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The channel topic is "This channel is used for topics and discussion around the Education SIG (http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/Education) and general educational questions".
The topic was set by sdziallas on 08/01/2008 05:12:57 AM.
sdziallas Hi all (well, maybe: Hi, you two! :)
LaserJock hi
sdziallas you found the channel ;)
LaserJock I did
LaserJock sdziallas: is there a meeting today?
sdziallas kudos!
sdziallas well... I'd have wanted one today
sdziallas but apparently, there would be just you, me & rdieter
sdziallas rdieter: ping
rdieter yo
sdziallas well, #fedora-meeting is occupied by the rel-eng guys...
sdziallas if we wanted a meeting today, we would need to do it here
rdieter could do it here (I guess I forgot to mention, if you want to use #fedora-meeting, you need to book the room)
sdziallas well... I just announced it, but I didn't want to block the time table, since our meetings are happening irregularily
rdieter here is fine
sdziallas okay? here we go? :)
LaserJock cool
sdziallas http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/Education/Meetings
rdieter sry, I'll only be at best 1/2 here, attention split between work, #fedora-kde, rel-eng in #fedora-meeting
sdziallas okay... do, what needs to be done ;)
sdziallas how do we start?! LaserJock: we're almost ready with a spin for F9
LaserJock the Math spin?
sdziallas yeah! we got trademark approval, so we can use the official fedora logos.
LaserJock awesome
sdziallas :)
LaserJock do you have a link to the kickstart file?
LaserJock I lost the one you gave me
sdziallas that's the one for F9:
sdziallas http://sdz.fedorapeople.org/livecd-f9-education-math.ks
sdziallas no worries
LaserJock hmm
sdziallas so it's now just a question of building and hosting it
LaserJock so it's a KDE spin but you use abiword, gnumeric, qalculate-gtk
sdziallas yeah... well, the thing is:
LaserJock are the gtk/gnome libs of abiword/gnumeric smaller than KDE3 libs?
rdieter LaserJock: probably.
sdziallas we decided to stick with KDE for now, but the Koffice version in F9 is still 1.6 (pulls in kdelibs3) and the same goes for qalculate-qt
sdziallas as far as i know, it should be smaller...
LaserJock ah
sdziallas if there were koffice2, I'd have used it ;)
LaserJock so do the blend in ok visually ?
LaserJock *they
sdziallas oh... good question... I had a look @ abiword some time ago, but in the last days, I focussed on kdeedu
sdziallas I'm going to build it at home again, to double check everything
* sdziallas puts it on his todo-list
rnorwood has joined this channel (n=rnorwood@nat/redhat/x-e7cc56f2f2436000).
sdziallas this needs obviously to be checked
LaserJock I just wonder if you'd want gtk-qt-engine
LaserJock or if that works with KDE 4 apps in Fedora or not
sdziallas it might be, that it gets pulled in... mhh... rdieter: do you know?
rdieter gtk-qt-engine isn't installed by default. honestly, it generally doesn't work all that well, so I'd recommend against it.
LaserJock rdieter: ok, I've had interesting experiences with it as well
rdieter long version: I mean it works, but it exposes bugs in apps/themes, which generally don't ever get fixed, and get blamed on gtk-qt-engine.
sdziallas mhh... okay, I'll check this after the meeting (how the apps look like by default in KDE4)
LaserJock sdziallas: forgive my spin ignorance, but will this be installable or Live-only?
sdziallas installable
rdieter LaserJock: an installable live image (like all the other fedora live images)
sdziallas no problem. we're currently having issues with generic-logos, kdm, and installing the spin
sdziallas but since we're using fedora-logos for this: no problems... hopefully
LaserJock ok cool
LaserJock so is there a target age range for the math spin?
LaserJock or do you mostly just want to get as many good math apps as you can in
sdziallas well, in this case, we decided for a purpose-related spin... we had discussed age-related spins in one of the other meetings, but if I remember correctly, this is just math-related
LaserJock it's at least a great proof-of-concept
sdziallas :)
LaserJock have you thought about messing around with the menus?
LaserJock if you produce a purpose-related spin your likely to end up with all the interesting apps bunched up in one submenu
sdziallas you mean adding new points or stuff like this? I think the astronomy guys are doing stuff like this
LaserJock well, I mean customizing the menu to fit your spin better
sdziallas mhh... this might be a good idea, though
LaserJock you could, for instance, make Math a top-level menu and have more finely categorized sub-menus
LaserJock Geometry, Algebra, Calculators, Plotting , etc.
sdziallas yeah!... this sounds like a good idea! :)
rdieter LaserJock: careful, that's *hard*, and it has to integrate with the rest of fedora (best to avoid, hand modifying stuff just for a spin, it should be available via other install methods too)
LaserJock rdieter: for sure
LaserJock I've done it before though
rdieter by hand, or via modular *.menu files?
LaserJock the XDG menu spec has a fair nice cateogorization
LaserJock .menu files
rdieter excellent
LaserJock I've not done it with KDE before
LaserJock but I once had aseigo tell me all about it ;-)
rdieter kde should work like any other, it supports the xdg menu spec
LaserJock yep
LaserJock in fact, according to aaron, it should be easier on KDE
rdieter heh, according aaron, *everything* is easier on KDE. :)
LaserJock anyway, just a thought
* sdziallas lets the experts talk... ;) I've never done this before...
