Wiki/Report of Meeting 2022-09-22

Report of Meeting 2022-09-22

Present: Art Anger, Devon McCormick, Raul Miller, Bob Therriault

1. Bob showed the work that he had done on the navigation of the add-ons that suggested a clearer distinction between user, developer and reference material. https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/JAL/User_Guide the primary work is the navigation bar which will allow a quicker access to the information. There will be further work required in order to be able to frame the information appropriately. Raul suggested that a vertical orientation that would be closer to the dropdown menu model. Art pointed out that using add-ons to install the base library does not seem appropriate for something that would usually work with add-ons. Art suggested a wrapper verb that would allow the base library to be installed by a verb with a different name. Maybe as simple as install=: 'install'&jpkg
2. Art talked about his table of Essays https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Anger/Essays_Index and the fact that he had added some Advent of Code entries to the table, as they are pertinent to the essays https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Anger/AoC Bob suggested that Advent of Code might also be a category. Art wondered if people would know what AOC meant.
3. Bob welcomed input into what he would present to the J meeting on the weekend. Art wondered if there were to be more verbs and adverbs added. That lead to a discussion about the way that J displayed information, but that there seemed to be a focus on threading and the new verbs involving that.
4. Bob wondered whether a pure wiki is the approach that should be used for documentation. Raul pointed out that the original wiki had some pages that were locked. Bob thought that fit with his ideas where upper levels might be more rigid and lower levels more flexible. That the wiki becomes a bit more of curated information like a library than a heap of information. Raul pointed out that many J users were pretty informed and that the locking might not be so necessary. Bob thought that the navigation structure might be locked down for most users and content pages remain open. The work in that would be in restructuring and the content that would be required to bridge. Old pages that do not fit in would be searchable but not navigable because they may not show up in the navigation. The content that Chris was looking for was ways to make it easier for people to create add-ons. Curation of the add-ons would be a challenge because of the level of understanding that is required for an accurate synopsis.
5. Bob also talked about developing other tools like Jalopy, J's version of aplcart that would support the wiki https://aplcart.info. Even Nuvoc might be split off to allow a different approach to the distribution of information. A lot of the time the information is not being changed as much as it is being pruned. Raul mentioned that we may not want to change tools if it means abandoning other tools. The concern was that a tool may require a different url and a different maintenance team to keep it active.
6. Raul suggested that people may not be repelled by hard concepts and used Rust as an example where there may be a lot of people willing to do the work to get secure code and communities develop where there is a need addressed. Bob pointed out that there is also a momentum that languages like COBOL have where they become entrenched and maintenance is now the driving force. Raul pointed out that the array languages have a strong connection to math, but that is not always a positive for the general population. There may be more interest in a language that is an aid to problem solving.
7. Bob will be travelling the next Thursday so invitations will be sent out for the September 29th meeting if he has enough internet connectivity.

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 29th, 2022.