Report of J wiki Meeting for May 2nd, 2024
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robert therriault
May 8, 2024, 1:41:21 PMMay 8
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== Report of Meeting 2024-05-02 ==
Present: Art Anger, Ed Gottsman and Bob Therriault
Full transcripts of this meeting are now available on the its wiki page. https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki/Report_of_Meeting_2024-05-02
1) Ed gave a report on his most recent exploration of the category displays. He has used colour, indentation and size of font to distinguish the hierarchy of the category trees. This works with the JQt viewer. Additional information that is provided is the number of pages that are associated with each category. The scrolling of the columns is done with a horizontal scroll. He is also loading all the pages in a category in a drop down which saves the user a lot of look up and traversal time. Ed feels that the tree map is not the way to approach this, but feels better about the outline approach that he has taken. Bob wondered if the vertical column of the the J Viewer has the same information. Ed feels that the addition of colour and font size makes the information much more accessible. Also that the horizontal scrolling across the columns allow the user to cover a lot more real estate than the vertical category display. The dropdown in an interesting idea, although with some of the categories that have many pages it does become a bit cumbersome.
2) Bob showed the template that he had developed that was more of a tree map of the categories in a grid display. https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/User:Bob_Therriault/template It still needs to have the hover facility put in. Ed wondered how many nodes are displayed and Bob estimated that this display has about a third of the total number of nodes. Bob pointed out that there are inconsistencies in the display in the way that some of the categories display vertically and some at the same level may display horizontally. This is done to make the best use of space. Ed felt that the ratio of data to area is pretty low, so it does not seem like there should be a better use of space. This would be a challenge especially for mobile users. Bob felt that reorganizing the categories might give a little gain but not as much as might be required. The idea would be to keep the most useful areas near the top of the display since the template will be at the bottom of each page. Ed wondered if was possible to just let the grid CSS display order the nodes into columns and not worry so much about the separation of the different categories. Those differences would be shown by font size and colour. Bob felt he would be constrained by the fact that grid only extends one layer down, but Ed felt that looking at this as a flat list would be better and there was some discussion to explain to Bob how this might work. Ed used the analogy of laying out columns on a newspaper. Bob wondered about using different fonts to distinguish between different categories. Ed's experience is that graphic designers have a strong negative reaction to this. It would probably be best to stick with size and color as areas to discern between categories. Bob felt that this was a good direction to explore. The numbers of pages with each category are probably not going to be available with this representation.
3) There was some discussion about SVG and the fact that with JQt SVG would remain an option. SVG allows a more constrained layout that could make better use of space. Ed mentioned that it does not work as well for mobile users. Bob thought that pinching allowed zooming in and out. Ed pointed out that this would require a lot of zooming in and out to view pages shown at the regular size. Bob wondered if there was an option to use viewports and inset of the overall map. Ed thought that this was more useful for physical terrain instead of conceptual differences. Bob felt that this would be closer to what Jan was trying to do with his data generated maps. All of this may require additional user training that we would not want to require to use the wiki. Simpler is better. Ed says that making hierarchy navigation more obvious will allow users to better appreciate the information that is contained in the wiki. Bob agrees.
For access to previous meeting reports https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please contact us on the J forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 23:00 (UTC) There will not b e meeting on May 9th, so the next meeting is May 16, 2024.
Present: Art Anger, Ed Gottsman and Bob Therriault
Full transcripts of this meeting are now available on the its wiki page. https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki/Report_of_Meeting_2024-05-02
1) Ed gave a report on his most recent exploration of the category displays. He has used colour, indentation and size of font to distinguish the hierarchy of the category trees. This works with the JQt viewer. Additional information that is provided is the number of pages that are associated with each category. The scrolling of the columns is done with a horizontal scroll. He is also loading all the pages in a category in a drop down which saves the user a lot of look up and traversal time. Ed feels that the tree map is not the way to approach this, but feels better about the outline approach that he has taken. Bob wondered if the vertical column of the the J Viewer has the same information. Ed feels that the addition of colour and font size makes the information much more accessible. Also that the horizontal scrolling across the columns allow the user to cover a lot more real estate than the vertical category display. The dropdown in an interesting idea, although with some of the categories that have many pages it does become a bit cumbersome.
2) Bob showed the template that he had developed that was more of a tree map of the categories in a grid display. https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/User:Bob_Therriault/template It still needs to have the hover facility put in. Ed wondered how many nodes are displayed and Bob estimated that this display has about a third of the total number of nodes. Bob pointed out that there are inconsistencies in the display in the way that some of the categories display vertically and some at the same level may display horizontally. This is done to make the best use of space. Ed felt that the ratio of data to area is pretty low, so it does not seem like there should be a better use of space. This would be a challenge especially for mobile users. Bob felt that reorganizing the categories might give a little gain but not as much as might be required. The idea would be to keep the most useful areas near the top of the display since the template will be at the bottom of each page. Ed wondered if was possible to just let the grid CSS display order the nodes into columns and not worry so much about the separation of the different categories. Those differences would be shown by font size and colour. Bob felt he would be constrained by the fact that grid only extends one layer down, but Ed felt that looking at this as a flat list would be better and there was some discussion to explain to Bob how this might work. Ed used the analogy of laying out columns on a newspaper. Bob wondered about using different fonts to distinguish between different categories. Ed's experience is that graphic designers have a strong negative reaction to this. It would probably be best to stick with size and color as areas to discern between categories. Bob felt that this was a good direction to explore. The numbers of pages with each category are probably not going to be available with this representation.
3) There was some discussion about SVG and the fact that with JQt SVG would remain an option. SVG allows a more constrained layout that could make better use of space. Ed mentioned that it does not work as well for mobile users. Bob thought that pinching allowed zooming in and out. Ed pointed out that this would require a lot of zooming in and out to view pages shown at the regular size. Bob wondered if there was an option to use viewports and inset of the overall map. Ed thought that this was more useful for physical terrain instead of conceptual differences. Bob felt that this would be closer to what Jan was trying to do with his data generated maps. All of this may require additional user training that we would not want to require to use the wiki. Simpler is better. Ed says that making hierarchy navigation more obvious will allow users to better appreciate the information that is contained in the wiki. Bob agrees.
For access to previous meeting reports https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please contact us on the J forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 23:00 (UTC) There will not b e meeting on May 9th, so the next meeting is May 16, 2024.
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