Wiki/Report of Meeting 2023-11-16

Report of Meeting 2023-11-16

Present: Art Anger, Ed Gottsman, Raul Miller, and Bob Therriault

Full transcripts of this meeting are now available below on this wiki page.

1) Bob had received Ed's footage of his demo and there was a discussion about the audio that he had used. It was decided that Bob would use the existing audio and Ed would review and then there would be a decision on when to publish. Bob might also rerecord the audio if that was Ed's preference. https://youtu.be/SLJS84u4eVc

2) Ed changed the category list on the J viewer back to a Qt list instead of his previous expandable version. The performance has improved. Raul noted that the new version requires that you scroll at the end of the list, whereas it used to autoscroll. Ed wants to be able to have SQLlite do line numbers in GitHub results because those results tend to be larger.

3) Ed talked about attempting to include information of Skip Cave's Quora solutions. Quora seems to be resisting attempts to have Ed crawl the site. This is an ongoing investigation. Bob wondered if there might be a place in the J wiki for Skip to include some of his solutions. Bob is currently going through the essays on the wiki to select ones that might be most appropriate for Newcomers. Raul mentioned also that Journal of J could be included https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/JournalOfJ. There are links on the wiki, but the content of the Journal of J is not on the wiki. Bob had some reluctance to dump their content onto the wiki and Ed said that he would need their permission before crawling their site.

4) Ed feels that the J Viewer is ready for prime time and will start by posting to the J forums after the demo video is published. Bob suggested that the fact that it is in JQt should be noted for those users who access J through the console. Raul asked that updates for Windows be thoroughly tested before release to avoid extra noise. Bob asked about announcing on the ArrayCast, but will wait for Ed's approval. Announcing on the British APL Association is another possibility and might be pursued for their next meeting.

5) Bob tested the new J viewer and ran into a few problems due to the fact that he had made local changes to the addon in the process of troubleshooting.

6) Bob did a quick review of the work that he had been doing on the Newcomers page of the wiki. https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Newcomers_N Additions are the Return to Home navigation link and removal of the Scripts category as there were not many scripts that would work for Newcomers. Raul suggested using larger font on the titles and Bob agreed. Bob is also going to take Developers off of the Home page until it is further developed. https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Home The Developer information would still be available through Reference. Ed asked about including the Category's on the page that would be more involved but would be accessible for those who wanted the more detailed view.

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 November 23, 2023.

Transcript

All righty then.

I did get your files Ed and I've put them on Final Cut Pro and I did a quick cut to them.

It sounds, the visuals look fine and everything looks like it'll sync up okay.

There's one cut I might have to do a little bit of dancing around because when you cut your audio the screen changes enough that it kind of jumps, but I think I might be able to fix that quite easily.

I haven't tried that yet.

That would be very kind of you.

Yeah.

Now the only other thing is, and I'm noticing it right now we were speaking, are you recording, are we hearing you through a headset mic or are we hearing you through your computer mic?

So this is a headset mic.

When I recorded the audio for the demo I did it with the computer mic.

Yeah.

The headset mic was delivering clicks which was disturbing to me.

Yeah.

So I didn't use it.

And right now to me, I'm not hearing any clicks, but to me if I had to say, I would say you're actually, we're hearing you through the computer mic because it's fairly echoey.

So if you check your inputs.

So the, yeah, the explanation for that Bob is that I am in what I think the McMansion people call the great room.

Yeah.

Okay.

And we've got, it's pretty echoey.

We also have poured concrete floors and there are carpets, but there are also concrete floors.

So I think that's why it sounds echoey right now.

Now, when I recorded the demo, I was in an office and my son who knows more about these things than I do said, dad, let's drag a mattress in there with you.

And that's what we did.

So the recording you've got is not, shouldn't be echoey and includes the mattress option.

I would say the mattress, your son's got great instincts.

The mattress certainly would have helped it.

Absolutely.

But it's just a factor of being further away from a computer mic than you would be from a, so you can't really get around that.

Okay.

I can certainly rerecord.

I don't, let's see.

I've got a couple of headsets I can experiment with.

Well, I'll tell you what, let me edit it and then, and then it'd give you a chance to hear it and see what you think.

Okay.

I did listen to it, although I was listening to it on my phone as I tried to do both at once.

I tried to talk and read the script and also operate the mouse and the keyboard.

I know it can't be done.

It just can't be done.

So I did record it, record the audio and then play the audio back on my phone through my headset while I was operating the mouse and the keyboard.

And that's why you got two different tracks.

They were independently recorded.

I could certainly go ahead and put it together.

I have heard it.

It didn't sound great, but that's because I don't sound great as far as I'm concerned.

And it's clear, so that's not a problem, but I'm just thinking if it's something we want to run as more of a demo thing.

But what I'll do is I'll see what I can do for audio enhancement, because I might be able to do that as well.

