
<isforinsects> walterbender: if you could get us that it would make a world of difference.
<Mokurai> tonyforster: We can use Inkscape offline. Walterbender: What chance of a Sugar SVG editor?
<walterbender> isforinsects: will start looking into it right away. should be as simple as the same mechanism we use now for png and pdf
<isforinsects> Officially starting the conversation on tools 1.)
<walterbender> Mokurai: one of the "kids" in .UY is working on one. In the meantime, Inkscape works quite well in Sugar
<isforinsects> We have two or three major options:
<isforinsects> Booki, the Sugar labs wiki, and 'whatever else' which could be google docs and/or etherpad
<christophd> walterbender: btw, will you be joining us in person tomorrow?
<tonyforster> can a svg screenshot plse include the option of capturing the cursor?
<Mokurai> isforinsects: I should give notice that in the Replacing Textbooks program we will want to be able to embed Sugar activities in the "textbooks".
<Mokurai> isforinsects: That is why I asked about EPUB earlier.
<christophd> might be easier to add a cursor if so desired in post-processing. cursos (IMHO) dont work too well on screenshots because they often hide the very thing you want to emphasize
<GrannieB> right
<Mokurai> I have just finished an algebra book where every math statement is executable via copy and paste.
<christophd> Mokurai: as mentioned before I think such efforts are interesting and important but way beyond the scope of the current event
<tonyforster> cursor optional
<Mokurai> I would like it to be executable by double-click.
<isforinsects> Mokurai: if we can get the text in a simple markdown format, either well formed html, wikimarkup (which has some issues) or even markdown, we can render whatever we want via html.
<christophd> Mokurai: so launch an Activity from within an EPUB or what do you have in mind?
<Mokurai> christophd: I know that we cannot start on all of that this week. I just want people to be aware of this future direction, so that we think about making tools that can be extended in that way.
<isforinsects> I agree that is an interesting concept, and we should do waht we want to support it, but work directly on that project will not likely be happening this weekend.
<isforinsects> Mokurai: ++
<isforinsects> s/we want/we can/g
<Mokurai> christophd: Yes. In fact, have an activity window in the EPUB, in the state where some portion of a lesson is ready to start.
<garycmartin> Mokurai: EPUB, is pretty much a subset of HTML with some custom structure, reformatting HTML into EPUB should not be an issue.
<GrannieB> Folks can write wherever they like, cut and paste into Booki and convert it to html there, cut and paste into the wiki or wherever, Piece of cake!
<GrannieB> Preserves formatting
<Mokurai> GrannieB: Correct for static content and JavaScript. More work for Python and other languages.
<GrannieB> Not everyone is a whiz at html, especially when unusual formatting is needed
<GrannieB> I experimented with it last night ... very nice
<christophd> SJ said he will look into installing a WYSIWYG editor on w.laptop.org and we will talk to bernie tonight to see whether we can alspo get that on sugar labs wiki
<isforinsects> So, that brings us to the rest of the tools question
<Mokurai> GrannieB: We have Python, Logo, Smalltalk, FORTH, and J at the moment.
<isforinsects> A step before we get into the _url_, lets talk about formatting and styleguide.
<GrannieB> some of us aren't fluent in much beyond Pascal
<christophd> :)
<Mokurai> GrannieB: Including TurtleArt in Python that can generate Logo and interface to more Python.
<christophd> when it comes to formatting and styleguide i vote isforinsects for president to rule us all
<christophd> :)
<GrannieB> +1
<Mokurai> GrannieB: Hence the need for gentle tutorials.
<isforinsects> Thank you
<christophd> things such as the capital letter in Activities which (iirc) suggested by walterbender back in 2008 are vitally important
<tonyforster> who is isforinsects?
<Mokurai> I am all for having a styleguide implemented in CSS so that most of us don't need to know the gory details.
<christophd> tonyforster: isforinsects is Seth
<CanoeBerry> isforinsects will be paid $400,001/yr to make clear he's worth more than Obama
<christophd> :D
<GrannieB> also little things like how many spaces between a period (.) and the start of the next sentence
<christophd> GrannieB: +1
<isforinsects> Pfft.
