Re: GNU Guix Video Documentation

[Laura Lazzati]

On Sun, Oct 28, 2018 at 6:13 AM Gábor Boskovits <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> Hello Laura,
>
> Laura Lazzati <address@hidden> ezt írta (időpont: 2018.
> okt. 28., V, 2:33):
> >
> > Hi!
> > I have some ideas, suggestions and questions, based on this two videos
> > that someone replied in one thread of mails when I was first getting
> > in touch with the community.
> > [1] 
> > https://media.libreplanet.org/u/libreplanet/m/practical-verifiable-software-freedom-with-guixsd/
> > [2] https://archive.fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/usingguix/
> > I don't know much about video editing in the technical aspect of if,
> > but maybe my ideas could help. I have been reading about some
> > concepts, however.
> > On Fri, Oct 26, 2018 at 7:02 AM Björn Höfling
> > <address@hidden> wrote:
> > >
> > > On Fri, 26 Oct 2018 06:13:52 +0200
> > > Ricardo Wurmus <address@hidden> wrote:
> > >
> > > > 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.
> > Here, the first question, I would ask myself is: what is the purpose
> > of the video and who the audience of the video is?
>
> This is a very important point to discuss.
>
> > It is not the same making a general video promoting guix with it's
> > features and conveying ideas  to users/sysadmins/contributors - even
> > different kind of contributors - than doing so to people that are
> > already interested in using, applying guix, or contributing and want
> > to know the technical aspects because they prefer to have a first
> > approach with them and then read the documentation.
>
> I believe, there is a demand for both types of documentation, but
> uncertain about the priorities. The current project description reflects
> the technical aspects type instead, or rather a hybrid approach, like:
> introduce a concept, then show how that concept can be applied.
> I can think of a solution, where videos are grouped around the concepts,
> one (or more, targeted to different audiences) video to introduce a
> concept/feature/idea, and then a few more to show the technical apects/
> implementation. WDYT?
I agree with your approach.
First, we need to know which have the highest priorities, the
promoting, the howtos, and belonging to which topic(s). And in case
both (the ones "promoting" as well as the "howtos" are equally needed,
I believe that maybe the screencasted one is more appealing, even
taking into account that they are difficult to translate or update if
they get stale, but it also implies in the worst case creating only
one 3 minutes lenght video again on each topic.
And then, for the "howtos", I don't know how many 3 minutes length
videos will be required for each topic, or the depth of them but the
non-screencasted I believe is better, as most of you mentioned.
But I kind need to know which are more important at least for now.
Recall I am new to Guix :)
> > > I thought the videos are not for transporting general ideas, but to
> > > show the daily usage of guix. And that is using the command line. By
> > > showing common tasks the general idea gets transported (i.e. while
> > > showing guix package -i, guix package --list-generations, guix package
> > > --roll-back the idea of transactional package management is conveyed,
> > > without much abstract words).
> > When I first read the Ourteachy project, I thought that the videos had
> > to be technical, showing howtos, as Bjorn mentioned.
> > But for the first case (promoting, conveying ideas, to any of the
> > people the audience involves) maybe screencasting is more appealing to
> > the person that is watching them. It comes to my mind having someone
> > speaking, and showing graphics, diagrams, something like [1] - now I
> > realize that I have always watched screencasted tutorials and courses
> > and most of them in English. Translation in this case is more
> > difficult, it is true.
>
> I guess you mean something like [2] here. Yes, my ideas are similar.
> If you could have a look at the second version of the graph I attached here,
> you can see, that the screen recording and the narration aspects are 
> completely
> separated, and the narration is not necessarily a single video, but
> instead a set
> videos. That makes both recording and translation more tractable. WDYT?
Yes, I saw the graph, but as I am not into video recording rather than
home made ones, I got a little bit lost, I understood the point in the
end, about how to mix everything, but not very well the intermediate
steps.
But I still agree with you about being non-screencasted.
I still have to do more research on texinfo, I read the Reference
Guide,  but maybe even the slides can be generated with it -LaTex has
Beamer, for instance, there has to be something similar to it.
>
> > > > 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.
> > >
> > > When I thought about translations, I thought only about the speech and
> > > subtitles. Of cause you are right, the command line should be localized
> > > too!
> > Yes, I was thinking at first
> > Are you planning to translate them to specific languages, or to as
> > many as  possible, even on demand, in the future?
>
> It would be nice to have the ability to translate on demand in the future.
> The second version of the graph I have posted is created with keeping
> that in mind, that is one of the reasons why it has so many selection and
> composition steps. (Another reason is to have a versitality of outputs).
Great. I don't know if the translations will be automated and with
which tools - Ricardo mentioned that the non screencasted had, among
the benefits, easier translations, but I don't know up to which point
they will be automated.  I read about the tools for the localization
of the command line commands, but the audios and text (both subtitles
and the slides) will be that easy to translate with scripts? That's
why I though about texinfo- i don't know if by slideshow you mean the
non-GNU slideshow or any other tool.
 >
> > > > 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.
> > As regards the technical/howto ones, I was thinking also of something
> > like this. Some slides for the concepts with then cli sessions.
> > >
> > > When I said screencasts I first thought of handmade ones within well
> > > prepared (and documented) environments and a script/stage
> > > directions and script for automatic cutouts from the raw recordings.
> > >
> > > Then I thought of this puppet we have for qemu-tests: Is it possible to
> > > use it in order to controll the virtual machine, screencast it and get
> > > back certain events like terminal keywords in order to start/stop/pause
> > > the cast?
> > >
> > > This is my first time I heard of asciicasts. You mean the program
> > > asciinema and it's protocol asciicasts (https://asciinema.org/)? That
> > > looks cool. Can it be used to produce rendered films too?
> > >
>
> I have the same question here :-)
>
> > > Automating the process as much as possible is a good idea. Can we get
> > > that bitwise reproducible? :-)
> > >
>
> Actually I believe we can :-)
>
> > > [..]
> > >
> > > > 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.
> > >
> > > Yes, that site looks good, I watched videos from it in the past.
> > Where are all the videos already created for guix and guixSD, apart
> > from [1] and [2]  and the one on the official site?  Having this
> > answered, maybe it is clearer which videos are needed the most, the
> > ones conveying ideas, the technical ones, or if both, which ones are
> > more important.
>
> Do we have any more? Maybe some conference recordings, or from the
> last guix day? Do we have a place where links are collected?
>
> > > > 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.
> > >
> > > We don't have a Mediagoblin package yet :-)
> > >
> > > Björn
> > Regards!
> > Laura
> >
>
> Best regards,
> g_bor

Regards!
Laura