Present: Ed Gottsman, Devon McCormick, Raul Miller, and Bob Therriault Full transcripts of this meeting are now available on the its wiki page. https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki/Report_of_Meeting_2023-04-13
1) We started off with Ed's sixth demo of the new J wiki browser. As much of this is visual the video can be watched here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uo7j1Gyl2og Ed has added an area for tags which he suggests are the best representation of the user defined categories. He has grouped these categories into alphabetical groups which have a more manageable size which can be further probed 2) The next topic was the way to represent forums. There was a discussion between Bob and Ed about the way that the interface for the forums could be organized to allow quick access through years to months to threads and then to posts. Raul suggested that a click and hold interaction that would freeze interaction until you release in the new position. This would be used to reduce unwanted hover selection. Ed wishes to explore the hover mode as far as possible because it encourages information exploration. 3) Ed felt that there are two use cases for the forums. One is to find the most recent posts and that case is supported well. The second case is browsing through threads the way that you would browse through a magazine. Ed wonders if there is another use case. Raul suggests that the structure of the forum does not lend itself to use cases beyond those two. Bob relayed that his son, Stephen, who has education in UX and design, felt that the search and the speed of access was the most powerful aspect of the interface. Ed pointed out that not all posts show up in the search, although they do if browsed in the thread. ED confesses that he has found that the current interface allows him to browse the threads in a way that is quite pleasant. 4) Bob suggested using the entering of the labels to restart the timer, as it seems to pick up entering more quickly than leaving a label. Ed suggested that that is done with a quarter second lag which could be tuned. The right side of the screen does not have a lag, but the web based right side which has a lag anyway has a quarter second lag. Raul suggested an accordion of the months below the years. That may be too many to represent visually, since it would be a couple of hundred entries. Raul further suggested an accordion for the years as well as the months with a zoom slider similar to the vertical table of contents. Ed's solution of opening a gap in the months below the years 5) Ed asked if there could be some design support provided, as his expertise is in programming and not design. Bob said he could get in touch with Stephen to get some support. Ed said he was looking for information on colour palette. 6) Ed is currently looking for a way to partition the 'public' wiki information from information such as bookmarks that might be more 'personal'. Ed is considering whether this could be done on one database or if it requires two. Is the current protocol to ask permission before writing to a file? Bob felt that as long as you are writing to the temp file and it is information that the user generates, such as bookmarks, that should not be a problem that the user is storing their information in their own file. Raul wondered about how much we could know about the user's machine and that could lead to problems. Also that the files be managed in one folder, possibly titled 'J wiki browser', that has the files that the user would know not to remove that folder. Ed prefers having one database file to retrieve debugging information more easily. Raul suggested writing 'personal' information to a J file, clobbering the database and then read the 'personal' information back into the database to repopulate the 'private' information. 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 April 20th, 2023. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
