Another collaborator?

[gregory...@gmail.com]

Mark Fitch, of the University of Alaska Anchorage, emailed me as his dept. is considering adopting APEX Calc. In our exchange, it became clear he is knowledgeable about PreTeXt and he offered his help.

Is that of interest to you guys? Adding another person may be useful to you, and he may just slow you down as you have to bring him up to speed on the current state of things.

Just throwing the option out there. 

[Sean Fitzpatrick]

Mark is active on the PreTeXt forums, so he could be a good person to have on board.
Probably we should check with him to see where he would best be able to contribute?

At this point, here are some of the things that need to be done. (Alex can supplement/correct this list)

-- WeBWorK exercises. Probably Alex's domain, unless Mark has experience writing WW problems
-- Styling. Are we happy with the default HTML, or do we want to tinker with the layout, colour scheme, etc? (Also, I think my styling for the LaTeX/PDF is a pretty good start, but certainly more could be done.)
-- Accessibility. None of our images have descriptions. There are probably other issues I'm unaware of.
-- Interactives. Do we want to replace some of our static images with JavaScript or GeoGebra elements? (I'm thinking of things like zooming in on a tangent line, Riemann sums, etc.) Generally, things that can be done in PreTeXt that were never possible in LaTeX,
-- Solutions. All exercises have answers, but maybe 10% or so have proper solutions.
-- TikZ adjustments. Some of the images (e.g. for optimization, related rates, fluid force) don't look quite right. I think this is because there have been some changes in TikZ code over the years that have caused small changes in the appearance of certain images, like labels not lining up correctly.

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[Alex Jordan]

Mark has a fork of ORCCA (forked from the Lane Community College fork,
so two forks removed from the original). I've worked with Mark some,
helping him to get that going.

I think it's best if I keep plodding through WeBWorK issues on my own.

I'm unsure if Mark has experience making edits, using git, and using
GitHub. Did he indicate that's the kind of help he is offering?

Also, did he indicate whether he is hoping to work on a fork? I only
want to work on the canonical, Greg-approved version.

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[gregory...@gmail.com]

Sorry - I didn't see Alex's response until just now. 
Here's the entirety of Mark's comment to me: " Thank you. I would be willing to assist in the conversion. I am aware of both Sean and Alex's work through the pretext list serve."

It doesn't appear that he's looking to work on his own fork. 

In the back of my head, I keep thinking of a comment I heard from a computer-sci visiting speaker from a few years ago: "Adding people to an existing project will only slow you down." He was *very* animated when he said it. So Mark may be a great guy, but it may not be the right time to bring someone on board.

At the same time - with Alex working on WW issues, Sean may appreciate the help with the list of things he put out there. Perhaps Mark is interested in working on the accessibility issue. I've had 2 schools ask me in '21 about this, and it may be a deal breaker for some. 

I'm fine with bringing him on or not - it's up to you two, I'd say.

[Sean Fitzpatrick]

Greg, perhaps you could ask Mark where he feels he could best contribute to the project? You could mention some of the things that need doing, but he might have something in mind.

Then we'd be better placed to decide what role he could play.

I also just got an email from somebody from the University of Hawaii, thanking me for the videos on YouTube.

He mentioned that he was working on making his own HTML version he could include the videos in. (I pointed out that this work might be unnecessary, of course.)

He also mentioned plans to make GeoGebra materials for everything in Calc1. I suggested that contributing to our project might be more efficient than making his own.

[Alex Jordan]

I'll admit I am intrigued by the possibilities of Grady's GeoGebra
work being integrated somehow.

I don't feel like I have bandwidth to onboard someone with PreTeXt
right now. Even Mark with PTX experience will need onboarding for the
special things that APEX does.

I'm only really paying attention to WeBWorK issue right now, and even
then, only as far as I have already revised (up through 6.1). For
example, I only do a cursory skim of any commits Sean makes in
sections later than chapter 6.

So I would leave this up to Sean, knowing that I will probably be
little help if Grady or Mark needs guidance. I think it will be this
way for me up until summer.

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[Sean Fitzpatrick]

I haven't heard back from Grady yet. But I'd love to get some
interactive content in.

We can always suggest the following:

- right now, none of us have time to get someone up to speed on PreTeXt
or our git workflow
- contributions (I think) are welcome if somebody has something to offer
- after all:
    * the source is in a public GitHub repo
    * anyone can send us a pull request
    * we're under no obligation to merge a pull request from someone
outside the project
    * a PR that makes obvious improvements (even just typo fixes) is
always welcome

something like that?

Alex: if someone creates a GeoGebra material using the app, is it
possible to extract from the ggb file the instructions for building it
with the API? (I am thinking of something like the Construction Protocol
view.)

[gregory...@gmail.com]

Mark initially asked me about accessibility within the .pdf of the text. Since that's a lacking feature, I'll suggest tomorrow that that is one place he can make a contribution. And I'll be forthright & polite in saying that there isn't bandwidth for bringing people up to speed. If he can handle git correctly, add accessibility features to images  to a few images in, say, Chapter 1, Sean can look at the pull requests and see if he's on the right track.

He may be a great addition; he may actually be too busy to do much. And I say I'll write him tomorrow in case you all don't like that plan.

[Sean Fitzpatrick]

Greg, this sounds reasonable to me.

I think getting accessible PDF from LaTeX remains a nightmare, so if he can make it better...

We now have PreTeXt-generated PDF, which I think does a bit better than the original version, but it's still not great.

[Alex Jordan]

> Alex: if someone creates a GeoGebra material using the app, is it
possible to extract from the ggb file the instructions for building it
with the API? (I am thinking of something like the Construction Protocol
view.)

If it's possible to do that, I don't know about it. It's been over a
year since I had my head in GGB.

The advantage of directly coding GGB commands instead of building
something with one of its GUIs is that the code is right there in the
would-be APEX source, easy to edit and no extra files to manage. Or
worse, no hosting service like GGB Materials that you need to rely on.

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