Wiki/Report of Meeting 2023-02-02

Report of Meeting 2023-02-02

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

1. We began with a discussion of activating add-ons from the wiki. Art would like to be able to click on an add-on that he has identified and have it installed. Bob usually thinks of the description of the add-ons on the wiki as documentation. Raul suggests that having a cut and paste instruction on the wiki that could be used in the J environment. He thinks that internet security would not allow one click implementation. Art wonders if updates could be done the same way. Raul found that install will also update any scripts that are out of date.
2. Art further wondered why GitHub was used to store scripts rather than the wiki. Devon points out GitHub is version control and Raul adds that the wiki is documentation. Bob notes that in the past there have been times when he has uploaded scripts to the wiki. This may have been prior to GitHub. There are also scripts that are marked as literate https://code.jsoftware.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Category:Literate and used as documentation and example programs.
3. Art asks about how much documentation that we should be doing about GitHub, and whether there should be a consistent description between GitHub and the wiki. Raul says that there is really not a problem with duplication. Bob suggests that a link from the wiki to the README file would be a way to avoid duplication. Raul thinks that the duplication is good to overcome connectivity issues. Bob thinks that there should also be a description on the wiki of which IDE's the add-ons apply to. Pacman takes care of this automatically with its screening lists based on version and IDE. The wiki would have all the add-ons, so the IDE and version information would be necessary for users to understand why certain add-ons may not be visible. Devon pointed out that recently he had a nonce error and got information from the forum. Should the wiki be providing this information? Raul pointed out that the beta version of J has more expressive error messages and the error that Devon found now has a more detailed description. All agreed that some GitHub instruction should be included on the wiki so that new users can make better use of the add-ons.
4. Bob showed his category tree https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Page_Map which can have pages attached to the different categories without having the pages displayed. When you click on a category page, https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Forums_and_Community_N.2 the pages and subcategories are listed at the bottom of the category page automatically. The upper part of the category page can have the same sort of content as any other page, which can be used to provide context. These category trees can go down many levels which allows much finer granularity.
5. The next step is to go through all the pages in the wiki and attach them to appropriate categories. When this has been done the content can be developed based on the pages that have been attached to the categories. Devon asked about cases where J Playground shows up in multiple places in the tree. Bob showed that the different instances would have different contexts depending on where they were. The Newcomers subtree would have basic information and the Playground subtree would have much more advanced information.
6. Bob thinks he will implement the category tree beginning with the Reference subtree since it is the way that most currently use the J wiki. Later we can add Newcomers and Developers subtrees as different windows into the wiki's information.
7. Bob is planning to expand the contributing to the wiki section https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Contibuting_to_the_J_Wiki_W.2 so that others may also be able to categorize in addition to creating content for the wiki.
8. Devon asks about getting more people involved. Bob says lately he has been more involved with structure. Art points out that we are doing weekly meetings which are publicized. Bob says the focus on building a community approach is something that needs to be amplified. In the past there have been one time messages, but to build a community there needs to be more consistent messaging over a longer period of time.

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 24:00 (UTC) Next meeting is February 9th, 2023.