Kind of hard to take out room sound, but I might be able to figure out a way to do that.

And so I can probably take a run at cleaning it up.

We'll see how it sounds.

Another possibility, Bob, would be for you to record audio with your magical microphone and your voice over top of, and I could give you the printed script, over top of the video that I created.

Well, actually, I could.

That's also a possibility.

I've got an app called Whisper that uses chat GPT to create transcripts.

And it's actually pretty good.

So I could just take your audio and run it through.

Yeah.

All right.

So why don't you go ahead and do your first plan, which is just to put it together and we'll review it, and then we can figure out next steps.

But I think we've got a number of possibilities.

Yep.

Yep.

And certainly, it wasn't hard to work with.

And as is, the cuts are good and everything.

You gave me everything I need.

So no problems there.

Oh, good.

Good.

Good.

I wasn't sure.

Yeah.

Excellent.

Good.

I'm glad to hear that.

Yep.

So the damn thing was getting slow.

The viewer was getting slow.

I was sort of moving my mouse around and the rectangles were not keeping up properly.

And I spent some time with the J Performance Monitor and I wasn't able to get what I needed from that for whatever reason.

And so I decided, to hell with it, I'll just use a QT list on the left instead.

And eventually, I showed the whole hierarchy, which I had always been very reluctant to do because I thought it was quite large.

It's not, actually.

And the QT list, I was actually able to show page counts, which is something that I'd always wanted to do.

So next time you get a chance to have a look at it, have a look at it and see what you think.

But I did make that change for performance reasons.

But I think, actually, it's a happy change.

But I am now showing the entire category hierarchy, which I think is actually quite helpful.

Yeah.

One thing I miss is it auto-scrolled when I got near the ends.

And I know I have to always do the scrolling manually.

I'm sorry.

Yeah.

You're back to the way it used to be.

And I trained you to do something different and I apologize.

I'm sorry.

I would like, I think that when you're doing searches and you get results, the wiki results are okay in the sense that you get a snippet and you get the name of the page and you can bring up the page and it's usually not too much trouble to find out where the snippet is in the page.

I feel pretty good about the forums from that perspective as well, because forum posts tend to be pretty brief compared to other things.

I feel pretty good about Rosetta code because those solutions tend to be pretty brief.

But I really would like to figure out a way to do live numbers in GitHub results.

Oh, that's.

.

.

I took out.

.

.

There's a.

.

.

Every line has a hash tag on it.

So you could link directly to the line.

Like if you want line one, two, three, you can go #L123.

I think it's capital L.

Wow.

Okay.

That still leaves me with the problem of how do I get SQLite to disgorge line numbers for snippets?

That's the part I'm still thinking about.

I see.

That.

.

.

Because if you put it into the text, it would then be searchable and you.

.

.

Right.

Or would it?

Because in the GitHub display, you have the line numbers there visible.

You do.

So you could.

.

.

Conceptually, you could just include in the text this as a beginning line tab and then the rest of the stuff.

The hope would be that the snippet would include the line number.

So you'd have to try to do something to.

.

.

And you'd have to tag the line number as a line number, #digit, digit, digit, pound or whatever.

Well, I mean, the line number.

.

.

That's not impossible.

Don't you have to.

.

.

I guess.

.

.

Oh, I see.

For search purposes rather than display purposes.

Right.

Because SQLite ignores line ends basically.

It's just reasonable like any other whitespace.

I think so.

Okay.

Yeah.

You could put a GitHub line number.

123.

G-H-L-N-2746.

Yeah.

I'm going to experiment with it.

I'll see what I can come up with.

But I think that's a significant weakness.

I was at the New York City J-Users Group meeting on Tuesday and Skip Cave was there.

And it turns out that he has been answering Quora questions with J-Solutions for.

.

.

I don't know how long, but he's got quite literally hundreds of them out there if you go looking.

And I would like to index them.

And it turns out on the same basis on which I index the Rosetta code results.

Excuse me, solutions.

Turns out that Quora is skittish about crawlers to the point of paranoia.

My IP address has been blocked at this point for trying.

Oh, dear.

So, you can appeal, but there's a process.

And of course, there's no basis for an appeal because I am a crawler and they don't want you to crawl.

So, I'm admiring the beauty of that problem at the moment.

I think, yeah.

A workaround would be for Skip to give you a list.

And then.

.

.

I don't know if he has any more capacity to do that than I do.

Yeah.

I can send him a note, I guess.

Yeah.

Well, let's say that for a moment you became a non-caller for Quora purposes.

I wonder if you can go to Skip's profile and look at content he's generated and do it that way.

Right.

Then you just.

.

.

Here's.

.

.

Every six hours.

.

.

I can do that.

Yeah.

I don't necessarily.

.

.

I wouldn't mind doing the crawl.

