== Report of Meeting 2023-06-01 == Present: Ed Gottsman, 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_2023-06-01 1) Ed began with a demo of his latest iteration on the J wiki browser. We have put the video up on YouTube https://youtu.be/mco18CzFGTg. He began with the small version of the display where the webview expands as you hover it. Ed has moved away from the hover paradigm and now requires clicks to change the contents of the web view which displays the wiki page. The number of pages in a category is now indicated by a number instead of a line which provides the information in a more compact way. Ed has also expanded the space that a label has available when they are hovered over. That allows more information to be available from viewing the full title. Bob wondered if the green stripe is necessary and the whole column could not be scrollable. Ed pointed out that with smaller screens it is trickier and with a scrolling group it is hard to hit the target when the whole group slides. Raul suggested that when you slide up the group without the scrolling that is not as useful since you end up highlighting something that you cannot see. Ed also pointed out that the existing display provides a choice - you can use the green if you are not concerned with the non-linear and if you want more accurate targets then use the non-scrolling. 2) Bob wondered if the webview could have display precedence since it is the target that he often uses to decide if he has found the right content. This may be a matter of getting the right minimum size for the page. If it is too small you have to go back and forth between the link display and the webview. Raul showed the results on his laptop screen and in that size the content of the screen provides enough content to discover the page that you are on. Raul wondered if it was possible to eliminate the sidebar on the wiki pages to provide more useful information. Ed pointed out that the forum pages don't have a sidebar and that he did not know of a way to slide the webview under the other content as in JQt the components do not overlap. 3) Bob showed the work that he had done on the Primer. https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Help/Primer/001Start_here and the new version includes an index on the bottom of each page that allows the viewer to be able to view the titles of the other pages by hovering over the page numbers. This allows the viewer to access other pages with enough resistance to allow moving through the Primer non-linearly without encouraging it. Bob also talked about the method that he was using to highlight the current page and Raul suggested that you can use the arguments passed to a template to reduce the CSS required on each page. The index will always be at the bottom of the page which means that it will jump around depending on the length of the page. The alternative of having the index at the top of the page which Bob felt gives it too much prominence. 4) The discussion then moved on to the Addons that Raul was organizing. https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Vocabulary/Libraries He has broken the previous long table into sections that expand according their categories. He was also able to include some 'unofficial' Addons that had not yet been put into the Package Manager at the bottom of the page. His page is generated from the names in the manifest for the Addons repository. Raul feels that the GitHub folder should be added as an identifier to these names as it is necessary to access the Addon repository. There are Addons that do not have content so that over time some content may need to be provided. Raul said that many of the scripts have comments that would provide the start of the content that needs to be provided. Raul has created a script that builds the Addon display in the talk area of the Addons page where it can be uploaded. https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/File:Addon-summary.txt Henry has provided an example of excellent documentation on Dissect https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Vocabulary/Dissect 5) We reviewed Henry's Share My Screen initiative and found it to be an excellent resource for encouraging developers and intermediate J programmers. https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/ShareMyScreen Ed mentioned that he feels that there is a lack of good intermediate J code and this looks like excellent work because it breaks down the process line by line and explains the way that he approaches the solutions. 6) Ed wondered about the location of the 50 Shades of J. Raul pointed out that it was in its own category 50 Shades of J R.3.6. https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:50_Shades_of_J_R.3.6 Bob said that it had only been included in reference so far because only the reference had been categorized even in a rudimentary fashion. There may be many opportunities to attach the 50 shades of J to other parts of the wiki including NuVoc. https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/NuVoc The challenge with expanding NuVoc is that if it grows too big then it become hard to navigate and consume that much information. Raul wondered if it might be possible to collapse areas of esoteric information and keep the foundation information more easily accessible. Ed wondered if there were a way to have an automated index for each page that a might be a type of an see also addition. The automation would have a foundation of curated pages in references like 50 Shades of J. Raul thought that if you have selected the source pages it could be done by hand and others could weigh in on the quality of the links that have been provided to crowd source the improvements. Bob felt that this would require a strong community, but if one were to emerge then that outcome is possible. 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 June 8th, 2023. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
