Where to put media demonstrating Gnu Elpa packages?

[Michael Heerdegen]

Hi,

If someone would want to provide a video demonstration for a Gnu Elpa
package (or at least images) - what would be the canonical and ethically
acceptable place to put it to? Most people seem to use github for
advertising and demonstrating their stuff, but that probably doesn't
fulfill the requirements. Gnu Elpa package pages can only contain text,
right?


Michael.

[Kaushal Modi]

On Wed, Aug 29, 2018 at 12:49 PM Michael Heerdegen <michael_...@web.de>
wrote:

It would be nice if Org mode can be used for this. We already have ox-html
in Emacs core.

With a default CSS file for the GNU Elpa package pages, it should be
possible to have "homepages" for all packages with pics and videos.

The GNU Elpa builder can look for README.org (or something like that) in
the package root dir. If present, it kicks of its export to HTML.
--

Kaushal Modi

[Stefan Monnier]

> The GNU Elpa builder can look for README.org (or something like that) in
> the package root dir. If present, it kicks of its export to HTML.

Agreed. Patches to elpa.git's admin/archive-contents.el welcome.
One important detail, tho: the export code should be *safe* regardless
even in the face of an attacker getting access to the README.org.
[ I hope to be able to lift this restriction by running such untrusted code in
a sandbox, but so far I haven't gotten it to work. ]


Stefan

[Michael Heerdegen]

Kaushal Modi <kausha...@gmail.com> writes:

> It would be nice if Org mode can be used for this. We already have
> ox-html in Emacs core.
>
> With a default CSS file for the GNU Elpa package pages, it should be
> possible to have "homepages" for all packages with pics and videos.
>

> The GNU Elpa builder can look for README.org (or something like that) in
> the package root dir. If present, it kicks of its export to HTML.

Does that mean the preferred way of providing media would currently be
to add the media files to the repository and to refer to the files from
the documentation the package provides (file header or info)?


Thanks,

Michael.

[Stefan Monnier]

Probably not: elpa.gnu.org is a pretty feeble server, so it's fine to
serve HTML and tarballs, but it's definitely not fit to serve videos.


Stefan

[Michael Heerdegen]

Stefan Monnier <mon...@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

> Probably not: elpa.gnu.org is a pretty feeble server, so it's fine to
> serve HTML and tarballs, but it's definitely not fit to serve videos.

Is there at all any Gnu thing that could do it?


Michael.

[Stefan Monnier]

>> Probably not: elpa.gnu.org is a pretty feeble server, so it's fine to
>> serve HTML and tarballs, but it's definitely not fit to serve videos.
> Is there at all any Gnu thing that could do it?

I think MediaGoblin is part of the answer, so I think all you need is to
find the FSF's MediaGoblin instance.


Stefan

[Michael Heerdegen]

Stefan Monnier <mon...@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

> I think MediaGoblin is part of the answer,

Wow, I always wondered where Gavroche in Supertuxkart did come from.

> so I think all you need is to find the FSF's MediaGoblin instance.

Hmm,

https://www.fsf.org/youtube

says that it's this:

https://media.libreplanet.org/

but the contents are quite restricted to LibrePlanet conference media.
I guess I'll go with one of the instances listed in
https://wiki.mediagoblin.org/Live_instances.


Thanks for the tip,

Michael.

[Amin Bandali]

Michael Heerdegen <michael_...@web.de> writes:

> Stefan Monnier <mon...@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:
>
>> I think MediaGoblin is part of the answer,
>
> Wow, I always wondered where Gavroche in Supertuxkart did come from.

Alternatively, you could look into PeerTube [0], a decentralized
video hosting network that's part of the fediverse [1]. You can
run your own instance, or join one hosted by others that has open
registration [2].

[0]: https://joinpeertube.org/en/
[1]: https://fediverse.party
[2]: https://joinpeertube.org/en/#getting-started

-amin

[Michael Heerdegen]

Amin Bandali <am...@gnu.org> writes:

> Alternatively, you could look into PeerTube [0], a decentralized
> video hosting network that's part of the fediverse [1]. You can
> run your own instance, or join one hosted by others that has open
> registration [2].
>
> [0]: https://joinpeertube.org/en/
> [1]: https://fediverse.party
> [2]: https://joinpeertube.org/en/#getting-started

That's nice, thanks for the tip!


Michael.

[Michael Heerdegen]

Stefan Monnier <mon...@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

> I think MediaGoblin is part of the answer, so I think all you need is

> to find the FSF's MediaGoblin instance.

I went with https://goblinrefuge.com. It's a disaster. My first video
I uploaded took ~ 12 hours to appear. It had 350kB. You get no
feedback, no failure message, no meaningful info about transcoding
progress, etc. My second video was a bit larger, 12.5MB - I wait for it
to appear since four days.

The 350k video was a demonstration of an Emacs bug. I posted it as an
attachment in an answer to the bug report - nobody complained. Is such
a size acceptable to attach?

FWIW I'll try PeerTube now which had also been suggested in this thread.

Michael.

[Stefan Monnier]

> The 350k video was a demonstration of an Emacs bug. I posted it as an
> attachment in an answer to the bug report - nobody complained. Is such
> a size acceptable to attach?

IMO, 350kB is on the large side of acceptable attachments for
non-personal messages, but as long as it's rare, I find it acceptable,
yes (and preferable to a link to a web page, since it then gets properly
archived). 12MB is too large, OTOH: in such a case I'd prefer to put it
on some web server somewhere and only put a link in the message.

Regarding MediaGoblin, I have no experience with it, but I suggested it
for use with videos like tutorials, rather than for bug-reports.


Stefan

[Jean Louis]

* Michael Heerdegen <michael_...@web.de> [2019-07-29 03:40]:

> Stefan Monnier <mon...@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:
>
> > I think MediaGoblin is part of the answer, so I think all you need is
> > to find the FSF's MediaGoblin instance.
>
> I went with https://goblinrefuge.com. It's a disaster. My first video
> I uploaded took ~ 12 hours to appear. It had 350kB. You get no
> feedback, no failure message, no meaningful info about transcoding
> progress, etc. My second video was a bit larger, 12.5MB - I wait for it
> to appear since four days.
>

> The 350k video was a demonstration of an Emacs bug. I posted it as an
> attachment in an answer to the bug report - nobody complained. Is such
> a size acceptable to attach?
>

> FWIW I'll try PeerTube now which had also been suggested in this
> thread.

It could be simple. Just find ANY hosting account and upload video,
and provide link to it.

I use following bash function to convert video to webm:

function video2webm () {
bitrate=$1;
shift;
for file in "$@";
do out=${file%.*}.webm;
ffmpeg -y -i "$file" -c:v libvpx-vp9 -b:v $bitrate -pass 1 -speed 4 -c:a libopus -f webm /dev/null -async 1 -vsync passthrough && \
ffmpeg -i "$file" -c:v libvpx-vp9 -b:v $bitrate -pass 2 -speed 1 -c:a libopus "$out" -async 1 -vsync passthrough;
done;
}

then I do like:

video2webm 300k video.mp4

so this way I get smaller video when necessary.

Jean

[Michael Heerdegen]

Jean Louis <bu...@gnu.support> writes:

> It could be simple. Just find ANY hosting account and upload video,
> and provide link to it.

Sure. But it's a question if Emacs development should rely on something
like youtube, and if it is only for demonstration stuff. Also some
people don't like to run nonfree javascript code on their side. That's
why I'm looking for something better than "any".

> I use following bash function to convert video to webm:
>
> function video2webm () {
> bitrate=$1;
> shift;
> for file in "$@";
> do out=${file%.*}.webm;
> ffmpeg -y -i "$file" -c:v libvpx-vp9 -b:v $bitrate -pass 1 -speed 4 -c:a libopus -f webm /dev/null -async 1 -vsync passthrough && \
> ffmpeg -i "$file" -c:v libvpx-vp9 -b:v $bitrate -pass 2 -speed 1 -c:a libopus "$out" -async 1 -vsync passthrough;
> done;
> }
>
> then I do like:
>
> video2webm 300k video.mp4
>
> so this way I get smaller video when necessary.

Thanks for sharing. I think I'm doing something similar with shotcut,
though I need a mouse. I can also choose a lot of parameters and the
result is pretty small. I expected an animated gif would be even
smaller, but it seems it is actually much larger (about a factor of 50
or so).

Michael.

[Stefan Monnier]

>> It could be simple. Just find ANY hosting account and upload video,
>> and provide link to it.
>
> Sure. But it's a question if Emacs development should rely on something
> like youtube, and if it is only for demonstration stuff. Also some
> people don't like to run nonfree javascript code on their side. That's
> why I'm looking for something better than "any".

I don't think he was thinking of youtube, but rather "any random
web-server to which you can add documents".

E.g. for me I typically `scp <doc> <host>:html/<name>`
after which the file is available under
http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~monnier/<name>

For bug-reports, this is perfectly sufficient. For a tutorial to which
you want to refer beginners it might not be as good since the browser
might just decide to download the file and not play it (and also it
probably won't stream, so the playback will only start after the whole
file is downloaded).


Stefan

[Michael Heerdegen]

Stefan Monnier <mon...@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

> http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~monnier/<name>
>
> For bug-reports, this is perfectly sufficient.

Yes, but for those it seems a 300k video can better be attached, and it
will even be less of a problem in the future (when disk space gets
cheaper).

> For a tutorial to which you want to refer beginners it might not be
> as good since the browser might just decide to download the file and
> not play it (and also it probably won't stream, so the playback will
> only start after the whole file is downloaded).

That's the case I'm thinking about, yes. I think I will need something
like media goblin for this.

Michael.

[Jean Louis]

* Michael Heerdegen <michael_...@web.de> [2019-07-29 23:29]:

> Jean Louis <bu...@gnu.support> writes:
>
> > It could be simple. Just find ANY hosting account and upload video,
> > and provide link to it.
>
> Sure. But it's a question if Emacs development should rely on something
> like youtube, and if it is only for demonstration stuff. Also some
> people don't like to run nonfree javascript code on their side. That's
> why I'm looking for something better than "any".

Sorry again, I meant simple hosting account, and you do not need to
use any HTML neither Javascript.

Just like this https://www.example.com/my-files/my-video.ogv

Jean

[Michael Heerdegen]

Jean Louis <bu...@gnu.support> writes:

> Sorry again, I meant simple hosting account, and you do not need to
> use any HTML neither Javascript.
>
> Just like this https://www.example.com/my-files/my-video.ogv

Oh, ok I indeed misunderstood.

That would be a fallback solution. But as Stefan mentioned, it would
probably be inconvenient because streaming wouldn't work if you open
such an url in the browser, right?

Michael.

[Jean Louis]

* Michael Heerdegen <michael_...@web.de> [2019-07-31 02:36]:

I am not sure if that would be "streaming".

Majority of web browsers can open various video files, hosting a video
file is not problematic.

Everybody can host their videos and provide them similarly as YouTube,
just put a file on a web server and it works with any browser that
supports videos.

When it is necessary to enclose it in HTML that also works.

Jean

[Michael Heerdegen]

Jean Louis <bu...@gnu.support> writes:

> Everybody can host their videos and provide them similarly as YouTube,
> just put a file on a web server and it works with any browser that
> supports videos.
>
> When it is necessary to enclose it in HTML that also works.

Well, my problem with that solution is that I don't have any server, and
that I probably would also not know how to enclose it in html.

BTW, the video finally appeared on goblinrefuge.com. It took five days
or so, but finally it worked.

Michael.

[Jean Louis]

* Michael Heerdegen <michael_...@web.de> [2019-08-05 07:40]:

> Well, my problem with that solution is that I don't have any server, and
> that I probably would also not know how to enclose it in html.
>
> BTW, the video finally appeared on goblinrefuge.com. It took five days
> or so, but finally it worked.

Good solution!

Where is it?

[Michael Heerdegen]

Jean Louis <bu...@gnu.support> writes:

> > BTW, the video finally appeared on goblinrefuge.com. It took five
> > days or so, but finally it worked.
>
> Good solution!
>
> Where is it?

It is here:

https://goblinrefuge.com/mediagoblin/u/michael/m/leuchtkafer/

a video of a lightning bug in our garden (there is also a video of an
Emacs bug there).

So far this were all more test cases to see if this works for me, I'll
upload more useful stuff in the future.

Michael.

[Jean Louis]

* Michael Heerdegen <michael_...@web.de> [2019-08-07 09:03]:

> It is here:
>
> https://goblinrefuge.com/mediagoblin/u/michael/m/leuchtkafer/
>
> a video of a lightning bug in our garden (there is also a video of an
> Emacs bug there).

Is this Leuchtkäfer Emacs bug?

How do I invoke that?

M-x leuchtkäfer ?

[Michael Heerdegen]

Jean Louis <bu...@gnu.support> writes:

> How do I invoke that?
>
> M-x leuchtkäfer ?

You don't need it: just use M-x butterfly, it can do the same as M-x
leuchtkäfer, and more!

Michael.