== Report of Meeting 2023-05-04 == 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_2023-05-04 1) Since Ed has got to a point of polishing up the beta, he decided to do a recap of the J Wiki Visualization Tool functionality. Video of this demo is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjNDi05Wy20 and it provides a good introduction to the application if you have not already watched it. 2) Devon wondered if the entire database needed to be sent for debugging information. Ed replied that the log includes some environmental information and does not require users to split out the information of the database. 3) Bob revisited the Developers category and now feels that Ed and Devon's suggestion of renaming to Advanced and including information such as Add-ons, Socket programming and others as they are developed. Ed wondered if there could be a slush pile category that would be information that had not been curated. Bob thought that the Archived category would fit this and of course search would traverse this information and make it available to users. 4) In the Newcomers area, Bob felt that if the Primer were updated to the current version of J and that the book and lab reference was organized for easier access. It is more important that Newcomers not be exposed to the evolving wiki, since they are expecting structure. When the Newcomers is cleaned up a bit then we should be ready to move ahead with the final part of the transition with the understanding that it will be a work in progress. 5) Devon wondered if the J Wiki Visualization Tool could be used as an example of programming. Ed felt that he might not be used as a example since he was not a professional J programmer. Devon pointed out that there were not many of those and then referred to the Monument documentation which he said did not look like it had been developed by professional J programmers. Devon then talked about Jose Mario Quintana's style which was highly tacitified and would be intimidating to most J programmers. 6) Ed wondered how testing should be approached for a GUI application. Devon wondered if the log could be played back as he had used that technique to capture GUI interaction. Ed pointed out that although there is html output that could be tested, that most of the output is graphics. Bob talked about using assert and 5!:5 to get a linear representation that matches to the programs output. Devon mentioned that Hummingbird https://github.com/hummingbird-project/hummingbird might be used for playing back logs. Bob wondered if the timing of feedback might indicate user experience is degrading. Ed is looking for a way to be able flag user experience before exposing the users to the interface. Devon felt that this is a difficult problem. Ed said that it was something that was pretty much solved for the web, but testing graphical output is harder. Recently Ed noticed that the text is less crisp and this would be something that he hoped would be caught by these tests. 7) Ed proposed that it might be time to expand the test user group. Devon mentioned that Ed is presenting at the May 9th NYCJUG https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/NYCJUG/2023-05-09 and that there may be candidates there. 8) Devon wondered if it was possible to webify the J Wiki Visualization Tool and Ed said that he had wondered about that as well. His specific question is whether there is an API to allow the J interface to work with the DOM and the canvas. Bob mentioned the J Playground, based on a WASM or JHS which is the IDE that is web based. Ed expressed the feeling that there is a lot of potential for J beyond mathematical programming. Bob mentioned the work that Michal Wallace has done with his scripted videos. https://github.com/tangentstorm/ 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 May 11th, 2023. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
