IRC Conference/logs/2010-01-24

From Open Siddur Project Development Wiki

Conference log for the Jan 24, 2010 chat. See the summary for discussed topics. Questions or comments should be directed to the discussion list.

(Note: this log has some chat from 1:00PM-1:30PM redacted.)

(12:59:46 PM) zeev [i=cf66664f@gateway/web/freenode/x-kkjsfkugllnkblry] entered the room.
(01:00:24 PM) zeev: hello all, boker tov from the west coast
(01:01:00 PM) Aharon: he zeev!
(01:01:17 PM) Aharon: hail from across the continent
(01:01:31 PM) realazthat: good move making it a bit later ;)
(01:01:34 PM) EfraimDF: good morning or afternoon to all  (depending on where you are) ;-)
(01:02:16 PM) Aharon: let's update everyone where we're at re: software developement and afterwards, re: texts and content
(01:02:49 PM) EfraimDF: do we want to hold for a few for latecomers?
(01:03:11 PM) Aharon: i'm ok with that
(01:03:16 PM) EfraimDF: (historically, we havent started until 10 after)
(01:03:23 PM) EfraimDF: unless anyone's in a hurry
(01:03:27 PM) Aharon: right
(01:03:34 PM) zeev: time for another cup of coffee then
(01:03:35 PM) Aharon: is anyone in a hurry?
(01:04:56 PM) yakovsh [n=yakovsh@static-98-140-248-67.dsl.cavtel.net] entered the room.
(01:05:54 PM) EfraimDF: hi
(01:07:29 PM) EfraimDF: while we're at it, why don't we make sure everyone knows who everyone is...
(01:07:52 PM) EfraimDF: if you want to introduce yourself and your interest in the project, please do so now
(01:08:10 PM) zeev: Hi all, I'm Ze
(01:08:20 PM) zeev: Ze
(01:08:32 PM) Aharon: i'm Aharon Varady, founder and co-director of the Open Siddur Project
(01:08:55 PM) Aharon: hi yakovsh
(01:09:03 PM) EfraimDF: I'm Efraim Feinstein, lead developer/co-director (or whatever).  I have my paws everywhere, but mostly, I've been working on the XSLT transforms and XML specs
(01:09:38 PM) yakovsh: i'm yakov shafranovich
(01:09:49 PM) yakovsh: i am here as an unofficial liason to hebrewbooks.org
(01:09:58 PM) Aharon: lovely!
(01:10:06 PM) Aharon: thanks for coming by
(01:10:11 PM) realazthat: Hi, I am Azriel, developer with the project, mostly on actually putting Efraim's transformations to use, and some designing and manipulating the XML
(01:10:40 PM) zeev: I'm Ze'ev Clementson, I wrote an iPhone Hebrew Bible app and am interested in helping out with the development of open Hebrew texts
(01:11:11 PM) Aharon: Are you in Israel, yakovsh ?
(01:11:28 PM) zeev: I'm currently on a slow dialup connection, so may drop off at any time
(01:11:40 PM) EfraimDF: ok
(01:11:49 PM) realazthat: zeev: those used to work too ;)
(01:12:24 PM) EfraimDF: ok I think we can move on to the dev update
(01:12:33 PM) zeev: when you're used to high-speed connections, dialup seems very fragile ;)
(01:12:47 PM) Aharon: software development first
(01:13:10 PM) EfraimDF: specs: not much change here
(01:13:13 PM) Aharon: last we met, we announced our demo
(01:13:29 PM) Aharon: and that demonstrated the following:
(01:13:48 PM) yakovsh: i am in us
(01:13:49 PM) yrosen[brb] is now known as yrosen
(01:13:57 PM) yrosen: back
(01:14:18 PM) SHF [i=18dade75@gateway/web/freenode/x-crbcpqclyhgwfalx] entered the room.
(01:14:51 PM) EfraimDF: ((hi SHF, yrosen.  We're doing an update on software dev; if you want, please introduce yourselves ))
(01:15:14 PM) Aharon: Our demo, demonstrated we have a functioning database, xml spec, and the means to display our xml
(01:15:27 PM) realazthat: I have been working an HTML/JavaScipt editor for our JLPTEI files
(01:15:31 PM) yrosen: Hi, I'm Yudi Rosen, was introduced to the project by realazthat. I'd like to assist in the frontend development, but havn't actually contributed anything yet.
