Re: GNU Guix Video Documentation

[Gábor Boskovits]

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 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?

> > > 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).

> > > 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