<isforinsects> A lot of the styleguide is going to be textual.
<Mokurai> CanoeBerry: I know where you can get a great deal on Buddhist Hell money. We could pay him millions.
<christophd> isforinsects: but we also expect you to close guantanamo within the month!!
<garycmartin> Mokurai: (and the move to GTK3 should allow activities to appear directly inside EPUB documents, or any HTML browser)
<isforinsects> I am in favor of being very light on markup.  The hardest thing is going to be formatting and displaying images.
<Mokurai> christophd: Do what the Republicans do. Declare it closed and move on. Don't let those pesky facts get in your way. :-D
<christophd> Mokurai: point taken
<christophd> :)
<CanoeBerry> hmm: i just looked for our 2008/2009 style guides @ flossmanuals.net and failed
<Mokurai> isforinsects: Sorry. You were saying?
<christophd> btw, 35min warning
<GrannieB> sometimes the text also needs some fancy formatting. Like in the parts of TamTamMini where I had to line up key nemes with Do-Re-Mi etc
<christophd> (I meant we have been going on for 35min - or actually longer)
<GrannieB> better getto TOC
<isforinsects> If we can use _basic_ markup, then getting the text out of wherever it lives, and processing it with python to html and every other format
<CanoeBerry> yes, let's get to TOC in a bit
<isforinsects> Right
<Mokurai> GrannieB: When we have settled on our tools, send me your requirements, and I will write step-by-step HowTos.
<isforinsects> TOC added to agenda
<isforinsects> There will be cases where we have to have more complicated Figures
<GrannieB> I'm fine with what I worked out last night. Thanks anyway
<isforinsects> but we might be able to 'outsource' that to a subset of us who will do it in inkscape if we have to.
<Mokurai> isforinsects: Have you compared your desiderata with the new toolbar in BookType? It can generate HTML, EPUB, and other formats that we want.
<isforinsects> As far as I have been told, the Booki (booktype) publish button is broken.
<isforinsects> I do not want to rely on that option
<GrannieB> someone should test and verify that
<Mokurai> isforinsects: I filed the bug on that, and will follow up with Adam and Aco.
<GrannieB> can't always rely on Booki anyway.
<Mokurai> GrannieB: In what way, can't rely?
<Mokurai> GrannieB: Bugs? Availability? ??
<GrannieB> Wasn't able to edit this weekend. Christoph confirmed. A. Hyde fixed it
<isforinsects> Booki was down temporarily this weekend, and the same thing happened 4 years ago.  This should not be extrapolated to suggest that the site is unreliable (we have far too little data for that)
<isforinsects> But if something _does_ happen, out workflow should allow us to use whatever works.
<Mokurai> GrannieB: I have that problem at treehouse, where the Django backend crashes. Dogi wrote me a procedure for restarting it.
<isforinsects> And 'happen' may mean people really like using etherpad to write collaboratively.
<GrannieB> I would love to collaborate with someone on something like Labyrinth
* walterbender was distracted by trying to hack cairo->svg
<isforinsects> Lets make our way into a workflow conversation, which touches upon TOC
<walterbender> christophd: I will be at Twine most of the day tomorrow
<christophd> walterbender: cool (both the distraction and that you'll be in tomorrow)
<Mokurai> When I can't get to a server, I have no trouble writing offline in some other WYSIWYG/raw code HTML editor.
<isforinsects> Mokurai: Right!
<Mokurai> But I want a reliable server, so that I can always edit previously written material.
<isforinsects> I think that we should try to farm out our figures and screenshots to a small group if possible.
<isforinsects> Ideally, chapters are worked on by 1-3 people (with an editor)
<GrannieB> +1
<GrannieB> for photos
<GrannieB> etc
<isforinsects> Those people should write their copy (words) with as little extra formatting as possible.
* walterbender is not as confident that I will be able to get SVG output for every activity :(
<walterbender> it is easy to generate, but from within the activities, not from within Sugar
<CanoeBerry> OK, we can always pay Mike Lee $400,002/yr to fix all our image problems ;)
<isforinsects> If they require a figure, they should be able to describe what they require, and we may be able to feed those requests to Mike Lee and/or wb (for svgs?)
<GrannieB> we could use a depository for images
<isforinsects> ^^
<isforinsects> Yes
<Mokurai> Subject-matter expert, editor, artist, sometimes a programmer.
<isforinsects> Yep!
<christophd> regarding svg screenshot: we could see what the status is tomorrow noon and then make a call about its feasibility
<GrannieB> a place to put them?
<christophd> +1 for image team
<isforinsects> GrannieB: To be decided by the svg/art team.
<Mokurai> isforinsects: Right. I always told engineers not to format API docs and the like, because it just meant I had to remove it all and start over.
<GrannieB> +1
<isforinsects> Mokurai: precicely.
<isforinsects> Now, let's sum up the major TODOs and undecideds
<CanoeBerry> Thanks. Many of need to leave soon to more important business (drinking @ Shay's in Hvd Sq 9PM, 258 JFK St)
<isforinsects> 1.) We will have a TOC, writers/editors will mark what chapters they would like to work on.
<isforinsects> 2.) we will have an Art team, that will create and manage (store, distribute, organize) the required art assets.
<isforinsects> 3.) We will use as little in-text formatting as possible, and where it can not be avoided, we will strive to coordinate on figures with the art team.
<Mokurai> walterbender: Can we recommend a library to all activity developers that will make it straightforward to dump SVG screens?
<christophd> isforinsects: +1 on all 3 points from my side
<GrannieB> One thing not discussed Remote helpers... proof readers and testers need to know where to find each days products for testing and proofing
<isforinsects> We will decide by friday what websites chapters will be created on, and where chapters should be dumped when they have a new revision.
<GrannieB> we have a lot of folks who want to help
<isforinsects> GrannieB: The TOC / assignments document will be online and we will be setting up a coordinating IRC #.
<walterbender> Mokurai: In Cairo, it is a matter of setting up an SVG surface... then everything else is the same.
<christophd> GrannieB: I think realistically we'll only get the first real readable artifacts by Saturday
<isforinsects> Let's start an email thread on how best to support remote folks.
<Mokurai> walterbender: Perhaps we can get that put into MYOSA.
<GrannieB> christoph: yeh... I figured Saturday too
<isforinsects> And I am afraid that I have to run "-( There is a car outside waiting for me.  I will leave my irc open and reply to anything requested of me when I arrive home!
<isforinsects> gtg!
<Mokurai> Bye
<christophd> okay
<christophd> isforinsects: thanks
<CanoeBerry> Thanks isforinsects for agreeing to be our Editor-in-Chief inasmuch as his time allows (incl compiling a style guide & TOC draft tomorrow with as much help as you need, ok!)
<Mokurai> Off to polish my algebra book.
* Mokurai  has left #olpc-help
<CanoeBerry> 8pm on the nose, thanks al!
<christophd> fwiw: I will continue working on these things and start style guide, etc. tomorrow 10am~ish
<CanoeBerry> A few of us sticking around to tidy up?
<GrannieB> I'll leave my irc open for a while too
<GrannieB> Actually... I can stick around for a few minutes.
<CanoeBerry> http://j.mp/xomanual is getting organized at last, all plz help!
<GrannieB> I'll look at my Chicago Manual of Style (every jopurnalist has one) and see if it is any help
<GrannieB> maybe I can find the old style sheet from 2008
<christophd> GrannieB: I have the ATP stlye somewhere in my flat in Vienna, good stuff in there :)
* CraigPerue  Quit (Quit: CGI:IRC)
<christophd> oh, and can anybody point me to the 2008 style guide, I cant seem to be able to find that sucker :/
<tonyforster> thanks, what is the primary communication for remote helpers? irc not too good for other time zones. Sugar devel? IAEP? private mail?