Every month or every six months.

I mean, one page every.

.

.

Space out the pages.

Oh, I see.

Yeah.

You got to lie about the source and the header.

You got to pretend that you're Safari or something like that.

Yeah.

Microsoft Edge, something they trust and believe in.

The other problem is the way.

.

.

Go ahead.

I was gonna say, if Skip's logged in, and I think this is kind of where Raul was going, is it possible for him to generate a list of his content?

So, in other words, the list of things he's contributed to and then he just grabs that and sends that to you.

You don't have to crawl at all.

Well, the problem is.

.

.

Yeah, he has to crawl to get the content.

Yeah.

I think I can get around that.

I think I can lie and say I'm Safari.

That seems to be a thing.

But more than that, the user interface for Quora, the web user interface, is actually pretty sophisticated.

So, you can do a query.

You can say, "Give me everything that Skip Cave has produced that includes the words 'J programming language.

'" He always seems to use that phrase when he's doing a J solution.

And you can get the results, but not all of them.

You get the first 10.

And then as you scroll down, it pulls in the next 10 and the next 10 and the next 10.

So, if you're a crawler, you're hosed.

You're not gonna get all thousand or whatever it is.

And if you go and look at the page source, it's a mess.

It's just not at all clear what it is you should do with it.

So, maybe I will write a note.

Yeah, we're talking about several hundred here.

I mean, yes, I suppose I could.

I only have to do it once.

Yeah.

And then it's.

.

.

Oh, and by the way, it still doesn't show you everything.

It only shows you the first couple of sentences and there's a more button associated with each post.

Yeah.

But doesn't it give you URLs for those?

I could probably find URLs.

Yes.

And then grab them directly.

Yes.

Yes, that could be.

So now we're spent scrolling in a save page ass or something.

Touché.

Yes, absolutely.

You're right.

You're right.

Well, actually, I'm kind of wondering whether we don't ask Skip if he can create a section in the Wiki for his core answers.

Because I know he's doing it to attract a wider audience, but just the information he's putting out.

.

.

He is.

Yeah, that's an interesting thought.

Let me write him a note and try to start a conversation on this.

I'll mention the possibility of enriching the Wiki with the answers that he's come up with.

Yeah, because I could easily include that as part of the newcomers page.

Right.

You know, as solutions and frequently asked questions, it would fit that nicely in there.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

And in some cases, it might help that we can fill out some background or some related for newer users that don't necessarily have the background that he's expecting a J user to have.

Well, we could.

I mean, I'm looking at doing this.

.

.

I mean, if that existed, if that existed, you know, we could look way into it.

Yeah.

And I'm actually thinking of doing something similar to that with the essays, is not every essay fits newcomers.

So I'm kind of going through the essays and figuring out which ones would be most useful to newcomers.

And those will go on the newcomers page.

And the reference will have all the essays.

And we could do the same sort of thing with his answers.

Did you notice there's also the Journal of Jay?

Yep.

And that's another thing that you could perhaps index and search and link people into.

I've got the Journal of Jay on the wiki, actually, and I've brought over all the.

.

.

I'm not going to say episodes, but the.

.

.

Oh, what do you call it with a journal?

Each journal is a made up of.

.

.

Issue.

Issue.

There you go.

That's what I'm looking for.

Yeah.

You have links to all the issues and you have a list of titles.

Yeah.

I see here from 2011 up to 2019.

Did it stop in 2019?

Yeah, it seems to have.

Ah, oh well.

But still, I mean, that's another.

.

.

Yeah.

And that would be.

.

.

The Jay viewer would be able to get access to that through the wiki.

But if you wanted to do it separately through the Jay viewer, it could do that as well.

I mean, it's a.

.

.

Oh, so a category of.

.

.

Go ahead.

Sorry.

I see in the wiki, I see links to the Journal of Jay, but I don't see the content of Journal of Jay in the wiki, which is what the Jay viewer would currently do.

The four is just things that.

.

.

Oh, I see.

Yes.

Yeah.

Okay.

That's right.

So yeah, it would give you a link.

Yes.

And it wouldn't.

.

.

It doesn't expand it out.

I mean, to me, that's probably a bridge too far with talking to them about taking all their content and dumping it onto the wiki.

Yeah, that was.

.

.

So who owns the Journal of Jay?

Oh, I'm trying to remember his name.

He's a Spanish guy.

Jose Maria.

.

.

No, no, he's not.

Jose Mario Quintana.

Yeah.

Well, I have no problem indexing it if they have no problem with crawlers, but I would need coordinates.

I think Raoul's checking it out.

I don't see his contact information.

Oh, interesting.

Let me check that out.

It's also PDFs, which might be a little more difficult to crawl them.

Oh, here it is.

Info@journalofjay.

com is the contact information.

Of course, he might also ask some point.

.

.

