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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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