(01:15:47 PM) Aharon: JLPTEI is our xml spec
(01:16:15 PM) Aharon: no worries
(01:17:27 PM) yrosen_ [i=63bf7b1d@gateway/web/freenode/x-dbppmbtprnqkhvyu] entered the room.
(01:17:40 PM) yrosen_: great, wifi is acting up again :\
(01:18:02 PM) SHF: Shira from Brookline
(01:18:32 PM) yrosen left the room (quit: Ping timeout: 180 seconds).
(01:21:02 PM) yrosen_ is now known as yrosen
(01:23:44 PM) Aharon: it's interesting and probably worthy of a little discussion. we've talked in the past about OCR and the use of non-commercial OCR products. our policy is to only use open source tech within our open siddur processes but to accept materials contributed that may have used non-free tech
(01:23:59 PM) EfraimDF: Not a problem
(01:24:14 PM) EfraimDF: text is text.  From our perspective, it's just a bad transcription
(01:24:17 PM) yakovsh: there is no open source OCR technology comparable to abby right now
(01:24:23 PM) yakovsh: we wish there was
(01:24:47 PM) EfraimDF: I think our policy position on that is not to have any part of the platform *rely* on non-free technology
(01:24:56 PM) yakovsh: ocr is not necessary
(01:25:05 PM) yakovsh: it is always possible to transcribe by hand :)
(01:25:09 PM) EfraimDF: We always have the option of going to manual transcription and it's not becoming part of our toolchain
(01:25:35 PM) yakovsh: i gotta go in a minute
(01:25:38 PM) EfraimDF: Same way we don't care if someone transcribes text on a Windows computer :-)
(01:27:17 PM) Aharon: btw, i'd love to see another chart like the one at cornell (linked above) for israeli copyright
(01:27:40 PM) EfraimDF: Basically, pre 1923 is OK no matter what
(01:28:06 PM) yakovsh: israeli copyright is 70 years
(01:28:07 PM) Aharon: The Tulane Center for Intellectual Property Law and Culture (partnered with the Open Siddur) should know more
(01:28:16 PM) yakovsh: after the date of death of author
(01:28:18 PM) EfraimDF: authors death + 70, I think
(01:28:25 PM) EfraimDF: which is now the same as the US
(01:28:27 PM) yakovsh: you can use JNUL in israel to check for date of death
(01:28:55 PM) EfraimDF: but it doesn't apply for anything pre-Berne's effect
(01:29:45 PM) Aharon: yakovsh 's comments segue to an update of text contributions so maybe we'll talk more about that first then software developments (after)
(01:29:45 PM) EfraimDF: the issue usually is works that are non-US and published between 1923 and 1963
(01:30:13 PM) yakovsh left the room.
(01:30:33 PM) EfraimDF: contribution update first, then transcription update?
(01:30:53 PM) realazthat: any questions on software?
(01:31:10 PM) EfraimDF: let's deal w/software after we sort out texts?
(01:31:19 PM) realazthat: ok
(01:32:15 PM) Aharon: great. we received two major contributions. one we can act on directly the other needs conversion help
(01:32:37 PM) Aharon: the first is Gabriel Wasserman's machsor for chanukah.
(01:33:06 PM) Aharon: transcribed from seder avodat israel, but with some changes and no meteg's. correct efraimdf?
(01:33:56 PM) EfraimDF: transcribed mainly from baer (seder avodat yisrael) w/some changes for minhag of Kehillat Adat Jeshrun in NY as observed by the contributor
(01:33:58 PM) Aharon: this buys us some time in our transcription of the seder avodat israel since transcription of a number of pages just turned into proofreading a number of pages
(01:34:32 PM) yrosen_ [i=18b6bcba@gateway/web/freenode/x-wmahhsfiaiwsdmpy] entered the room.
(01:34:40 PM) EfraimDF: He carefully transcribed the text, but not all of its punctuation
(01:34:51 PM) yrosen left the room (quit: Ping timeout: 180 seconds).
(01:35:08 PM) EfraimDF: where "a number" is pretty much all of shabbat davening
(01:35:17 PM) Aharon: The second contribution is from Juan Meija. the text is that of the Spanish-Portuguese nusach
(01:35:33 PM) Aharon: the format is native davka.
