Re: GNU Guix Video Documentation

[Laura Lazzati <laura.lazzati.15@gmail.com>]

Hi!
I have some ideas, suggestions and questions, based on this two videos
that someone replied in one thread of mails when I was first getting
in touch with the community.
[1] https://media.libreplanet.org/u/libreplanet/m/practical-verifiable-software-freedom-with-guixsd/
[2] https://archive.fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/usingguix/
I don't know much about video editing in the technical aspect of if,
but maybe my ideas could help. I have been reading about some
concepts, however.
On Fri, Oct 26, 2018 at 7:02 AM Björn Höfling
<bjoern.hoefling@bjoernhoefling.de> wrote:
>
> On Fri, 26 Oct 2018 06:13:52 +0200
> Ricardo Wurmus <rekado@elephly.net> wrote:
>
> > While screencasts can be useful, I don’t think they are the most
> > useful tool to convey ideas.  Much of what’s special about Guix is
> > not the command line user interface, but the underlying ideas.  These
> > are better illustrated, I think, with the help of graphics as we have
> > been doing for years when introducing Guix to new audiences.
Here, the first question, I would ask myself is: what is the purpose
of the video and who the audience of the video is?
It is not the same making a general video promoting guix with it's
features and conveying ideas  to users/sysadmins/contributors - even
different kind of contributors - than doing so to people that are
already interested in using, applying guix, or contributing and want
to know the technical aspects because they prefer to have a first
approach with them and then read the documentation.
> I thought the videos are not for transporting general ideas, but to
> show the daily usage of guix. And that is using the command line. By
> showing common tasks the general idea gets transported (i.e. while
> showing guix package -i, guix package --list-generations, guix package
> --roll-back the idea of transactional package management is conveyed,
> without much abstract words).
When I first read the Ourteachy project, I thought that the videos had
to be technical, showing howtos, as Bjorn mentioned.
But for the first case (promoting, conveying ideas, to any of the
people the audience involves) maybe screencasting is more appealing to
the person that is watching them. It comes to my mind having someone
speaking, and showing graphics, diagrams, something like [1] - now I
realize that I have always watched screencasted tutorials and courses
and most of them in English. Translation in this case is more
difficult, it is true.
> > One concern is also translations and future updates.  Recording a
> > terminal session with screencasting software makes it impossible for
> > us to easily translate the video.  When command line interactions are
> > to be shown I’d prefer to have a way to reproduce / regenerate the
> > output in a different locale automatically, i.e. using scripts.
>
> When I thought about translations, I thought only about the speech and
> subtitles. Of cause you are right, the command line should be localized
> too!
Yes, I was thinking at first
Are you planning to translate them to specific languages, or to as
many as  possible, even on demand, in the future?
> > We can easily mix what amounts to a narrated slideshow with scripted
> > command line sessions (cf asciicasts).  This can easily be automated,
> > so that we can rebuild the video and update it with minimal effort to
> > prevent it from getting stale.
As regards the technical/howto ones, I was thinking also of something
like this. Some slides for the concepts with then cli sessions.
>
> When I said screencasts I first thought of handmade ones within well
> prepared (and documented) environments and a script/stage
> directions and script for automatic cutouts from the raw recordings.
>
> Then I thought of this puppet we have for qemu-tests: Is it possible to
> use it in order to controll the virtual machine, screencast it and get
> back certain events like terminal keywords in order to start/stop/pause
> the cast?
>
> This is my first time I heard of asciicasts. You mean the program
> asciinema and it's protocol asciicasts (https://asciinema.org/)? That
> looks cool. Can it be used to produce rendered films too?
>
> Automating the process as much as possible is a good idea. Can we get
> that bitwise reproducible? :-)
>
> [..]
>
> > We can host the videos on http://audio-video.gnu.org/ and embed
> them
> > on the Guix website, but the sources should be added to the
> > guix-artwork repository, I think.
>
> Yes, that site looks good, I watched videos from it in the past.
Where are all the videos already created for guix and guixSD, apart
from [1] and [2]  and the one on the official site?  Having this
answered, maybe it is clearer which videos are needed the most, the
ones conveying ideas, the technical ones, or if both, which ones are
more important.
> > The videos could also be published on Mediagoblin instances, but I
> > don’t know if there’s an instance for GNU packages.  GNU Guix does not
> > currently have its own Mediagoblin instance.
>
> We don't have a Mediagoblin package yet :-)
>
> Björn
Regards!
Laura