Wiki/Report of Meeting 2022-09-15

Report of Meeting 2022-09-15

Present: Art Anger, Raul Miller, Bob Therriault

1. The meeting opened with Art walking us through his table view of the essays with collapsible sections that can be searched alphabetically and ordered by columns for Title, Source, Applications,and Operations. https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Anger/Essays_Index
2. Essays with multiple names are a bit of a challenge because if you sort a column you will lose the connection between the Source and the Title for cases where there are multiple tiles from the same source.
3. Raul has started work on a spider bot that will be able to transfer categories from the prototype wiki to the current wiki and this seems very doable. Tom McGuire has continued to categorize Essays and his work is very much appreciated.
4. Bob suggested that he was interested in developing a J version of APLcart https://aplcart.info/ as an updated version of Phrases. APLcart is a searchable database with links to documentation and to the web based user interfaces so it is easy to see the phrase in action as well as an explanation of what it does. Raul suggested calling the J version of the APLcart a Jalopy.
5. Bob also gave developing the add ons structure as his second project for the fall. There seems to be information that is spread over a number of other areas. JAL https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/JAL/User_Guide Pacman https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Pacman and Vocabulary/Libraries https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Vocabulary/Libraries Bob suggests separating the topics into User Guide, Developer Guide and Library all under the main section of Add Ons. User Guide would focus on functionality of the application for users, Developer Guide would focus on how to create add ons and requirements, and Library as a list of add ons accessible through Pacman. Because information is stored in different sections it may be confusing to users when they see similar information to what they have seen before, but that is stored in a completely different section. Art mentioned that add ons can be difficult to develop and is there an easier way to develop add ons. Bob said he would look for ways that the process may be made simpler. A lot of this may be about doing more education through the Developer Guide pages. Bob wondered if there was an opportunity to do some type of a linting application that would check that the add on file was ready to publish and that if all was okay then it would do a dot version increment to make the add on publishable. Add ons have a lot of potential to transfer scripts from GitHub using 'install' jpg 'filename' but this is an opportunity to educate the users.
6. Bob talked about whether the wiki meetings might be used as updates for the different projects in addition to the general discussion. Raul mentioned that having achievable milestones is an important part of the project and those milestones seem to be have been set on a individual basis. There are more opportunities to work collaboratively and have project potentially spin off into their own development similar to the way that the J playground developed.
7. Art wondered about ways of adding Categories on the the table and include the current categories of the essays. This could be useful through sorting the column where the main category would be first and the sub categories would be available to show how other users may have categorized the essays that may be helpful in future searches. Also you could have categories as links to the category pages so that if you clicked on a category would you be able to take you to the category page where all the pages using that category. Art has include an Operation column with links that will take you directly to Nuvoc page. Similar things might be done with some of the topics that might be able to link back to wikipedia for descriptions that the user may not know. The Application column could be used for the main category with a category column for the sub categories. Raul pointed out that this would involve a lot of work updating the table whenever a category is changed. Bob suggested that once the Essays are categorized there may not be a lot of updating that is required.
8. In areas that are work intensive, it is up to the wiki team to motivate users to contribute. The challenge is to make sure that we are using that resource of community involvement in ways that are of most benefit. This will be an ongoing challenge of the wiki development.
9. Next Thursday will be the last J wiki meeting prior to the Fall Jsoftware meeting in Victoria, so any thing that should be brought up in Victoria can be explored on the J wiki meeting of September 22nd.

For access to previous meeting reports https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development

If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 23:00 (UTC) Next meeting is September 22nd , 2022.