(details also available via http://www.mindview.net/Seminars/BackTalkWorkingSession/) INTRODUCTION If you're a seasoned Zope, Python, or collaborative technology developer, you're invited to Crested Butte, Colorado between July 7 (Sat) - 10th (Tues) to help in a "working session" which has as a goal developing a 1.0 version of a "BackTalk" implementation for Zope. The working session is primarily a time for quickly iterating against an existing implementation, adding features and hardening as we go. If you come, you'll have an opportunity to meet other Zope and Python developers and have some fun hacking around on a neat project. This is *not* a seminar or teaching exercise, and thus is unstructured. We'll likely use some of the concepts from Extreme Programming (pairing, short iterations, etc), to keep us busy during the working session. Ideally, participants will have built Zope Products in the past. COST Free WHO WILL BE ATTENDING - Bruce Eckel (President, MindView, and author of Thinking In (Java|C++) and other books) - Chris McDonough (developer, Digital Creations) - You! WHAT IS BACKTALK "BackTalk" is an annotation and collaboration system devised by Bruce Eckel and Bill Venners. It is described at http://www.mindview.net/Books/BackTalk and http://www.mindview.net/Private/BackTalk . It is first and foremost a system which allows for inline commenting on prestructured content. It is close in sprit to systems such as Crit (http://www.crit.org) and Andamooka (http://www.andamooka.org). ** note: although the MindView documentation talks about BackTalk as nonfree software, it is describing the Java implementation. The Zope software produced as a result of the working session will be free ** BackTalk has two major design goals: - dramatically lower the bar for readers to provide inline comments on booklike content. - provide mechanisms for original document authors to fold contributions in the way of comments into the mainline document. IMPLEMENTATION GOALS Produce a Zope implementation of BackTalk which makes use of Zope-only features such as Structured Text (http://cmf.zope.org/doc/user/UsingStructuredText.txt/view), and the Zope object database [ZODB] (http://www.zope.org/Documentation/Articles/ZODB1). A prototype Zope implementation is (hopefully) accessible at http://serenade.4-am.com/BackTalkSandbox/ . If you have difficulty accessing the prototype, please let me know via email (it's a development box). IMPLEMENTATION HIT LIST (we might need you if you know anything about...) - BackTalk "back/forward" navigation system (DTML/Python) - BackTalk document end-of-document index generation (Python) - Table of contents generation (DTML/Python) - RTF-to-StructuredText converter (Python/C/whatever) - BackTalk-to-RTF converter (Python) - BackTalk-to-PDF converter (Python) - Javascript form elements (JavaScript) WHEN DOES THE SESSION START/END From: Saturday, July 7, 2001 To: Tuesday, July 10, 2001 session days begin at 9, end at 5. WHERE IS THE SESSION Crested Butte, Colorado (exact location in town to be announced) Directions and location details are available from http://www.mindview.net/Seminars/Locations/CrestedButte/CrestedButte.html HOW DO I SIGN UP Sign up via the registration system at http://www.mindview.net/Seminars/BackTalkWorkingSession. We have as a limit about 15 people. Hopefully, I'll see you there! - C