He wants to do a new issue, he might ask for an outline of how your crawler works and an article presentation of that or something.

I'm just looking back through old correspondence with him, and all I see is his name is Miguel.

M-I-K-E-L, he said?

M-I-K-E-L.

Miguel.

Not Miguel, but M-I-K-E-L.

But for some reason I thought it might have been his surname is Spanish.

Oh, it's because his headings are in Spanish.

Invadio, Uvis.

Eighth to November, whatever, I don't speak Spanish, so it's all I think I remember seeing him send stuff to the forums.

I don't say Miguel on the forums.

So maybe he's got more names than one.

So is Invadio Greek?

I might have the language wrong.

It's not in Greek letters, it's not in Cyrillic, so I guess not.

So it's not in Greek letters.

All right.

Search for Journal of Jay.

Okay.

Journal of Jay, home.

Bingo.

2017.

Nope.

I only see Journal of Jay in forums mentioned by myself and Bob.

I've got it.

It's journalofjay.

com.

Oh, yeah.

I'm remembering content that I thought I saw that I'm not finding by.

.

.

Oh, I see.

I thought there were slides in here.

Anyway, it could be another source you could crawl.

I think it would be a bit of a challenge because as Raul says, I think some of it's PDF.

And I know I was submitting Word documents because that's what originally he was asking for.

Sure.

And some of it is PowerPoint slides.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's kind of all over the map.

Well, I guess there's an approach there that if when you're in all of your fabulous free time, Google, for example, offers a image to text transcription surface.

And you could, you know, if you need to.

It wouldn't surprise me if there's a PDF text extraction facility floating around somewhere.

Well, that's what I did.

I think for Skype that was doing PDF to text.

For WordPress.

Looking up to that a while back.

I don't remember the details, but I remember working on it.

No, I'm sure I could figure it out.

I think the important thing now, and this was the last point I wanted to make, is that I think we need to launch because left to myself, I will just keep enhancing indefinitely.

And that's fun for me, I suppose, but it wasn't.

And it was arguably the point of the entire exercise.

But I think it's time to put a stake in the ground, as they say, and actually get it out there and start getting some people pounding on it and get more feedback and, you know, enhancement requests and bug reports and so on.

I would like to do that.

And what I think I want to do is send out something very much like the wiki page that introduces it and explains how to install it and how to set up the Control-Shift-H shortcut in JQT and invite people to try it out.

And I'm fairly confident that I will suddenly become very busy with bug reports.

At least that's my hope, I guess, is that that's what will happen.

So what I'm imagining is posting to JChat.

I think that's the appropriate place to put it.

And I'd like to do it sometime after Bob and I get the demo video together, because I think that's a component of the launch.

And I would like to invite comments on those thoughts.

I think it would actually be appropriate, even though I agree with you for what you would normally do.

I think it fits chat.

But I think it would actually make sense to put it in programming as well.

Really?

Yeah, because that's where people are going to be looking for that sort of a thing.

Chat seems to be sort of more just sort of wider discussions.

And I think it becomes a programming tool, really.

All right.

So programming.

I think so, because that seems to be the busiest.

And I think most of the people that you're looking for to try it out are going to be on that.

Our programmers.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And the only other thing I'm thinking is, you'd want to make clear to them that you need the JQT interface, because there's a lot of people who program that are on console.

Yeah, I say, I think in the opening sentence that it's a JQT based add-on.

So maybe I'll make that even a little more.

I'll emphasize that a little more.

I'm just thinking in the email, so they don't even have to look at it.

That's what I'm saying.

Yeah, yeah.

No, the email will basically be the web page.

Okay.

One thing I want to ask you to do before you go live, make sure you update in Windows.

Because when I tried to update in Windows, it didn't work.

I had to do the install still for this version.

So by update, you mean version update?

Yeah, new version of the app.

Data update.

Okay, I will check that.

Yeah.

I'll spend time exercising it under Windows before I do this, for sure.

Definitely.

And the other thing I need to emphasize, I guess, is that it works great.

I mean, if it does work great under Windows and Mac, but has not been tested particularly under Linux.

Although there's a number of people that have been able to use it, but there's so many different installations of Unix and Linux that are too much.

Linux is a zoo.

Yeah.

So I'm guessing if you do the rollout, start with the J community through the chat or chat or programming, this serves.

And then I can make an announcement on Raycast whenever you'd like, but that's going to be out to a wider community.

Right.

Although if you're not on J programming, they're unlikely to be able to.

I mean, I suspect that all of the potential users of this thing who need to be using J are on the J programming list, sir.

That would be my speculation.

Yeah.

I think the thing is there's a number of people who are younger that don't pay attention to listservs.

Oh, there is that, I suppose.

Yeah.

