ubuntu-tour team mailing list archive

["K.de Jong" <k.dejong@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

I have written this text file about the progress that has been made
and showing things that need or could be done.
Feel free to comment or join us in the chat room.

-- 
Met vriendelijke groeten,
Keimpe de Jong

Hello Everyone,

Here is my summary for the things that happened over the past week.
It is a good list with lots of progress
and there is still plenty of things to do.
Some of this is on https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuTour/Todo

Get started
===========
At this moment of writing:
We have had 194 revisions and a few pending
I handcounted 26 unique people committing to bazaar
We have 82 people that joined the team.
For people that joined and do not know how to get started
read this: http://ubuntutour.org/contribute/branch/
If you have trouble getting this done, come join us on IRC
Start xchat and start the freenode / ubuntu server and
/join #ubuntu-tour
The website is http://ubuntutour.org
And some other information can be found at
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuTour/

The Code
========
The base code is functional.
This means it runs, it works but there are still
a couple of things that are to be done to improve it.
(DBUS, unpacking a tour language pack, 
$ LANG=en_GB.UTF8 && python ./ubuntu-tour/ubuntu-tour.py
This sets the language and runs the application
Change the language as needed.
We have had bugs and fixes too :)
Bug #643044: Chaging locale sometimes results in crash or use of English
Bug #638616: images dirs all over the place
Bug #636823: Links open inside the tour not the default browser
Bug #636805: incorrect tour progression
Bug #636618: When first opened, tour window shows redundant scrollbar

The Menu
========
As I have seen from the mailinglist
some want it at the top, others at the side.
Personally I don't care, but I think it depends on
screen real-estate. We should be able to fit
everything in a 800x600 resolution easily minus panels.

Languages
=========
English still needs some work, and there are topics not covered.
Some things are in the wrong order (about-ubuntu chapter 9 and 12)
Translations have been done for: de_DE(german), en(english), es(spanish), 
it(italian), ml(??), nl_NL(dutch), pl(polish), pt_BR(brazilian?)
I think english needs forking in en_US and en_GB at least.
I do hope some people will do french, russian, japanese and chinese,
providing a good base for launchpad translation.
I personally did all the dutch translations from english into dutch.
This was with help from google translate
and then correct it for text style and proper sentences.
I also had to change from formal to informal style.
Translation of tour.info files is limited to the first line.

Missing
=======
Missing topics:
Licence, Disclaimer, Printing, mm codecs, chrome, character map,
searching for files, tomboy, transmission, evince, brasero,
cheese, pitivi, sound recorder, back in time, qemu+kvm / virtualbox OSE,
gnome format, gedit, terminal, screenshot, about me, accessability,
bluetooth, compiz, keyboard, proxy, personal file sharing, power management,
screensaver, startup apps, windows properties, additional drivers,
bootup manager, computer janitor, disk utility, gparted,
language support, logfile viewer, login screen, network tools,
startup manager, system monitor, system testing,
time and date + location + timezone, users and groups

PNG, JPeG, SVG
==============
We still have not reached consensus on the use of png's of jpeg's
I see both formats being used in the repository.
SVG would best for scalability, but that requires conversion work.
JPG is already compressed and makes potential future conversion hard to do.
PNG is the default format making screenshots,
it also makes text better readable than JPG.
so PNG seems to be the logical choice.

Screenshots
===========
For the people that want to make screenshots.
Read this: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuTour/Screenshots
- I recommend installing virtualbox.
- Install the CD to a VM
- Run the updates
- Install the language packs
- Sign in the "ubuntu-tour" user with the language of choice
- Set resolution to 800x600.
- expand the virtualbox vm window so it shows gray bars around the vm
- now you can prepare each shot and take the actual shot
  from the host system move mouse out of the way when possible.
screenshots should have the following naming style:
000-gnomepanel-mainmenu-soundandvideo-rhythmbox.png
This allows for sorted images describing what they are.

Package Size
============
Having one language taking up 1MB,
means we can have a package of 300MB if all languages are provided.
Currently we are at an uncompressed 7.5MB, lacking topics and screenshots.

Video's
=======
If we could show video's that would be cool,
but if we have to make them for every language,
you probably can understand that becomes impossible.
If we are to make video's, they should be available
on youtube or vimeo, so the promotion of ubuntu continues.

Arrows
======
MadnessRed developed on screen arrows,
exacly as I had imagined them !
this wonderful thing can be user during the tour
to point users in the right direction.
Though I wonder, if it should use percentage screen mapping
to scale according to desktop, 
or should it be more like aimbot technology..

Installation CD
===============
To be realistic about it, ubuntu-tour should install english as a default
and install other additional languages,
when the user chose an alternative language during install.
This will most likely come from the internet,
as we can not provide all languages on the installation CD.
So this is a special requirement for installation from a installation cd.

User Issues
===========
There are plenty of people that get online to #ubuntu
and never even looked inside the help and support application
I know I never did until now,
it somewhat contains the same information as we are giving
but much more text lengthy, so why do people ignore this ?
it looks too much like windows help, dull and unattractive, 
with too much info to get things done quickly.
It has not been properly maintained either
as there are longstanding bugs, making it exactly the same
as microsoft help, not up-to-date and faulty.
I think that the need for scrolling
prevents users for reading it all.
So if we keep info to a minimum, and fit everything
to a single page they will not miss out on information.

UDS
===
I have signed myself up for UDS.
Unfortunatly I will have to join that summit remotely.
But for the progress we have made I will do my best to promote it.
and hopefully we will get some narwhal action.

Have fun!
Keimpe de Jong
aka UndiFineD