LaserJock I've seen it come up before with other "niche" type projects
LaserJock you have all those apps and they all end up piled in one submenu somewhere
rdieter or is that effort misplaced, shouldn't this happen not just here, but for all of fedora, to improve menus and/or categorize apps?
LaserJock sdziallas: http://standards.freedesktop.org/menu-spec/latest/apa.html has a list of available categories
LaserJock rdieter: well, the problem is in focus
rdieter a problem, anyway. :)
LaserJock if you are trying to have a broadly usable menu you can't focus on any one area
LaserJock but if you're biasing the application selection
LaserJock then your menu becomes less useful
LaserJock especially for kids
rdieter I'm only concerned that "edu spin" folks will get used to one style of menu, and when/if they switch back-n-forth with "stock" fedora, get confused/losts.
LaserJock having to dig through the Education menu all the time would be a pain, IMO
sdziallas mhh... at least, this sounds like a kind of logic to me
LaserJock rdieter: well, that is a point, but I think it can be done in a reasonable way
LaserJock for instance, you can just focus on messing with the Education menu
rdieter agreed.
LaserJock leaving everything else, as is
LaserJock although I once wrote a menu for small kids
LaserJock no submenus
LaserJock just selected apps
rdieter how about we get a preview out the door, then, we can review the menu situation, then find a way forward. LaserJock, you willing to help implement some/all of this?
LaserJock rdieter: hmm, I can at least take a look. I can't spend large amounts of time on it
rdieter nod, join the club. ok. :)
sdziallas okay?! :) but we could bring this topic up afain after having released the preview...
* sdziallas makes a mental note
sdziallas can we move on?
LaserJock sdziallas: your show ;-)
sdziallas okay :)
sdziallas thx. I was thinking about a kind of survey for users of our preview spin... how they like it, which apps they were using, what they'd want to improve...
sdziallas just another idea which came into my mind
sdziallas but I'm not yet sure, whether and how to implement it. we could try to add it to the bookmarks of the spin's browser, or we could just post it on the blog articles...
LaserJock oh, bookmarks were another idea I had last night as I was thinking of the spin
sdziallas the astronomy guys are again doing something that way... wait, I'll look up the link
sdziallas https://fedorahosted.org/astronomy/wiki/AstronomyBookmarks
LaserJock yeah
rdieter neat
LaserJock there are a wealth of good Math resources online
LaserJock one thing I think is valuable with these spins is trying to get more than just "Fedora + edu apps"
sdziallas you mean giving the users a kind of material (documentation, introduction, related texts, whatever) related to the spin?
LaserJock well, things like more useful menus and bookmarks are something
LaserJock if there are other things people can think of that's cool too
sdziallas okay :) so this is one thing we should keep track of: kind of general improvement of the spin with additional material or an increased usability
sdziallas I'll post a summary or something like this later ;)
LaserJock but what happens often is that people will so "can't I just install those 5 packages on my existing Fedora?"
LaserJock *say
sdziallas sure, they can... if they want to. we could even provide our customizations in a rpm package (astronomy bookmarks here: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/packages/name/astronomy-bookmarks)
sdziallas on the other hand, we could again consider using those comps-groups...
sdziallas user does a: yum groupinstall education-math and gets something which looks (almost) like the math spin
LaserJock right
sdziallas but if we're not providing such a package at first, they'll miss some those customizations...
sdziallas (if they're just installing those "5 packages" ;)
LaserJock right
sdziallas mhh... on the other hand, the point with an online portal might also help here: we're providing additional content there (e.g. among with a customized spin)
sdziallas I've thought a little bit about it...
sdziallas and we could even try to move to fedorahosted.org and then make a infrastructure request asking for a redirect: edu.fedoraproject.org - fedorahosted.org/education
LaserJock lots of things can be imagined
LaserJock baby steps though ;-)
LaserJock gotta have a preview spin first
sdziallas at least, this would be one possibility how to... begin realizing this. sure, we could also try to get our own CMS running (on fedorahosted we get a trac instance & e.g. git), but that would be... more difficult
sdziallas yeah! agreed!
sdziallas mhh... well, then there is just one other thing on my topic list (unless you've anything else)
LaserJock go for it
LaserJock I'm just along for the ride today ;-)
sdziallas citing the wiki "Collaboration with other educational Efforts (OLPC SIG & K12LTSP)"
sdziallas :)
sdziallas well... really don't know, how we might start this best, but I think we should talk to those other efforts (maybe we could even have a joint meeting) to discuss a few things, who is doing what, who might help how... and so on
sdziallas but that's also another topic for after the preview release
* sdziallas suggests to get this preview release ready, try to do kind of PR (get more people in here! :) and move on then
rdieter nod.
LaserJock +1 to that
LaserJock I think I'm gonna try to read up a bit on Spins
sdziallas once the spin is ready, we might even post some announcements to the press or so...
LaserJock and perhaps see if I can get a Chemistry one workable
sdziallas okay :)
sdziallas If I may help you... you know where to find me ;)
LaserJock yeah
sdziallas okay! sooo... looks like we're done for today?!
LaserJock guess so
LaserJock so that was ~ 1hr
sdziallas yeah!
sdziallas we had a little bit more in our last meetings, but that's okay
sdziallas meeting adjourned! ;)
sdziallas thanks you two! :)

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