[AG-TECH] Access Grid Documentation Project

Wed Feb 7 21:54:23 CST 2001

Hi:

Note: I am an AG user not an AG developer or document writer.

I took on monday a very useful tutorial. Nevertheless, in order for me 
to use the access grid I need an FAQ and scenario kind of quickstart guide.

Here are the scenarios that must be addressed. I recognize that some 
scenarios may not be possible, but this is good as it may deliver new 
requirements to the access grid. Furthermore, It is important to 
recognize that simple terms must be used in the answers to these 
questions, one should not assume that the tutorial is only for those 
hard core AG developers. 

a) How do I present power point slides from a Windows2000 machine in the 
access Grid?

b) How do I present power point slides from a Linux box using StarOffice?

c) How do I share my Windows 2000 desktop with other Access grid 
participants?

d) How do I share my Linux desktop with others Access Grid participants?

e) How do I use a white board within the AG?

e1) How do I share emacs with other AG participants?

e2) How do I share MSWord or with other AG participants?

e3) What is the performance I can expect while using VNC between 
organization x and y? How can I obtain this information dynamically? How 
many seconds delay is there between a character typed in organization x 
and its appearance in y?
How can I monitor this dynamically?

f) I  have twenty participants in my meetings, but a couple of them are 
always traveling and can only participate via a  800 through a phone. 
How can I make this happen?

g) I have twenty participants in the AG, but one person is on a location 
in which it is impossible to install an AG (e.g. a synchrotron 
beamline). How can this participant be still part of an AG session while 
using net meeting or another commodity video tool?

h) I have 10 people in AG and 10 people using net meeting, can I still 
use the AG?

Here a couple of comments:

   I locked at   the client and master bat files, and it seems real 
bothersome that I have to type those parameters in, why is not a web 
page created under the room that has a bunch of links in there that will 
automatically started. For example I imagine a command

joinAGsession -room SailingRoom

A default session gets established and than I can modify it.

also it would be great to have UNIX shell scripts that allow to schedule 
reservation or free them. This way we could integrate the AG in Problem 
Solving Environments.

.e.g.  scheduleAGevent -name "EasyToRememberKeyInsteadOfConfusingRoomName" \
                                        -start <time> -end <time> 
-participants ANL,Indiana,Sandia,UC-Flash

This way I could for example create an event called:

   "Lysosyme Experiment"

which has actually a semantic implications to my participants. For all 
these Mudders out there the semantic meaning is a name of a room, but 
meeting in a room called sailing is confusing and much more difficult to 
remember than a term determined from the audience scheduling the event. 
The software must also provide a lookup function that allows to extract 
information about the session from a directory service, indicating what 
capabilities I need to joins the session, ...

I am sure much of the above is possible, but the tutorial I attended did 
not give me the appropriate hints to quickly identify these issues, nor 
did the web page.

I appologize about grammer and spelling errors, but I hope the points I 
raise are still useful.

Gregor

Allan Kenneth Spale wrote:

> I do not know how personally to help with this project but do include me
> and EVL on any future mailing lists.
> 
> One suggestion for making things searchable: we need some sort of indexing
> structure.  I mailed some of EVL's AG docs to Jennifer.  The more natural
> language the index is, the more easily searchable the index will be (in my
> opinion).  This would be especially helpful for past ag-tech postings.
> 
> 
> Allan Spale
> EVL / UIC node-op
> 
> On Mon, 5 Feb 2001, Jennifer Teig von Hoffman wrote:
> 
>> Hello all,
>> 
>> Those of you who attended the AG Technical Retreat last week are already
>> somewhat familiar with the plans for the Access Grid Documentation
>> Project (AGDP), an effort based in very large part on the Linux
>> Documentation Project (LDP), which can be found at 
>> http://www.linuxdoc.org/ .
>> 
>> The AGDP's goal is to provide the canonical set of AG documentation, and
>> to distribute it freely under a GPL-like license. (For more background on
>> the AGDP, please see http://scv.bu.edu/~jtvh/talks/agdp.ppt .)
>> 
>> The AGDP, by its very nature, is a community effort. Please take a look
>> at the list of tasks below, and let me know which you are interested in
>> helping with:
>> 
>> * Reviewing the AGDP Manifesto. Feedback is due by February 15; I'd like
>> to firm up the beta version of this by March 1. The current draft of the
>> Manifesto is at http://scv.bu.edu/~jtvh/talks/agdp-manifesto-draft1.doc .
>> 
>> * Helping to determine which (if any) document formats to require for
>> submission to the AGDP and for revisions to AGDP documents, as well as
>> in which document formats we should publish on-line. (Just to give you a
>> taste of this, the biggest issue at the moment seems to be whether we
>> should store (but not publish) our documents in SGML -- an open-source,
>> flexible, but less than ubiquitous format -- or something more ubiquitous
>> but perhaps not open-source.) I'd especially appreciate it if those with
>> SGML experience could participate in this process.
>> 
>> * Serving on the team of reviewers which will determine whether submitted
>> documents are appropriate for posting on the AGDP. (We will not begin
>> accepting submissions until April 1.)
>> 
>> * Helping to provide day-to-day management and support to the AGDP. Tasks
>> for this group will most likely include document conversions, tracking of
>> the review process, and web site maintainence.
>> 
>> * Sending me suggestions for inclusion on a document wish list (ie,
>> documents we hope somebody, somewhere will write and submit to the AGDP).
>> 
>> All volunteers will be added to the agdp-discuss-l at bu.edu mailing list
>> (ultimately this list should probably be located at accessgrid.org). If
>> you'd like to help out with the AGDP and aren't sure how yet, please let
>> me know and I'll add you to the list too.
>> 
>> Any and all help will be very much appreciated.
>> 
>> Yours,
>> Jennifer Teig von Hoffman
>> Senior Analyst/Consultant
>> Office of Information Technology
>> Boston University
>> 111 Cummington Street
>> Boston, MA 02215
>> (617) 358-0033 phone
>> (617) 353-6260 fax
>> jtvh at bu.edu
>> 
>> 