And so that if we make that announcement, and there may be people who were on the list service and have since, and it might be a reason to go back and look, I just think you do kind of get a wider group and there are a certain number I'm pretty sure will be looking to, they might even download J and load it up to see how it works because they're interested in doing stuff like this as well.

I see.

Okay, great.

Yeah, no, that's wonderful.

But I'll hold off until like, I mean, next Tuesday we do record, so I could mention it then, no problem.

The other groups that you were talking about, I think they had their meeting this morning is the British APL guys.

You know, I didn't get a notification on that, which surprises me because I signed up for notifications.

I didn't get one either this time, but I looked at their schedule and they say that they would have had one today.

Okay, I don't doubt that they would have.

They seem to be on some sort of biweekly, alternating weekly thing.

They alternate with the dialogue group.

I think maybe this week was the dialogue group rather than, nope.

Nope, no, I looked at it yesterday and this week was the, last week was the dialogue group and this week should have been British APL, but you're right, I didn't get a notification from them.

But I don't know, sometimes their ability to reach the community is sometimes challenged.

Sometimes I get them and sometimes I don't.

Interesting.

Okay.

You're right, I didn't get a notification.

I will dig into that because I think I would like to talk to them.

But I think the general story about, gee, wouldn't it be great if all of the content associated with our language were in a single repository is a beautiful dream that's never going to happen, but you can create a single integrated index across multiple repositories.

And I think that's a good story and I would like to put it in front of them and see what they say.

Yeah, I think it is.

And that's why I think some of the other languages might be very interested in this as well, just for that reason.

Yeah, yeah, we'll see.

The same way we were interested based on Adam's apple cart.

That was inspirational.

And Raul, thank you for pointing me to that because that was very important as it turned out.

And the upgrades you were talking about that made it quicker have been done since that last exchange I had with you about the size of Windows?

Yeah, yeah, it was like the last 24 hours.

Okay, because I just went back and looked at my version and it's telling me everything's up to date.

The buttons are saying that anyway.

Really?

Yeah.

Could you try it again right now?

Okay, so I got JViewer is up to date and local database is up to date.

And then let's just let.

The latter is true, the former is not true.

Have you relaunched or are you just running it?

No, I'm just running it.

Relaunch it, if you'd be so kind.

Yeah.

Okay.

We only check at launch time?

Yeah.

Oh, is that right?

Okay.

Okay, I'll find it.

Okay, I'll fix that.

Once a day or something.

Yeah, right.

Okay, I'm launching now.

It's okay.

Yes.

Okay, I've got click to download the latest data and it's telling me JViewer is up to date.

But the other thing.

Just hang on a second, because the other thing is I tried out a few things by going in on my file of it.

Like right when I downloaded your add-on file, when I was testing some of those things, I downloaded the file.

So maybe that's crossing me up here.

I'd be surprised.

If you're not running the same copy that it thinks you're running.

Yeah.

Doesn't it introspect to find out where it's loaded from?

Yeah, it's loading the local manifest to figure that out.

Oh, the add-on is up to date and you're possibly not running the add-ons.

That's what I'm thinking is I need to reload the add-on.

No.

No, no, no.

But that's just because I loaded the add-on and then I made changes to it.

So it was asking me if I wanted to reload from the file.

Oh.

And that's probably what's crossing it out.

So I'm just going to reload the add-on.

No, now it's still telling me JViewer is up to date.

What's the version in the upper left hand corner on the title bar?

I'm seeing a JViewer 2.

1.

0 crawl date time.

Okay, that's correct, actually.

Yeah.

So you've got the latest.

Okay.

Well, maybe it's updated it.

Oh, yeah, it's changed.

Absolutely.

It's changed the look of it for sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Thank you for stopping my heart, Bob.

But, you know, I do think what was doing it was because I had downloaded the add-on and I'd made a change in that file that I downloaded because I was testing out some of that stuff with the size of the windows and things.

Right.

And then when I went back to it, it would have given me the prompt to update from the disk, which I said, yeah, sure.

But that's not what's being downloaded.

Until I went back and downloaded again, I didn't have the new version.

It was running off my disk.

Right.

Yeah.

Right.

Right.

Yeah.

So I wouldn't worry about that.

I don't think it's unlikely anybody's going to go in and try and monkey around with it.

But I suppose.

Oh, I don't know.

Yeah.

Well, I was going to say if somebody gets.

They're asking for it.

Yeah.

Well, they are.

I was.

But it's probably worth keeping in mind if you're troubleshooting, if somebody just started, you know, I guess just find the version they're on and then make sure they're not downloading off the local copy.

Right.

Exactly.

Because that is the one thing with add-ons, you can do that.

Yeah.

It's one of the nice things about add-ons because you can test them from your local copy.

You don't have to.

Right.

Yeah.

And that's all I've got.

A lot.

That's.

Yeah, that is a lot.

That's going to be fun to see what happens as it rolls out.

And.

I think so.

Yeah.

But what I'm imagining is.

At first I was very nervous about this because I thought it was sort of big bang.

But it's it doesn't need to be.

I can send out a monthly update that says, you know, these bugs have been fixed.

These enhancements have been made.

If you haven't given it a try or if you haven't given it a try in a while or if you tried it and you had trouble, maybe it's been fixed.

So give it another try.

And I can do that indefinitely.

There'll always be more things, more enhancements and obviously more bugs to be fixed.

And you might be able to rather than you might be able to reduce the amount of reading that you're sending out by just putting it onto a Wiki page.

Yeah.

I think.

Yeah, do both.

Right.

I'm certainly not going to try to overwhelm people with verbiage, but if you include a link in an email, you right away dramatically cut down on the number of people who are going to see the content because link following is a lot more of an investment than just continuing to run your eye briefly down an email.

We've already got people who don't even read all the paragraphs.

See, well, OK, right.

See, for example.

Yeah, I've done that myself sometimes.

In a hurry, I skim over it and I go back to that.

Oops, wow, I really missed the important part.

And I've already hit reply.

Yeah.

Yeah, erase star dot star.

Well, I what?

Yeah.

OK, well, I guess the next thing I've got is just to do a quick look and I'll share screen, actually go back and check my see what I've got on my.

And I'll share screen.

And this is the.

What I've done with the with the newcomers page, so I've created these return to home, which will take you back to the home page.

And then when you click on here, it'll take you back to the home page.

And then when you click on here, it'll take you back to the home page.

And then when you click on here, it'll take you to newcomers.

So that kind of a thing I've also done reordered this a bit.

I've put the primer.

There was previously a section called scripts, which I didn't really have very many scripts that I could put in for beginners.

So I didn't think it was using making good use of the space.

So I took it out and replaced it with the primer so that we've got J playground, the primer introduction to new VAC and installing J in the top line, because I think that's probably most of what you may want to look at.

And then frequently asked questions, which are not super strong.

I've you know, there's not a lot, there's just basically links, I don't think this is 2009, so I'm not sure how much weight it's going to carry.

But I'm leaving it in there because we might expand that later.

And again, I've got a return to welcome to J.

I'll end up putting the arrows in.

I think I just did that on this one, sort of as enhancement, but I kind of like the look of the arrow back.

I am so tempted to go in there and make those titles on the blocks be bold or larger font or something to make them stand out just a bit.

These ones?

Yeah.

Yeah, well, you could.

It's not hard to do.

Just going to move this out of the way because it's my way of.

Because it's just a table, right?

Yeah.

So all I'm going to all I would do if I was going to do it is I just change the say, the style of the font to OK, so that this is different because it's the body of but I could easily just change the style of the font to to one point five.

I think it's probably standard.

Let's see what is in the main thing.

Yeah, so font sizes is this will be interesting.

I'll give it one point five.

And show preview.

Now you can see the difference.

I was just talking about the the the tops of each block because the the the subtext is fine to be small.

You know, you want that to be.

People that are that are focusing on it rather than people that are skimming over it.

And but the right now the title fades behind the picture.

So that it is.

Yeah, let's see if I just copy font size in here.

Pop it into this guy.

And give it one.

So be the next one down, wouldn't it?

Well, it'll be for the J playground, right?

Oh, I see.

I was.

I'm just going to do this one.

So I'll see what it looks like.

Yeah, let's see what it looks like.

It should look bigger than the others.

There you go.

Sort of like that.

Yeah, that that that that I think is an improvement.

OK, I mean, I might change your mind, you know, in two seconds, but because I'm fickle sometimes.

Yeah, no, no, I like that idea.

Yeah.

So I I might fiddle around, maybe not go for one point five, but I might go, you know, one point three or something like that.

Although I do want to make sure that I'm not going to go too far.

You know, one point three or something like that.

Although I do kind of like that look.

Yeah, no, I'll do that off the off the top.

So the the the the text underneath is sort of well, it feels like sort of a subtitle.

And then and I think, as I was saying before, there are certain areas where I just done a straight blast through.

Oh, I guess I have to leave page.

Actually, I'll cancel first and page cancel.

Do this properly.

You.

OK, yeah.

So anyway, I was saying there are certain areas like books where I've done a redirect right to the books for learning J.

And I've left the return up there, too.

So you can go back to this.

I've seen one problem.

My problem is if I go to.

The main page, I chose to make J playground, the newcomers version, because I think if you see it on this page, you probably want sort of the overview of it.

It returns you to welcome to J because it's got this feed from the main page.

So really, if I want to be correct, I'll have two returns here.

One will take you back to the home page and one will take you back to welcome to J.

Depending on how you came in, you can choose how you go back out again.

Because this won't take you back to the home page that you came from, it takes you to welcome to J.

