David Chisnall wrote:
On 23 May 2005, at 16:47, Jesse Ross wrote:
The presentation looks nice.
Thank you.
Who was the presentation given to
The UWS Computer Science department has recently started running a
series of seminars where a postgraduate student gives a talk about an
interesting topic not directly connected to their research to the rest
of the research students. This was the latest in this series. They
are generally informal, and are intended to:
a) Inform the audience about things outside their direct field, and
b) Promote discussion.
The audience are all computer science research students, most either
theoreticians or graphics specialists.
what was the response like?
Well, we went on for a bit too long, but apart from that it was
generally good. People seemed to like the ideas we presented,
particularly the circular menus. One question began `I think we all
agree that this is the kind of thing we'd all like to be using.'
What kind of questions were asked? Any great
insights by the audience (other than the terminology discussion)?
There was some confusion about exactly what Étoilé actually is (i.e.
OS, Desktop Environment, or library), but this has already been
discussed on the list.
While that may be the case, is it laid out clearly on the front page of
the Étoilé website? I don't think it is, and that should be addressed,
since it's far more likely someone will be confused if there's no
explanation on our website, than in a seminar where it can be explained
to them immediately. I also think it should be said on the Étoilé
website that Étoilé is not an operating system, or even necessarily tied
to an operating system. It should probably even be referred to as a
desktop environment on front the webpage at least once, and then go on
to explain why it's unique/different.
The terminology confusion has already been discussed.
There was a suggestion that this is a very large and daunting task, and
that more demo-able material (e.g. flash) might be useful.
It was suggested that having a working sub-set of the system that
people could play with (even if they can't use it seriously) might be
good for garnering interest. I think this is a valid point - if we
could produce a LiveCD with the project environment and a few sample
components / objects (e.g. a Rich Text object, and a few components for
manipulating it - maybe spell checks and syntax highlighting?) this
would be nice to be able to show people, and might encourage other
people to write components.
Excellent point. This is something I'd be willing to work on for the
project. IANAP, but this is well within my realm of ability to do, and
I'd like to see it done. Would anyone like to either help me out,
explain what they want done in terms of a LiveCD, or elaborate on what
they'd like it to contain?
Cheers,
Alex Perez