<christophd> tonyforster: good question
<christophd> etherpad and the wiki being other options
<CanoeBerry> in theory, let's all try to communicate other library@lists.laptop.org
<CanoeBerry> here: http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/library
<CanoeBerry> we'll prob host the majority of "chapters" on wiki.sugarlabs.org and a few on wiki.laptop.org ?
<GrannieB> tonyforster: that's what I was asking about. I need to tell people what to expect
<GrannieB> I looked for the style guide. I think once something is published in Booki, stuff like that disappears
<GrannieB> I vaguely rememner Ann Gentle putting it together
<christophd> yeah, also looking through old 2008 mails and cant find it anywhere
* NtugiMark  Quit (Quit: NtugiMark)
<ghunt> CAN someone put up the etherpat link?
<christophd> I dont think we have an etherpad just yet
<ghunt> ok
* walterbender thinks it would be good to decide on a style for the wiki pages (that would have all the info we need for Booki)
* walterbender uses a similar format for all of his activities on w.sl.o
<walterbender> maybe garycmartin could design something?
<walterbender> aside to tonyforster: were you able to apply that patch?
<tonyforster> walterbender: (havent had time to do patch)
<GrannieB> walterbender: Last night I took a formatted chapter I created in Booki, toggled it into html, cut and pasted it into the olpc wiki. Worked beautifully
<GrannieB> Before that I tried a direct cut and paste. It was a mess. I couldn't format it.
<walterbender> GrannieB: link?
<tonyforster> What about content? What to include? What not to? eg the wiki pages on turtleart could be the basis of help? Just a decision of what to remove? Make wiki pages screenshots SVG?
<GrannieB> the mess:http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Cbigenho#About_Tam_Tam_Mini
<christophd> those are some good questions which we'll taggle tomorrow and first thing on Friday
<GrannieB> good one coming up
<walterbender> tonyforster: wiki poages have a nice advantage over booki in terms of supporting internal and external links
<christophd> IMHO we should aim for fairly concise documentation, so not going overboard on length
<christophd> not just because "concise is nice" but also thinking towards possible use as source for in-activity help and whatnot
<GrannieB> walterbender: good one http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Cbigenho#Tam_Tam_Min scroll down to see the red letters
<christophd> plus what some of us had discussed today is not just to focus on "how to use an activity" but also giving concrete ideas and suggestions for education / learning use (esp. on Activity leve, OS and hardware are something a bit different I would dare say)
* christophd 's 2 eurocents
<christophd> okay, gotta leave to grab some dinner before heading to Shay's later
<GrannieB> waalterbender: link didn't work right. Just scroll down to the bottom section of the page
<christophd> thanks everyone, have a good evening and talk again / see you all tomorrow
<walterbender> GrannieB: the technical issue with importing HTML into the wiki is that it makes the document impossible to link or edit...
<GrannieB> See ya
<walterbender> christophd: +1...
<GrannieB> hummm...
<walterbender> christophd: but I think we need a structure so we can grab the bits we need for difference purposes
<walterbender> the embedding mechanism in mediawiki does this very well
<walterbender> but not booki (at least in its present form)
<christophd> which bits are you now specifically referring to?
<GrannieB> Guess that is why it should be written, proofed, tested, polished, etc in etherpad or elsewhere until perfect
<tonyforster> Bye, going, thanks.
<walterbender> christophd: any bits... for example, if we write separate chucks for how to and why to and then want to use them in different ways
<GrannieB> bye
<christophd> tonyforster: thx, bye
* tonyforster  Quit (Quit: CGI:IRC)
<christophd> walterbender: okay, understood and +1
<christophd> walterbender: just wondering whether we need to make this structure human readable or also machine readable?
<walterbender> christophd: ideally both... the good news is that because of wikipedia, there are lots of humans that can read/write in a computer-readable language: mediawiki format
<christophd> makes sense
<GrannieB> walterbender: actually, I just tested it and did a minor text edit. Worked fine