So that's the one downside about going straight to a page, and it only goes that one generation down.

If you go to another link off that page, you won't have that same accessibility.

But I think the last time we were talking about this, it was pointed out you can use the back button to be able to back your way out of things.

And yeah, so that's about it.

This is, I think, pretty much ready to go.

I'll change the header sizes.

But as far as I'm concerned at this point, well, actually, the one other thing I've got to do is if I go to essays and articles, it's still in its rough form.

So these are the essays that I've already picked out of all the essays that would fit.

And I'll go through other essays and start loading this up.

And then I guess eventually, if I categorize those, I can put them in a nicer format than this, rather than having to click on the different essays that you want to take a look at.

But this is just for newcomers.

So I might get it going first.

And then the next thing I need to do is come back out to here.

I'm still really thinking strongly about taking developers out for now and just having newcomers referenced in community, because I think developers right now would probably go to reference anyway if they want to know about stuff.

And I don't think we've got enough information that's been curated for developers to be able to hold that spot.

I think if we put that in and they click on it, they're going to be disappointed.

So I don't really want to put something in that disappoints people.

That makes sense.

Yeah.

And newcomers, reference and community are all developer topics anyways.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

And the thing about having newcomers separated is I've built something that I think is friendly enough to newcomers that it's got a purpose.

And reference could be just about anything anybody else wants at any depth.

And then I think community is a neat thing to include, just to pull in other communities and widen that out.

So that's the only change I think I'll make to the homepage.

But there is some work to do in reference to bring it up to the same level as-- oops, it's interesting.

I've got all these to sort of put out.

So most of them are just sort of generic.

And I might not have-- honestly, I might not have a problem with just putting it out that way initially for reference stuff.

Because I think if you're going into reference, that's kind of the stuff that you're going to want to be able to pull out.

You click on the link, you'll see those things.

So it's almost like a link farm, I guess.

But that's kind of where I am.

So it's getting pretty close.

I'm hoping by sometime in December to be able to roll out the new version with a new homepage.

And as you can see, reference doesn't have the link back to the homepage yet.

But roll this out as the new main page.

Because right now, when people go to the wiki, this is the main page they get.

So again, it's more of a link farm.

But I don't know whether I'll do a redirect or I'll just go back into the pages that it links to and change those pages so I don't lose the information on the main page.

But I'm able to redirect things into the homepage rather than the main page.

And then the only other thing we've got is that thing that we developed, Raul, you and I, with the map and the search and the new VOC.

It'll sit up here in this area.

But I don't think that's too hard to do.

So as I say, a couple more weeks on it, and I think we'll have something that we can start to actually point people out and say, this is the new look of the wiki.

And then we'll see how that works out.

And so if there's any heat on the J viewer, I may be able to take it off by the response I get for the wiki.

So you'll have the advantage of launching first.

And I'll introduce the second change, and we'll see how that goes.

Anyway, that's where I am with that.

So any comments on that stuff?

I almost wonder-- I mean, you've clearly gone out of your way to make the whole initial experience as friendly as possible.

But I wonder if there's something to be said for a longer page that gets steadily less friendly the further down you go, more and more detail, more and more depth, more and more-- you called it a link farm.

But [INAUDIBLE] company used to have a website-- well, it used to have a catalog.

And they were a client of a company I worked for.

So I had some contact with them.

And they like to tell stories.

And one of the stories was that people who used their catalog would take it into the bathroom with them.

That was their bathroom reading, was this catalog.

And I don't know what a tarpaulin is, but apparently one guy in the bathroom discovered that Granger sold tarpaulins, which he needed badly.

And he was shocked to find that Granger had them.

I leafed through the Granger catalog.

It was full of these amazing things that had never occurred to me existed.

But they put together a website.

And they used to test website designers, candidates whom they'd bring in for interviews.

They'd say, here's our home page.

What do you think?

This home page was-- it had several hundred links on it, lots of abbreviations.

It was mostly text.

And most website designers were sufficiently repelled that it overcame their instinct to be polite and tactful in a job interview.

It was just bad.

Their customers loved it.

It was everything.

They could instantly or nearly instantly find what they were looking for.

They didn't have to follow a lot of links or do searches.

It was all right there, right in front of them.

So that is a very long and roundabout way of saying, I wonder if there isn't room for a steadily less friendly experience as you page down a steadily more detailed, richer, experience that ultimately encompasses potentially the entire wiki.

Which is kind of what's there.

I mean, on the left, you've got the entire wiki.

Well, you do, but you have to drill for it.

Well, isn't that kind of the point?

Well, no, that's exactly what the Grainger home page avoided.

So have the New Block reference card somewhere in the bottom of the page.

Even, yeah, let's go whole hog.

Sure.

New Block, why not?

But also every single category.

In some form, in some presentation.

And I'm sorry, this is very much a coda.

