Re: GNU Guix Video Documentation

[Gábor Boskovits]

Hello,

Ricardo Wurmus <address@hidden> ezt írta (időpont: 2018. okt. 26., P, 6:14):
>
>
> Hi Björn,
>
> > I expected more like a screen cast: A life hacking session with
> > comments on what's going on, why doing a step, opening a brower and
> > show where to find docs. Of cause this has to be well prepared and some
> > parts have to be cut out in order to be not too tedious (half an hour
> > gcc log output during compilation is not so interesting for some
> > people).
>
> While screencasts can be useful, I don’t think they are the most useful
> tool to convey ideas.  Much of what’s special about Guix is not the
> command line user interface, but the underlying ideas.  These are better
> illustrated, I think, with the help of graphics as we have been doing
> for years when introducing Guix to new audiences.
>
> One concern is also translations and future updates.  Recording a
> terminal session with screencasting software makes it impossible for us
> to easily translate the video.  When command line interactions are to be
> shown I’d prefer to have a way to reproduce / regenerate the output in a
> different locale automatically, i.e. using scripts.
>
> We can easily mix what amounts to a narrated slideshow with scripted
> command line sessions (cf asciicasts).  This can easily be automated, so
> that we can rebuild the video and update it with minimal effort to
> prevent it from getting stale.
>

I have been also thinking along the same lines, and I came up with a
more concrete and detailed version of the graph I've sent. I will send it
later.

> Setting up this automation to some degree is part of the project, in my
> opinion.  This could be done via scripts or tied together with a
> Makefile.
>
> The big advantages I see over a recorded live session are as follows:
>
> - no need to get it all right in one take
> - prepared narration can result in much more effective communication of
>   ideas
> - easy to rebuild
> - easy to translate
> - no need for manual video editing to cut out irrelevant parts
> - separate treatment of audio and video portions; audio portions can be
>   recorded by native speakers.
>
> I really think that we should make an effort to keep the sources of the
> videos and make sure that we can generate them from source without too
> much effort.  To me this means that we should avoid traditional plain
> video recording or screencasting.
>
> > What I'm next missing is a set of tasks that we want to be
> > video-documented. Or should that be part of the internship? I think it
> > is more on our side to define the requirements.
>
> Yes, I think we should provide more guidance here.  We should have a
> minimum set of concepts that we’d like to see covered.  This also makes
> it easier for us to determine if the internship progresses as planned.
>

Yes, although I wrote up some ideas on the project page, but this will need
discussion.

> Beyond the minimum, I’d like to leave it up to the intern to come up
> with more ideas for videos.  It’s possible, though, that the minimum
> already takes up more time than we currently anticipate, so lets just
> focus on the first three videos.
>
> > How and on which platform should the final result be presented?
> > This includes freedom, privacy and technical aspects and is a
> > question of acceptence/broadness of people watching it. Depending on the
> > choice, could that affect the preparation process (for example,
> > subtitle format, video-container format, audio-channels/translations,
> > automatic text2subtitle conversation)?
>
> We can host the videos on http://audio-video.gnu.org/ and embed them on
> the Guix website, but the sources should be added to the guix-artwork
> repository, I think.
>
> The videos could also be published on Mediagoblin instances, but I don’t
> know if there’s an instance for GNU packages.  GNU Guix does not
> currently have its own Mediagoblin instance.
>

Ok, then we should focus on to get a working version on these platforms,
and to beable to regenerate from sources at the repository.

> --
> Ricardo
>

g_bor