Wiki/Report of Meeting 2022-10-06

Report of Meeting 2022-10-06

Present: Art Anger, Raul Miller, Bob Therriault

1. Bob apologized for last meeting not happening due to campsite connectivity. Art asked about the future of J and Bob indicated that there may be a push to making J more accessible to developers.
2. Bob talked about making a more accessible way to sign up for the wiki, similar to the APLwiki https://aplwiki.com/index.php?title=Special:UserLogin&returnto=Main+Page , using some kind of a 'J' question to protect from spam. Users would be able to enter their own user name and password without having to go through confirmation through email. There is currently a similar situation for posting emails where an anti-spam question is used to confirm the video link. Raul mentioned that Rosetta code was seeing a lot of accounts added that never participated and they instituted a policy that any user that signed up and did not participate within 24 hours they would have their membership to the wiki deleted. This may be a solution if the problem shows up in the J wiki.
3. Bob explained that the plan is to discontinue the yellow wiki https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Main_Page by the end of November and it will be replaced by a smaller instance for testing php bots without affecting the main wiki https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Main_Page. The yellow wiki will be used to stage the upcoming changes for comment through the end of October and then through November the changes will be instituted on the blue wiki. As much as possible current information will be retained, although the structure will be changed to accommodate better navigation. Raul thought that the reduced form of the wiki would suffice because he can stage the testing of page at at time bots without affecting the wiki.
4. There was some discussion about the use of Jupyter notebooks Jupyter notebooks https://jupyter.org/ within the J environment. Raul mentioned that there is a barrier to entry in learning Jupyter and Bob pointed out that there have been a lot of people who have already crossed the barrier. Raul wondered whether there could be a J version of Jupyter with Jupyter as the IDE. Bob mentioned that Thomas McGuire had been doing work creating Jupyter instances that linked to the J engine https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/User:Tom_McGuire/JJupyterNotebooks. Raul pointed out that the J console does not have a script editor, but if the Jupyter environment had a text editor this might be used. Raul felt that as long as you have a way to advance a lab then the J labs should be able to be run in other environments.
5. Bob talked about the ongoing challenge of organizing the add ons and the education which might be used to encourage developers to use add ons. Art felt that it should be easier to develop add ons. Raul said that someone should go through the documentation and get feedback on the areas that are pinch points in the process. Bob wondered if videos or labs could be used to guide the user to develop add ons. Perhaps something along the lines of the J602 Lab Author lab.
6. Bob wondered if the labs may also benefit from a navigation upgrade similar to the way that Essays are currently being handled with categories and an index that may be more searchable.
7. Art asked if there was a way to lock the header when scrolling through tables. The closest that was bound was defining a second one line table of headings above the table. The functionality that would be required is to make the columns sortable without affecting the position of the header, but this would require more investigation.

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 October 13th, 2022.