I think what you've done is really good.

I'm just suggesting that maybe there's an opportunity here to enhance in an unfriendly fashion.

Yeah, and actually.

.

.

Or a fashion that.

.

.

Go ahead.

Well, where this resonates with me is continually when I try and explain things to people in Jay, and you try and make them a little bit more straightforward, or you're trying not to go into the weeds quite as much, there's part of my brain that says, "Everybody who uses this language is a person who does go into the weeds.

" And that if I'm lowering that barrier to entry, what am I sending you into?

I guess they're going to find out soon enough.

Yeah, maybe.

The other thing I'm wondering, so you're thinking the reference material down here, you'd actually put in all of New Block in there?

Drop that in the bottom.

Yeah, New Block might be at the bottom, but even before I got to New Block, there are, I don't know how many.

.

.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, ten, twenty, thirty, forty.

There are only about 300 categories.

It's not an outrageous number.

Yeah.

See if we put them all in outline form, multi-column outline form on the page.

You don't need to make people drill down to find things.

You could do a good job of.

.

.

I mean, outlines are a very familiar, intuitive, recognized mechanism for presenting hierarchies.

You could do a multi-column outline that would encompass the entire wiki's category structure.

Not the tags, but the parts that you've categorized and hierarchicalized.

You could do the whole thing.

You could do the Grainger catalog.

Yeah, I could.

I think that the idea behind that.

.

.

I'm not saying you should.

I sound like I'm really enthusiastic.

No, no, no.

I'm just proposing a notion.

Absolutely.

No, I like the ideas.

The other way, I mean, this is a cut and paste thing I do, so I've got access to the different categories quickly to add them.

But something like this, which would be a page map that would be part of what we're talking about being up here with the search and NUVOC, it's still a step down.

Oh, yeah.

I'm suggesting it shouldn't be a step down.

It should be up here of everything.

Make a nice flat picture of J.

Yeah.

And what do you think about whether or not it should go on the.

.

.

Should it be on the newcomers page, or does it make more sense to do that on the homepage?

I think the homepage.

Okay.

I'm with you there.

I think that's a good way to approach it.

Because I think if you go to newcomers, I think that's.

.

.

I get what you're saying, but that's probably overwhelming for something that's going to be on the newcomers page.

Make that a little friendly sandbox.

You can play it by all means.

Exactly.

Yeah, yeah.

But be able to put the full map down in here somewhere.

So it just sits down there.

You've got where you want to go in the wiki.

It's like a site map for the wiki sitting at the bottom of the homepage.

Is that what you got in mind?

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's what I've got in mind.

At a minimum.

And then maybe there's.

.

.

There's something more we could do with it, yeah.

I think that's a start.

Yeah.

It'd be interesting to see.

.

.

Yeah, I think that's a start.

I really like that idea, actually.

Just because I know quite often if I'm looking at a new page with a lot of information, the first thing I do is I try and find the site map.

Yeah, right.

Exactly.

And if it's right there on that.

.

.

How big is this thing?

How big is this thing?

What have we got here?

And just to have it sitting on that page, there's no reason we can't have it.

And it reinforces the categories as well.

Yeah, certainly.

That's a good idea.

Just a thought.

And I realize I'm creating an immense amount of work for somebody other than myself.

So I'm sensitive to that.

Yeah, I think in the grand scheme of things, there are.

.

.

Building up the reference area is probably more work than putting a site map.

And in fact, I have to have a site map in order to put something up there that people can click on and see.

So it's to put something up there that people can click on and actually get to wherever they are.

That's the advantage of having it on the main page.

This up here, when we get that up there, will be accessible on any page.

So you can always get back to it quickly.

Right.

That's good.

Stop sharing.

No, well, we're wrapping up our hour, I guess.

Any thoughts, Art?

I'm sorry about sending out all the wrong daylight savings times.

Well, UTC is correct, but that's the only one on the invitation.

I think what I'm going to do on the invitations is just put out UTC, because everybody can figure it out from there, wherever they are.

I didn't say they were wrong.

I said.

.

.

Yeah, but in fact, they are wrong.

And the reason they're wrong is because I looked at it in Japanese standard time and Indian standard time.

They don't switch back and forth.

So when I switched, I actually had to change UTC and they wouldn't have changed.

So if we had somebody from Japan trying to get on this, they came on an hour ago.

Yeah, spring ahead, fall back.

Yeah.

So I think I'm just going to send out UTC and everybody can figure out where they are in the world based on UTC.

Because there's too many ways to go wrong with everybody's daylight savings times.

And yeah, it's crazy.

Time zones.

Who thought of that?

Well, it was Alexander Graham Bell, but you know, who's counting?

All right.

Well, gentlemen, thank you very much.

And I will see you next week.

And I hope correspond with you before then.

Yeah, sounds great.