Second book sprint starting - let's finish the manual!

The state of the book in FLOSS manuals per February, 1:

1. Introduction
1.1 What is Etoys - started
1.2 Features & Benefits
1.3 Etoys in the Classroom - started

2. Getting started (to be done)
2.1 Installing (OSes, etc)
2.2 Starting, Saving, Quitting Altogether
2.3 How to make a script
2.4 Mouse Buttons, how to select multiple objects etc.
2.5 Showcase

3.User Interface
3.1 Overview (toolbar, world, flaps, balloon help)
3.2 Projects (what they are, how to use them)
3.3 Halo - started
3.4 Toolbar - started
3.5 Sketching (the paint toolbox and canvas) - replace images, review
3.6 Viewer (includes variables & scripts) - started
3.7 Script Editor (expressions) - started
3.8 Keyboard shortcuts

4.Common Tiles - started, list with balloon help
4.1 basic
4.2 color
4.3 geometry
4.4 more geometry
4.5 pen use
4.6 tests
4.7 motion
4.8 fill&border
4.9 scripting
4.10 sound
4.11 observation
4.12 drag&drop
4.13 miscellaneous

5. Objects (needs images)
5.1 World
5.2 Supplies Bin
5.3. Object Catalog - Basic
5.3.1 Curve
5.3.2 Ellipse
5.3.3 Joystick
5.3.4 Particles
5.3.5 Playfield
5.3.6 Polygon
5.3.7 Rectangle
5.3.8 Round Rectangle
5.3.9 Scrolling Text
5.3.10 Slider
5.3.11 Text
5.3.12 Trash
5.4 Object Catalog - Connectors
5.5. Object Catalog - Games
5.6 Object Catalog - Graphics
5.7 Object Catalog - Just for fun
5.8 Object Catalog - Multimedia
5.9 Object Catalog - Scripting

Regarding images: I'm in contact with FLOSS manuals maintainer to have our images bulk uploaded. As soon as the images are on the server, we can start and add them to the chapters. After that, the first chapters are ready for reviewing. I think, the images are needed to do this, because they will help to understand the text. Reviewing should be done in regard to correctness and understanding. So there will be a mail to the list and all reviewers once we have the first chapters ready!

First review on December 8:

we created the outline for the book on etherpad: http://etherpad.com/YJASrU0SQ2

Rita will re-arrange FLOSS manuals according to the outline.

1. Introduction
1.1 What is Etoys
1.2 Features & Benefits
1.3 Etoys in the Classroom

2. Getting started
2.1 Installing (OSes, etc)
2.2 Starting, Saving, Quitting Altogether
2.3 Mouse Buttons, how to select multiple objects etc.
2.4 Showcase
3.User Interface
3.1 Overview (toolbar, world, flaps, balloon help)
3.2 Projects (what they are, how to use them)
3.3 Halo
3.4 Toolbar
3.5 Sketching (the paint toolbox and canvas)
3.6 Viewer (includes variables & scripts)
3.7 Script Editor (expressions)
3.8 Keyboard shortcuts

4.Common Tiles
4.1 basic
4.2 color
4.3 geometry
4.4 more geometry
4.5 pen use
4.6 tests
4.7 motion
4.8 fill&border
4.9 scripting
4.10 sound
4.11 observation
4.12 drag&drop
4.13 miscellaneous

5. Objects
5.1 World
5.2 Supplies Bin
5.3. Object Catalog - Basic
5.3.1 Curve
5.3.2 Ellipse
5.3.3 Joystick
5.3.4 Particles
5.3.5 Playfield
5.3.6 Polygon
5.3.7 Rectangle
5.3.8 Round Rectangle
5.3.9 Scrolling Text
5.3.10 Slider
5.3.11 Text
5.3.12 Trash
5.4 Object Catalog - Connectors
5.5. Object Catalog - Games
5.6 Object Catalog - Graphics
5.7 Object Catalog - Just for fun
5.8 Object Catalog - Multimedia
5.9 Object Catalog - Scripting

Appendix:
What is a Morph?
What do you get when putting Etoys-friendly off?
MIME-Types related to Etoys
What do you when you accidentally delete the toolbar?
Items In need of a Documentor (Not for final publication)
Items Someone is Documenting (Not for final Publication)

