Re: Plans for the tutorials "for beginners" (now GTK, next the world).

[Jim Campbell <jwcampbell gmail com>]

Hi Marta,

On Mon, Aug 5, 2013 at 10:56 AM, Marta Maria Casetti <mmcasetti gmail com> wrote:

Hi from the Documentation Hackfest at GUADEC 2013!

Federico Mena Quintero, Meg Ford, Emily Gonyer, Seif Lotfy, Max Huang
and I had a very productive brainstorming session. So, this is what we
are planning to do:

0. We will keep on working on the idea of the "Tutorials for
beginners" in C (task: Julita Inca) _javascript_ (task: Meg Ford) and
Python (task: Marta Maria Casetti). Emily Gonyer: help for all.

But...

1. *Changes in titles*
The current titles use the "for beginners" _expression_ too much. This
can discourage programmers that know a language (or another library)
quite well from considering these resources. So:
* "Tutorials for beginners" (the index.page) should become "GATEway to
programming (GNOME Application Tutorials for Everyone)". (Thank you,
Emily!)
* "GTK Tutorial for beginners" becomes "GTK tutorial" (in each
language, to be followed by "[library] tutorial" in the future).
* "10 minutes tutorial" (see below) become "Sample applications" (the
rationale behind this is that if you are not able to complete the
example in 10 minutes you will feel bad and lose interest).

These sound like some good changes.

 

2. *What is in "Sample applications"?*
synopsis: The following are examples of applications for the GNOME
desktop environment
Example 1 (Text Editor)
Example 2 (Image Viewer)
Example 3 (Temperature converter)
Example 4 (Contact list - using Treeview) (Thank you, Federico!)
...suggestions welcome, both for simpler and more complex examples!

What will become of the sample applications that existed previously? I recall a guitar tuner as one application. Maybe those will continue to exist and I'm just not understanding everything here. 

I would also suggest a sample application that plays a sample audio or video file. Your examples here include text, image, logic / conversions, tree-view work . . . including some additional media samples would round things out nicely, I think.

 

3. *Making the tutorial more available*
Each "GTK tutorial" should have a downloadable version (a .zip
directory with .pdf of tutorial and .c/.js/.py files of samples)
(Thank you, Emily and Meg!)

Sounds good.

 

4. *Making the tutorial more challenging*
For each tutorial there should be an application to test knowledge and
earn "badges". (Thank you, Max!)

Setting up a badges reward system seems like a project that would require considerable investment of time and effort.

 

Now: plan of the attack!

I (i.e.: Meg, Julita and I) would start by working on the "GTK
tutorial", since we should refer to that in the "Sample applications"
(in each example we should link the "pieces of the puzzle" needed to
build the sample application), and that points 3. and 4. need the
tutorial to be completed. Description of the structure of the
tutorial: another email, or this one will become longer than "War and
Peace".

If anyone would like to write a first draft of the "sample
applications": thank you, and let everybody know what you are planning
to do via mailing list so that there are not two people working at the
same example not coordinating with each other.

Have you reached out to any groups to assist with writing these? We have some hackers who work on docs, but it would be good to involve others, as well.

Thanks for the summary, Marta. I hope I've understood your note and plans well enough. 

Jim