(01:36:01 PM) Aharon: we think we have the means to convert it without any loss of diacritical data
(01:36:26 PM) Aharon: but we need some help from someone who has Davkawriter to make for us a conversion chart we can use
(01:36:55 PM) EfraimDF: partway there on that.  I still don't know how to read DavkaWriter files :-)
(01:37:09 PM) Aharon: This is a project that should take a half-hour at most for someone with davkaWriter
(01:37:24 PM) EfraimDF: but we may be able to get around that with some careful use of find and replace and save as text
(01:37:30 PM) Aharon: we need help finding someone to take on this task
(01:38:36 PM) EfraimDF: Next on texts -- we still need help correcting the OCRs for the 1917 JPS
(01:38:50 PM) EfraimDF: The first half of Psalms is now 1/2 done
(01:39:04 PM) Aharon: so 1/4 done all in all?
(01:39:09 PM) EfraimDF: Yup
(01:39:12 PM) Aharon: nice
(01:39:18 PM) EfraimDF: But will go a lot faster w/more people working on it
(01:39:33 PM) Aharon: how many people are working on transcription including you and me?
(01:39:57 PM) zeev: EfraimDF: did you ever get a response on the status of the karaite 1917 jps digital copy?
(01:40:09 PM) EfraimDF: 3 people have been logging recently, we have occasional one-page transcribers but not many
(01:40:15 PM) EfraimDF: Never got a response
(01:40:52 PM) Aharon: tell me more about this 1917 karaite siddur?
(01:40:57 PM) EfraimDF: It's not a siddur
(01:41:08 PM) Aharon: no?
(01:41:10 PM) zeev: that's unfortunate - it would be much faster if you could copy/paste from an existing digital text and just edit that
(01:41:29 PM) EfraimDF: The karaite-korner website has a digital copy of the 1917 JPS (which they modified for the form of the name of God)
(01:41:45 PM) EfraimDF: We don't know its provenance though
(01:41:58 PM) Aharon: oh... right. and  i told you that karite Korner was Nehemia Gordon who I'm in touch with
(01:42:17 PM) EfraimDF: and since there's an extant claim over one of the digital transcriptions of the 1917 JPS, I'd need to make sure it didn't derive from that one
(01:42:23 PM) EfraimDF: before copy-pasting it into ours
(01:42:31 PM) Aharon: hmm
(01:42:47 PM) Aharon: can we draft a question i can pose to Nehemia?
(01:43:03 PM) EfraimDF: I already did.  I can forward you my email from a month ago
(01:43:27 PM) Aharon: Nehemia has been on a book tour so I'm not surprised
(01:43:40 PM) EfraimDF: ok, we can definitely try again
(01:44:53 PM) EfraimDF: ISTA also OCR/transcribed the Standard Prayer Book (Singer, 1915)
(01:45:21 PM) EfraimDF: And Ze'ev has gotten at least part way into an encoding conversion of it.
(01:45:35 PM) EfraimDF: Any progress there?  Questions?
(01:46:08 PM) Aharon: ISTA is the Internet Sacred Texts Archive
(01:46:13 PM) zeev: Basically, I've gotten to the stage where the singer doc is now well-formed xml (expanded macros, some cleaning up, html->xml)
(01:46:59 PM) zeev: For the next stage, I've got to break the book up into tei xml fragments
(01:47:26 PM) zeev: I'm currently trying to come up to speed on xslt 2.0 and tei and jlptei
(01:47:34 PM) zeev: bit of a learning curve
(01:47:39 PM) EfraimDF: XSLT 2.0 will definitely help you over XSLT 1.0
(01:47:53 PM) zeev: it would be very hard with 1.0
(01:47:56 PM) zeev: and messy
(01:48:05 PM) EfraimDF: the transforms would be painful in XSLT 1.0
(01:48:45 PM) zeev: yes, so I'm not attempting anything until I can get through the reading material
(01:48:51 PM) EfraimDF: Anything you've found unclear in the JLPTEI stuff?
(01:49:18 PM) zeev: haven't gotten to the jlptei stuff yet - still have to work through the tei material
(01:49:23 PM) EfraimDF: (I'm assuming the answer will be "yes")
(01:49:24 PM) EfraimDF: ok
(01:50:00 PM) zeev: problem is that I also have to do client stuff and can't devote a good block of time to this
(01:50:09 PM) EfraimDF: ok
(01:50:25 PM) EfraimDF: slow progress is definitely better than none
(01:50:26 PM) zeev: it'll happen, just not real quick
(01:50:52 PM) EfraimDF: Anyway, you'll get to add XSLT 2.0 to your resume :-)
(01:51:18 PM) zeev: yes and tei/jlptei :)
(01:52:16 PM) EfraimDF: Jessi Abrahams has been looking into input conversions of the haggadah text from the proof of concept to new-encoding
(01:52:37 PM) EfraimDF: They've also been proofread one more time, and a number of errors were corrected.
