Original proposal

[Parag Baxi]

Parag Baxi
ghe...@gmail.com
ghee22 (AIM & Google/Jabber & Yahoo & MSN)
I have 40 hours each week to spend on this project.

I am not planning any vacations this summer that will interfere with
development. This may sound sad, but it's not; programming is still
fun for me and I hope it will continue to be for years.

Please describe any experience you have with:
o C/C++ development: wrote a rudimentary user-level remote file system
using ONC (Sun) RPC supporting open, close, read, and write operations
in C.
o Java development: implemented a site scraping service that grabs
weather information on request from accuweather.com. The interface to
this service is via Java RMI, so that programmers who would like to
provide users with weather information can obtain the necessary data
via a remote procedure call and not have to deal with parsing HTTP
data.
o Scripting languages (Perl, Python, Lisp, etc.): PHP & MySQL web
development
o Windows development:
o UNIX development: wrote scripts in CSH for system admin purposes.
o Web development: java development (MySQL & java), PHP & MySQL,
javascript

I am currently a partime professional videographer, previously a web
designer (including flash intros), senior of C.S. at Rutgers Univ.,
and a distributor of ubuntu to windows converts. I have spent 4 years
at Rutgers, with a one year break. I have already given this tour many
times, just never automated. my preference toward choosing this task
is personal and a little selfish; I want to confidently distribute
ubuntu to new users knowing that most of their questions will be
answered without my interaction.

My unique experience as a videographer taught me the importance of the
sequence of events. In order to capture our user's attention and to
hold it is solely based upon the first scene in our tour. It must be
flashy, yet soothing. It's message must be clear, yet inviting for
details.

Microsoft takes the following approach: When a new user is logged into
Windows XP for the first time, a icon in the system tray pops a
message, "Take a tour of windows XP". This is not the response I want
to take. I want it the tour to be open on the first login for many
reasons. We cannot take for granted our users will understand the
system tray being at top right. This tour is not for new features in
Ubuntu Dappy Drake; this tour is for all features in Ubuntu, period.
This is our first LTR, hence, truly our first release to the general
public. Note: MS uses Flash for their tour, our specs require GTK.

With Gnome being our default desktop, I have decided that Gnome's
Desktop User Guide ( http://www.gnome.org/learn/users-guide/latest/)
should be heavily reformatted and edited. Edited because although
Ubuntu is based on Gnome, it isn't Gnome. For instance, we include
Firefox as the default browser, rather than Epiphany. This tour's
content should be similar to the tour on this page
http://help.ubuntu.com/quicktour/C/quicktour.html. Unfortunately, this
is for Ubuntu 5.10. We can use Gnome's "what's new in 2.14" (
http://www.gnome.org/~davyd/gnome-2-14/) as a good reference. I'd
remove all the technical details such as performance issues. Again, we
are assuming the audience has not used Ubuntu before.

Although I'd like to hope MS users will be able to pick up Gnome
without assistance, I've seen in personal experience that it's not
very likely. Questions such as "where's: winamp, word, outlook, this,
& that?" arise often. It's not difficult to find a chart that points
out Ubuntu's "equivalents": http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/11684.html.
There should be an option in the tour, "Are you a MS Windows user?" If
yes, the tour would move to this chart but instead of the Ubuntu apps
being text, they would be links to the actual programs so the user can
right there continue their personal tour.

Now that the MS bashing earlier is over, let's look at what they did
right. MS has two versions, one for accessibility made as a webpage. I
agree with this tactic & the implementation of this should be fairly
simple. Our should be the same, using stills instead of videos. MS's
Windows XP tour is personalized for certain activities : (adjusted for
our use)

1. Start Here: Desktop, Icons (shortcuts), Taskbars, Gnome Start
Menu, Files and Folders, Windows, Ending Your Session & our version of
fast switching users
2. Safe Personal Computing: the use of sudo, separation of accounts
for different users, installing software, updating the system, new
kernel, proactive security, iptables, antivirus
3. Easy config: settings/preferences menu, accessibility,
translated versions of ubuntu, power management, network manager, user
management, add/remove apps, sabayon, screensaver
4. Digital Media: good & the bad. good: gthumb, totem, Rhythmbox
(list portable players that are compatible, podcasts), . the bad but
put a twist on it: restrictions explained ( MP3s, The Codecs, Playing
Streaming Video from the Internet, Playing DVD's, RealPlayer,
Macromedia Flash, , Macromedia Shockwave, AAC and iTunes Music Store)
point to instructions on how to install mp3 playback, . something for
the future is to modify easy ubuntu to only install codecs and have
users be able to install it if they are within a legal country.
5. Finding what you need: searchable gnome, searching with
nautilus, deskbar, blurb about beagle
6. productivity: openoffice.org 2 features, firefox, evolution,
gedit, gimp, installing java
7. staying connected: gaim, ekiga, x-chat gnome, sharing with
zeroconf
8. support: help menu, documentation & guides, online web forums,
paid support with canonical & other registered companies (link)
9. participation: bug tracking, providing translations, donating
money, wiki, answering in forums

At the end of the tour, there should be a list of places to go for
support. This is just to open their eyes to where one should go for
help. This page http://www.ubuntu.com/support has enough content to
fill in the last page.

As for a timeline:

May 23rd, 1st week: mock screenshots of actual tour completed in first
week
May 30th, 2nd week: submit screenshots to mentor and general public.
since most of the text content is already created, the adjusted
formatting of all text should be completed in a week. also all
screenshots must be taken (note: this is only screenshots, not video
shots of programs).
June 7th, 3rd week: use new mockup after mentor & general public's
opionions. work on gtk program, with only text up. our goal for this
week is to have the the menu of choices and each choice finished
June 13th, 4th week: work on flashy intro, this will take 2 weeks so
I'll break it down. this week will be design goals for flashy entrance
and all text completed
June 20th, 5th week: work on finishing touches for flashy entrance
June 27th, 6th week: test on dapper in 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024,
1400x1050 (laptop). note all problems. test in 32 bit mode, 16 bit
mode, test in live cd & in ubuntu installed comp. Convert program to
html with pictures.
June 30th, mid 6th week: submit for midprogram evaluation. program
should have flashy design, and all text for all windows expected.
submit both versions to general public.
July 4th, 7th week: lax week, fix all issues that mentor & general
public did not like
July 11th, 8th week: implement screenshots into tour
July 18th, 9th week: submit to general public, start taking video
screenshots using Istanbul
July 25th, 10th week: learn how to implement video screen shots
August 1st, 11th week: fix issues general public did not like,
implement all video screenshots. Start work on an HTML version of this
August 8th, 12th week: test on dapper & latest flight of Edgy Eft in
800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024, 1400x1050 (laptop). note all problems.
run program in edubuntu as well, submit to general public
August 15th, 13th week: fix all issues found
August 21st, end of 13th week: program due, submit

As a sidenote, I am planning on applying to MythTV's Weather plugin.
This is a secondary choice, however. I hope to work with you, Ubuntu,
with this tour as I am very passionate about helping new users to the
features of Ubuntu.