[AG-TECH] Access Grid Documentation Project

[Jennifer Teig von Hoffman]

Gregor,

Thanks for bringing these things up. Your questions "a" - "h" are great
fodder for the AGDP wish list, as many of them are easily answerable but
are not documented as well as they could be. Allan's already answered some
of them; I'll chime in on a few below as well.

Please keep in mind that my reply (as well as Allan's, I believe) is
describing the current state of things. Better solutions to many of these
problems were described at the retreat last week, so I believe better
things are coming.

I hope you'll consider joining the AGDP list, to help us continue to
identify areas which should be better documented, and to help develop that
documentation. Please let me know if you'd like to join us on this
project.

Yours,
Jennifer

> > b) How do I present power point slides from a Linux box using StarOffice?
> > 
> 
> I don't know.  That's never been suggested to my knowledge.

VNC may work for this; I'm not sure if it's been tried.

> > e) How do I use a white board within the AG?
> > 
> 
> Not sure.   Actually, you could capture your Linux desktop using VIC
> (device = x11), but that's a really unsuitable solution because there has
> to be a better way.  Plus, only you have control of the whiteboard.  

There isn't currently an AG whiteboard application. You may want to try
using the whiteboards built into Netmeeting or WebEx to see if they suit
your needs. I believe either of these could easily be run on the display
machine, as well as the (windows) laptops of whomever's participating in
the meeting and needs control of the board.

> 
> > e1) How do I share emacs with other AG participants?
> > 
> > e2) How do I share MSWord or with other AG participants?
> > 
> 
> Could try getting everyone to use NetMeeting, but the AG does not say much
> about using NetMeeting.

Why not try VNC for these too? There are some issues regarding the Windows
VNC scalability, but I believe University of Kansas devised a reasonably
good workaround (see
http://www.cc.ukans.edu/%7Eacs/docs/access-grid-node/vnc/ ).

> > 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?
> > 
> 
> If you have the proper hardware, you can "patch" them into the AG audio.
> If you have a Gentner AP400 or AP800, you would want to use the Net-Telco
> preset to accomplish this.  Actually doing the steps when you have all
> this setup is fairly trivial.

Please see
http://www-fp.mcs.anl.gov/fl/accessgrid/gentner_audio_presets.htm for more
details on the Gentner pre-sets. We do this all the time with excellent
results (keeping in mind, of course, the poor audio quality of the
telephone system).

> > h) I have 10 people in AG and 10 people using net meeting, can I still 
> > use the AG?
> > 
> 
> Not sure how NetMeeting would interact with the AG.  If you can share
> applications and patch audio into your display machine's mic input, I
> would think this might be possible but I'm really not sure.  I have not
> used NetMeeting and only have seen it used once.

I'm aware that somebody has bridged AG and NetMeeting on at least one
occasion, but unfortunately can't recall who it was. Hopefully they'll
chime in and share their experience here.