(01:53:27 PM) EfraimDF: Does that cover texts?
(01:54:39 PM) Aharon: we've had a few more people contact us regarding contributions that we should note
(01:54:47 PM) EfraimDF: ok go ahead...
(01:55:22 PM) Aharon: one of them we cannot publicly announce but it is big. the issue (as always) is clarifying issues of copyright
(01:56:07 PM) Aharon: in this case the issue is the contributor thinks the material is out of copyright at least according to Israeli copyright
(01:56:49 PM) Aharon: and this situation (explaining copyright) extends to a number of other communications we've had
(01:57:06 PM) yrosen_ left the room (quit: "Page closed").
(01:57:12 PM) yrosen [i=63bf7b1d@gateway/web/freenode/x-tbolfquxsgqoaltf] entered the room.
(01:57:32 PM) EfraimDF: It's almost like a FAQ <http://wiki.jewishliturgy.org/FAQ>...
(01:57:57 PM) Aharon: Making the case that the project of Jewish spirituality is furthered through collaboration and sharing is one we are now working on extensively
(01:58:20 PM) Aharon: and this was a major part of my presentation on the Open Siddur at Limmud NY last week
(01:58:33 PM) yrosen_ [i=63bf7b1d@gateway/web/freenode/x-gwzpzjidyyyfxhim] entered the room.
(01:58:46 PM) EfraimDF: << someone get duct tape for Yudi >>
(01:59:44 PM) Aharon: one outcome of the presentation at Limmud NY was that I was invited to speak re: the Open Siddur and collaboration at the upcoming Academy of Jewish Religion seminar for independent congregational rabbis
(02:00:10 PM) yrosen_: EfraimDF: sorry about that :p
(02:00:12 PM) yrosen left the room (quit: Ping timeout: 180 seconds).
(02:00:15 PM) yrosen_: I think (hope) it'll be working now
(02:00:23 PM) zeev left the room (quit: Ping timeout: 180 seconds).
(02:00:28 PM) EfraimDF: << duct tape -- solves all problems >>
(02:01:02 PM) Aharon: after our software dev discussion... maybe we can talk about other targets we have re: text and supplementary material
(02:01:06 PM) EfraimDF: << except for the ones only solved by double sided tape and epoxy >>
(02:01:19 PM) EfraimDF: ok
(02:01:22 PM) Aharon: heh
(02:01:55 PM) EfraimDF: transforms: Lots of improvement in the XSLT over the past month
(02:02:25 PM) EfraimDF: The current svn revision now does translation alignment, even between two different sets of concurrent hierarchies
(02:02:58 PM) EfraimDF: so, say a Hebrew text and English text have different paragraph breaks, both will be reflected in the aligned text
(02:03:28 PM) EfraimDF: It has rudimentary support for inserting instructional text
(02:03:32 PM) zeev [i=cf666ab6@gateway/web/freenode/x-iiqsalkswmzkszlo] entered the room.
(02:03:50 PM) EfraimDF: and what I think is full support for the 3-way conditional system
(02:03:50 PM) zeev: #@$@# dialup
(02:03:57 PM) EfraimDF: << wb zeev)
(02:04:20 PM) EfraimDF: my next mission is reintegrating the automated transliterator
(02:04:41 PM) EfraimDF: which is now coded, but completely undebugged, so I haven't committed to svn yet
(02:05:18 PM) EfraimDF: speaking of which, Raphael Finkel coded for us software to identify qamats qatan and sheva na in an undifferentiated text
(02:05:34 PM) EfraimDF: it's currently under testing
(02:05:50 PM) EfraimDF: http://www.cs.uky.edu/~raphael/linguistics/fixHebrew.cgi
(02:05:57 PM) EfraimDF: attack it with weird texts. :-)
(02:06:07 PM) EfraimDF: tell us where it gets it right and where it's wrong
(02:06:42 PM) EfraimDF: once we verify that it's working well enough, it needs to be integrated into the database
(02:06:59 PM) zeev: what language is it written in?
(02:07:02 PM) EfraimDF: Perl
(02:07:24 PM) EfraimDF: will probably need to be translated to XSLT or XQuery (or maybe Java)
(02:08:03 PM) EfraimDF: mostly, we wanted a working algorithm, and we think it's almost there.
(02:08:49 PM) EfraimDF: (translating it may require dusting off Aharon's Perl skills :-) )
(02:09:13 PM) zeev: was the algorithm something Raphael developed or was it based on something else?
(02:09:19 PM) EfraimDF: I think he developed it
(02:09:26 PM) Aharon: that is so cool. also building new XSLT, XQuery, or JAva skills
(02:10:14 PM) Aharon: it's probably not possible for me to give time to the programming side while working on the communications angle for Open Siddur, and doing Yeshivat Hadar :(
(02:10:17 PM) EfraimDF: (my Perl skills = reading Perl *if* it's not written by someone who uses too many Perl-isms )
(02:10:58 PM) EfraimDF: I can probably do it, I just might need to use someone as a Perl reference -- or, I could finally give up and actually learn Perl
(02:11:13 PM) zeev: much easier to write Perl than to read Perl ;-)
(02:11:38 PM) zeev: luckily, I've never had to do either very often
(02:12:09 PM) EfraimDF: There's more than one way to do it and they're all ugly code filled with arcane symbols
(02:12:22 PM) yrosen_ left the room (quit: Ping timeout: 180 seconds).
(02:12:32 PM) EfraimDF: but enough dissing Perl -- Azriel?
(02:12:41 PM) Aharon: getting this integrated is a blocker for us getting the transliteration engine fully functioning?
(02:13:32 PM) EfraimDF: yes
(02:13:45 PM) EfraimDF: well, it'll work -- it'll just give the wrong answer :-)
(02:14:06 PM) zeev: some of the time ...
(02:14:24 PM) benjaminfleische left the room (quit: Read error: 104 (Connection reset by peer)).
(02:14:25 PM) EfraimDF: what he said
(02:14:38 PM) Aharon: besides the transliteration engine, there's the encoding engine... and OSNAT... remind us what that stands for
(02:14:50 PM) EfraimDF: Open Siddur Network Application for Transcription 
(02:14:57 PM) benjaminfleische [n=benjamin@207-229-182-83.c3-0.lem-ubr1.chi-lem.il.cable.rcn.com] entered the room.
(02:14:59 PM) EfraimDF: we need a cool acronym for the encoding app :-)
(02:15:19 PM) EfraimDF: (( hi benjamin ))
(02:15:25 PM) Aharon: N-Code
(02:15:48 PM) EfraimDF: already taken
(02:15:53 PM) Aharon: or Nikkud
(02:16:18 PM) Aharon: or iNkud
(02:16:26 PM) EfraimDF: we'll have to backronym it later
(02:16:48 PM) Aharon: back to tachlis
(02:16:55 PM) EfraimDF: Azriel?
(02:17:05 PM) realazthat: yes?
(02:17:11 PM) EfraimDF: code update?
(02:17:37 PM) realazthat: we are working on a JLPTEI file editor
(02:17:47 PM) realazthat: which is also an encoder application
(02:18:01 PM) realazthat: it ties in very closely to recipe creation as well
(02:18:13 PM) realazthat: currently, its entirely in javascript
(02:18:18 PM) realazthat: and html
(02:18:22 PM) realazthat: all jquery
(02:18:32 PM) zeev: that sounds neat - is it an end-user tool or developer tool?
(02:18:39 PM) EfraimDF: for now, a dev tool.
(02:18:45 PM) realazthat: its a markup developer tool
(02:18:54 PM) realazthat: end user will have trouble understanding it
(02:18:57 PM) EfraimDF: (requires you to understand the JLPTEI file structure)
(02:19:13 PM) realazthat: only the simplest parts
(02:19:17 PM) realazthat: its quite easy
(02:19:19 PM) zeev: any screenshots or writeups describing it available?
(02:19:32 PM) realazthat: only on a white board
(02:19:33 PM) realazthat: heh
(02:19:37 PM) realazthat: it is in svn
(02:19:41 PM) EfraimDF: well there is some code in svn
(02:19:44 PM) realazthat: but its not fully functional
(02:19:55 PM) realazthat: h/o
(02:19:58 PM) EfraimDF: maybe a few paragraphs on the wiki wouldn't hurt
(02:20:26 PM) realazthat: http://code.google.com/p/jewishliturgy/source/browse/trunk/code/encoding-app/recipe.js
(02:20:40 PM) realazthat: http://code.google.com/p/jewishliturgy/source/browse/trunk/code/encoding-app/ is the entire thing
(02:20:44 PM) zeev: so, is it meant to be used to create composite docs by merging jlptei segments from different docs?
(02:20:58 PM) realazthat: part of it
(02:21:01 PM) EfraimDF: that's the "recipe" type functionality
(02:21:02 PM) realazthat: that part is not ready
(02:21:12 PM) realazthat: I can explain the design
(02:21:17 PM) EfraimDF: ok,...
(02:21:21 PM) realazthat: Efraim and I met when he came to NY
(02:21:30 PM) realazthat: we are very productive when we meet ;)
(02:21:48 PM) realazthat: each JLPTEI file has a text repository
(02:21:56 PM) realazthat: which is an unordered set of segments
(02:21:59 PM) realazthat: like set theory
(02:22:08 PM) realazthat: each one has an xmlid
(02:22:14 PM) realazthat: in addition
(02:22:20 PM) realazthat: each file has a sequence selection
(02:22:34 PM) realazthat: which has lots of ptrs to the repository
(02:22:42 PM) realazthat: and gives them order
(02:22:55 PM) realazthat: it can also have duplicate ptrs
(02:23:00 PM) realazthat: ptrs = pointers
(02:23:27 PM) realazthat: the sequence can also select from other text repositories
(02:23:42 PM) EfraimDF: from other selections :-)
(02:24:07 PM) realazthat: then there are views which select parts of the sequence, and groups them (but keeps the order)
(02:24:20 PM) realazthat: so we can have a sentence view
(02:24:25 PM) realazthat: and a parsha view
(02:24:29 PM) realazthat: and a sedra view
(02:24:33 PM) realazthat: and an aliya view
(02:24:37 PM) realazthat: and they can all overlap
(02:24:45 PM) realazthat: overcomming the limitation of xml
(02:24:52 PM) realazthat: what we have done so far
(02:25:11 PM) realazthat: is to begin implementing a visual representation of the text repository
(02:25:21 PM) realazthat: and the sequence selection
(02:25:30 PM) realazthat: and allow the user to manipulate them
(02:25:39 PM) realazthat: ie. add, delete segments
(02:25:42 PM) realazthat: reorder them
(02:25:44 PM) realazthat: etc.
(02:26:11 PM) realazthat: this will be the first thing done after pre-encoding
(02:26:27 PM) realazthat: pre-encoding will give the texts some semblence of JLPTEI
(02:26:38 PM) zeev: slow connection so I can't look at pages very well till I'm back home - is the javascript msxml (e.g. - requiring IE as the browser) or are you using some js xml library?
(02:26:41 PM) realazthat: it might make whole sentences into segments etc.
(02:26:48 PM) realazthat: jquery
(02:26:56 PM) realazthat: we don't like IE much
(02:26:59 PM) realazthat: ;)
(02:27:10 PM) zeev: cool
(02:27:13 PM) realazthat: jquery is cross browser
(02:27:25 PM) zeev: Yes, I've heard of it but never used it
(02:27:27 PM) EfraimDF: We try to make sure everything works in at least FF, Chrome and IE > 7
(02:27:41 PM) realazthat: >= 7
(02:27:42 PM) EfraimDF: (sometimes, we even try IE >= 7)
(02:27:52 PM) realazthat: as for XML manupulation, we are using Sarrisa
(02:28:05 PM) realazthat: which normalizes the JS XSLT/XPATH api
(02:28:11 PM) realazthat: across browsers
(02:28:14 PM) realazthat: which have them
(02:28:29 PM) Aharon: What about Xqlib?
(02:28:44 PM) Aharon: i mean XQIB
(02:28:53 PM) EfraimDF: not ready yet
(02:29:21 PM) EfraimDF: XQiB (XQuery in the Browser) is a great idea
(02:29:34 PM) realazthat: its a browser plugin though
(02:29:39 PM) realazthat: heh
(02:29:43 PM) EfraimDF: and is backed up by some code that comes with a huge "don't use this in a production environment warning"
(02:29:44 PM) realazthat: interesting
(02:29:55 PM) EfraimDF: it is a browser plugin, so it's not cross-browser either
(02:30:18 PM) zeev: Sarissa - Konq and Safari offer no XSLT/XPath scripting support AFAIK :-(
(02:30:21 PM) realazthat: it _is_ a cool idea
(02:30:33 PM) realazthat: zeev: there is a third party implementation in JS
(02:30:39 PM) realazthat: its just much slower
(02:30:57 PM) realazthat: so for safari/konquerer I would use that
(02:31:17 PM) realazthat: zeev: look at Sarrisa's docs, it explains how
(02:31:36 PM) realazthat: just haven't had the time to do that
(02:32:09 PM) EfraimDF: would be good to get it working in Safari at least (since that's basically the browser of choice for a lot of the Mac user base)
(02:32:49 PM) realazthat: http://dev.abiss.gr/sarissa/howtos.html#javeline
(02:33:04 PM) EfraimDF: but first let's get it working at all :-)
(02:33:08 PM) realazthat: yup
(02:34:04 PM) zeev: gotta go - good chatting with everyone - thanks for organizing this Efraim
(02:34:10 PM) EfraimDF: thanks for coming
(02:34:12 PM) realazthat: I haven't really done anything with the demo
(02:34:25 PM) realazthat: and we haven't gotten many bug reports
(02:34:29 PM) EfraimDF: I think encoding app is more pressing now than the demo
(02:34:41 PM) realazthat: sure
(02:34:56 PM) zeev: EfraimDF: presumably, you will publish logs of irc chat?
(02:34:59 PM) EfraimDF: Yes
(02:35:05 PM) realazthat: with some editing
(02:35:10 PM) realazthat: for yakov
(02:35:22 PM) zeev: thanks, bye all
(02:35:25 PM) EfraimDF: we may decide to excise some of the beginning :-)
(02:35:42 PM) zeev left the room (quit: ).
(02:36:05 PM) EfraimDF: We should list our goals are for Demo v0.4
(02:36:25 PM) realazthat: I think they are
(02:36:26 PM) Aharon: folks ask me two questions: how far are you along? and when will it be ready?
(02:36:31 PM) realazthat: unless u have stuff to add
(02:36:34 PM) realazthat: its on the demo page
(02:36:47 PM) realazthat: Aharon: put those in the FAQ wiki page
(02:36:55 PM) Aharon: will do
(02:37:16 PM) realazthat: Aharon: you wanted to discuss output formats
(02:37:28 PM) realazthat: Aharon: right now we only have HTML
(02:37:53 PM) realazthat: unfortunately, I was unable (but am still searching) to find a path to PDF
(02:37:59 PM) realazthat: in Java
(02:38:29 PM) realazthat: so for now
(02:38:32 PM) realazthat: we got XHTML
(02:38:43 PM) realazthat: there are also a few other possiblities
(02:38:47 PM) realazthat: ODF
(02:38:51 PM) realazthat: open document format
(02:38:57 PM) realazthat: == Open Office
(02:39:15 PM) EfraimDF: (and KWord and even MS Word 12 now)
(02:39:30 PM) realazthat: PDF vectors, ie. no selectable text, everything is drawn, file is huge
(02:39:38 PM) realazthat: SVG vectors
(02:39:43 PM) realazthat: any image format
(02:40:24 PM) realazthat: from the perspective of texts
(02:40:29 PM) realazthat: thats going much faster
(02:40:53 PM) EfraimDF: another possibility (which I really dont want to use) is XeTeX in the cloud
(02:41:07 PM) realazthat: or Open Office in the cloud
(02:41:07 PM) realazthat: heh
(02:41:09 PM) EfraimDF: (which will probably require us to charge for PDF output to offset costs)
(02:41:12 PM) realazthat: for PDF output
(02:41:45 PM) EfraimDF: (giving anyone who wants the option to install the transforms locally if they want to and run them on their own machine)
(02:42:26 PM) EfraimDF: XeTeX will give nicer output than OOo any day, so if we go by cloud solution, I'd rather output to XeTeX than ODT as the route to PDF
(02:42:27 PM) realazthat: its quite frustrating really
(02:42:45 PM) realazthat: there are many good PDF libraries
(02:42:58 PM) realazthat: none are good for everything we need
(02:43:05 PM) realazthat: some show the text backward
(02:43:23 PM) realazthat: some don't understand OpenType which is the type of font we need
(02:43:26 PM) realazthat: for complex hebrew
(02:44:56 PM) EfraimDF: lots of ways to get 50% of the way there. 
(02:45:53 PM) Aharon: we might need an intermediary stage for helping folk download text that we've proofread but which hasn't been encoded
(02:46:17 PM) Aharon: like an alpha-download pack
(02:46:24 PM) EfraimDF: if it's not encoded, it's on the wiki 
(02:46:52 PM) Aharon: yeah but it's not organized on the wiki except as page numbered images from our texts
(02:46:59 PM) EfraimDF: getting it off the wiki is doable but not trivial
(02:47:03 PM) Aharon: right
(02:47:13 PM) EfraimDF: neither for human nor computer
(02:47:19 PM) EfraimDF: (we also have some texts on svn)
(02:47:45 PM) EfraimDF: I don't have time to figure out the mechanics of getting that working
(02:47:59 PM) EfraimDF: if someone else wants to do it, I'm ok with it happening
(02:48:10 PM) Aharon: lots of downloads of reb zalman's siddur and i've gotten a communication from a hillel in philly that they're using the texts we've made available to create their friday night service
(02:49:20 PM) Aharon: so the more we make available that people can use the more we publicize and promote the project and its values
(02:49:44 PM) yrosen [i=63bf7b1d@gateway/web/freenode/x-jcegezfglfcqpjjh] entered the room.
(02:49:45 PM) Aharon: waiting for all the parts to come together before output is available doesn't sit well with me
(02:49:57 PM) Aharon: so long as we have outpuit that is useful
(02:50:01 PM) EfraimDF: as I said, requires someone to devote time to developing it
(02:50:09 PM) Aharon: ok
(02:50:40 PM) Aharon: i'll work on it
(02:51:06 PM) EfraimDF: it's a moving target, so it would need to be coded
(02:54:54 PM) Aharon: last week i transferred opensiddur.org to datarealm hosting with Tucows as the registrar. i just checked whois and domaincetre.ca is listed as the registrar.... there must be some confusion between the registrars?
(02:55:41 PM) EfraimDF: No idea
(02:55:59 PM) Aharon: azriel?
(02:56:22 PM) Aharon: realazthat?
(02:56:31 PM) realazthat: sorry
(02:56:33 PM) realazthat: was afk
(02:56:57 PM) Aharon: whois seems confused as to the domain registrar
(02:57:09 PM) Aharon: it's still isting the old registrar after switching last week
(02:57:20 PM) Aharon: any ideas?
(02:57:45 PM) Aharon: for a brief time it was working and the mx record was set too
(02:57:58 PM) realazthat: no idea
(02:57:59 PM) realazthat: heh
(02:57:59 PM) Aharon: now it's not and email is not functional
(02:58:17 PM) Aharon: perhaps domaincetre.ca grabbed it's registration back?
(02:58:43 PM) EfraimDF: whois lists "TRANSFER PROHIBITED"
(02:58:52 PM) Aharon: yeah... what's that about?
(02:59:10 PM) EfraimDF: unlock required somewhere?
(02:59:13 PM) realazthat: h/o
(02:59:45 PM) Aharon: azriel gave me an authcode that i shared with datarealm support... that's what got it switched at least temporarily last week
(03:00:04 PM) EfraimDF: check w/datarealm support?
(03:00:11 PM) Aharon: i will tomorrow
(03:00:43 PM) Aharon: but i want to know what's up with whatever user account we have access to at this other registrar
(03:01:04 PM) Aharon: could you send me the username/password to get into that site and see what's what?
(03:01:17 PM) EfraimDF: if you do, plz use an ssl connection
(03:01:24 PM) EfraimDF: not irc or email :-)
(03:02:09 PM) realazthat: done
(03:02:25 PM) realazthat: anyone have any questions about anything?
(03:03:10 PM) EfraimDF: SHF, benjaminfleische or yrosen ?
(03:03:25 PM) SHF: no, thanks
(03:03:27 PM) yrosen: nope
(03:03:35 PM) yrosen: I'll have to read the logs after
(03:03:35 PM) benjaminfleische: just checking in now
(03:03:47 PM) SHF: just following but more technical today than I could comment on
(03:04:50 PM) EfraimDF: tends to be what happens when the ones who talk are the coders :-)
(03:05:43 PM) EfraimDF: I'm going to edit the Demo page's v0.4 release goals
(03:05:53 PM) EfraimDF: and we'll see if we think they're hittable
(03:06:51 PM) EfraimDF: Anything else we should cover?
(03:07:04 PM) EfraimDF: or are we all hitting space-out time?
(03:09:12 PM) EfraimDF: I'll take that as "we're all hitting space-out time"
(03:09:51 PM) EfraimDF: What do you think of the 1PM start time? Better than 11AM?
(03:10:18 PM) SHF: Either is good if I'm home for the day, and bad if I'm out
(03:10:22 PM) SHF: so no preference . . .
(03:10:39 PM) EfraimDF: I think zeev (west coast) preferred 1PM. 
(03:11:55 PM) EfraimDF: Next open chat will not be on Feb 28th :-)
(03:12:55 PM) EfraimDF: Thanks for coming; I think we're closing down the official portion for the day (if anything ever was official in any way)