PART PIECES (should fit in one full screen Etoys book page, except tip)

heading 2 - part title
quick summary / balloon help (will be replaced with formal description)
formal description (third-object mode)
screenshot
see also: your mother, she never hears from you
(optional) colorful commentary or tip

Kick-off meeting December 7:

We used this page on etherpad: http://etherpad.com/YJASrU0SQ2

Have a look at the calendar:

http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=ZDRjYXMzM3ZuMTFybDNncnQxdHFiY3BncDBAZ3JvdXAuY2FsZW5kYXIuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbQ

We will have the next skype chat tomorrow, December 8 at 3 pm EST, 12 PST.

To start writing: read the writing conventions on FLOSS Manuals, then pick a chapter which is not edited by someone else. Starting by tomorrow, you can also help with reviewing.

The Etoys community will be creating the Complete Etoys Reference Manual, a document everybody is waiting for. It will serve as

the manual you can look up every part of Etoys,
the documentation of what Etoys consists of and
the starting point for other, more elaborate materials.

The manual will be available online (html and pdf format), and for print-on-demand. It will be licensed under MIT, so that we can also ship it within Etoys.

We will work on it for a whole week from December, 7 until December, 12. At this point, we are not planning a face-to-face meeting somewhere, so the whole event will take place virtually over the web. We will meet on an irc channel, and we will have regular skype sessions every day to provide the opportunity for a talk.

Here is the link to FLOSS manuals, where our work will be hosted: http://en.flossmanuals.net/bin/view/Etoys/WebHome

I recommend that you register with FLOSS Manuals before the sprint starts. On the first day of the sprint we will give a short introduction on how to use it. We also will discuss the outline, so the chapters you can see right now can still be changed, sorted, extended etc.

Help

To create images of objects from within Etoys:

turn off Etoys-friendly option in your Etoys (open World menu, help, preferences)
right-click object to get halo
from Menu (above) click export ... png
change name if appropriate
you will find the image in your etoys folder

To make screenshots using system tools (e.g. Cmd-Shift-4 on a Mac)

turn off Etoys screen scaling! Otherwise the screenshot will be blurry
the scaling option is in the World's halo menu ("display mode")

What do we want to do

We start with a basic structure for

Introduction (what Etoys is about)
Getting Started (short technical description how to install and start it on different OS)
User Interface (describing all parts of the user interface)
Objects (describing all the ressources you can find in supplies etc.)
Tiles (list of all tiles with description)

During this process we can actually examine if we really need all the objects we currently have in the Etoys image. Since this documentation will be a list of all things our users can expect to be working fine in Etoys, we should leave out objects we will not support in terms of maintaining. That doesn't mean we will remove it from Etoys, but we will not include it in the documentation.

Schedule and participants

My suggestion is to start the book sprint on December 7 at 1 pm EST, 10 am PDT, 4 pm Brazil, 7 pm CET. The main reason is that I'm available at that time I also prepare a schedule for the days.

List of participants:

Rita Freudenberg
Kim Rose (volunteers to be external editor/reviewer)
Alan Kay (volunteers to be an external editor/reviewer)
Karl Ramberg (volunteers to be a reviewer)
Scott Wallace
Bert Freudenberg
Randy Caton, author
Christine Murakami, author
Tim Falconer, author

For the sprint, we need to fill out different roles. When you put your name on the list as a participant, please let us know which role you think will fit you best.

sprint facilitator - Rita, Cherry
local host - normally the local person, but since we are online, sprint facilitators can take on this role, too
FLOSS Manuals Expert - thankfully, Anne Gentle from FLOSS Manuals offered to be available at certain times to help us
manual maintainer - we need someone who agrees to maintain the documentation after the sprint
participants - these are the writers
external editors / reviewers - it would be very helpful to have contributors, who read, edit and provide feedback during the sprint
designers / illustrators - every book needs a cover and someone should have a look on the page layout

For the schedule, I created a calendar in google. We will try out if this is a useful way to organize the schedule. The URL is here:

http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=ZDRjYXMzM3ZuMTFybDNncnQxdHFiY3BncDBAZ3JvdXAuY2FsZW5kYXIuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbQ