[AG-TECH] Access Grid Documentation Project

Lisa Childers childers at mcs.anl.gov
Thu Feb 8 11:08:11 CST 2001


I'd like to chime in and respond with an emphatic yes this and other email
exchanges like it are very useful.  We need people to share ideas and get
involved.  In the long run, the AG will benefit greatly from these
discussions.

Thanks,
Lisa

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-ag-tech at mcs.anl.gov [mailto:owner-ag-tech at mcs.anl.gov]On
Behalf Of Gregor von Laszewski
Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2001 10:55 AM
To: Allan Kenneth Spale; accessgrid at mcs.anl.gov; ag-tech at mcs.anl.gov
Subject: Re: [AG-TECH] Access Grid Documentation Project



Allan:

   thanks for your quick response. As you can see from my questions
below, they are cumming from an "AG dummy".

Though there is an FAQ for example on the ANL site, it did not answer or
point me to the documentation you put in below. What I would find
useful, if the information below could encourage the AG developers to
provide a

   "Dummy Guide for the AG User" (e.g. those how are talking and
presenting during a session).

Since the modality I operate in needs also some elementary
administrative tasks, this "Dummy Guide" could be written in such a way
as to support the scenarios as listed below.

Here some higher level followup questions:

a) Are the scenarios listed below being considered in a documentation
project?

b)  When can I point my colleagues to a consistent web page, that does
not require to go out and download 100s of pages of documentation (e.g.
the link to VMC is nice, but not helpful, there should be a 10 step
guide or so that tells me how to install it so I do not have to even
open any VNC documentation). Note that the people I collaborate with
have little tolerance for spending time on browsing from site to  site
to go through hierarchies of web pages, only to find the description of
using VNC in the VNC site and not on the AG site.

c) Is  this e-mail exchange between me and the mailing  useful, or
should I not bother, as the mail gets shoved down in some priority list
with value of about 0.00001 ;-)

Please, understand that I have no clue how the access grid community is
organized.

Gregor

Allan Kenneth Spale wrote:

> Well, that's a lot of questions, but I started out that way too.  I will
> answer or try to answer those questions that I have some knowledge of.
>
> On Wed, 7 Feb 2001, Gregor von Laszewski wrote:
>
>> 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.
>>
>
> If you want, I wrote a guide for setting up the software in the AG (Red
> Hat 6.2 and Windows 2000) if you would like me to e-mail those ocuments to
> you.  I would recommend that you go to:
> http://www-fp.mcs.anl.gov/fl/accessgrid/.  This is the web page for the
> Access Grid.
>
>> a) How do I present power point slides from a Windows2000 machine in the
>> access Grid?
>>
>
> http://www-fp.mcs.anl.gov/fl/accessgrid/dppt.html
>
>> 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.
>
>> c) How do I share my Windows 2000 desktop with other Access grid
>> participants?
>>
>
> VNC.  http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/
>
>> d) How do I share my Linux desktop with others Access Grid participants?
>>
>
> VNC again.
>
>> 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.
>
>> e1) How do I share emacs with other AG participants?
>>
>
> Not sure.
>
>> 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.
>
>> 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?
>>
>
> Not sure.
>
>> 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.
>
>> 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?
>>
>
> EVL is doing this now.  You can have the person run VIC and RAT on their
> side an call out your display machine's IP address and your audio
> machine's IP address.  I still have not gotten the hang of this but VIC
> and RAT can be used as multicast and unicast conferencing tools.  Check
> out: http://www-mice.cs.ucl.ac.uk/multimedia/software/.  That will provide
> some user manuals.  Actually, I see there is some whiteboard software from
> these people that you may want to download.
>
>> 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.
>
>> 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.
>>
>
> What EVL does is run batch scripts that specify the parameters for VIC and
> RAT on all machines.  It's easier that way.
>
>> 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
>>
>>
>
> Hope this helps.
>
>
> Allan Spale
> EVL / UIC node-op
>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> 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
>>>>
>>>>




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