changeset 9:355768a1e154

Code site, autumn school etc

--- a/cannam.tex	Thu Sep 22 11:12:34 2011 +0100
+++ b/cannam.tex	Thu Sep 22 12:24:57 2011 +0100
@@ -194,18 +194,63 @@
 
 \subsection{Facilities and Tools}
 
-introductory note here: the barrier is that people lack facilities
-or don't use them
+% this is awfully fuzzy
+
+Researchers will not make use of version control and collaborative
+development facilities if they are unaware that they exist.  An
+informal poll of attendees at the Autumn School (section
+\ref{sec:autumnschool}) showed that few of them were aware of such
+facilities being provided by their institutions, and those attendees
+who tried to discover after the course what facilities their
+institution could provide all reported failure.  This is consistent
+with the experience in our own group, where version control has been
+used sporadically and set up in an ad-hoc fashion, and also with
+feedback provided to our survey.  Attendees at the Autumn School also
+reported difficulty getting started with the complex user interfaces
+available for version control.  Nonetheless, version control was
+identified by attendees in debriefing as the most compelling subject
+taught during the course, suggesting that lack of awareness may be the
+main barrier to uptake.
 
 \subsubsection{SoundSoftware Code Site}
 \label{sec:codesite}
 
+We provide the SoundSoftware code site
+(http://code.soundsoftware.ac.uk/) as a facility which audio
+and music researchers in the UK may use for collaborative development
+and as a version control and code hosting facility, if their
+institution is unable to help them or if they have a need to work with
+researchers at other institutions who would not be permitted access to
+their institution's facilities.  Of course the existence of this site
+also addresses the shortcomings in our own group's former ad-hoc use
+of version control.  The site is implemented using a custom version of
+the Redmine project management application, with Mercurial version
+control.  Any UK researcher in the field is permitted to register and
+to start their own collaborative projects using the version control,
+wiki, issue tracking, and other services provided.
 
-(Public and private projects; Linking publications with code; Tracking external projects)
+Four aspects of our code site make it potentially more useful to audio
+and music researchers than a generic site such as SourceForge or
+Github:
 
-\subsubsection{Version control and EasyMercurial}
+\begin{enumerate}
+\item {\em Focus} --- We believe that the focus of our site on audio and music research increases the likelihood of software relevant to researchers being found and reused;
+\item {\em Public and private projects} --- Researchers can use this site for code management even for projects they do not intend to publish, or can start a project privately and open it later;
+\item {\em Linking publications with code} --- Users can associate publication records with code projects to make it easy for future researchers to find code when searching for a publication;
+\item {\em Tracking external projects} --- Researchers who use code hosting or project management facilities elsewhere can also make use of our site as a nexus for relevant projects, as the site does not require that code is hosted with it and can also track external repositories.
+\end{enumerate}
+
+Although we believe these features make the site useful, our goal is
+to encourage researchers to make best use of whatever facilities are
+available to them.  We offer it simply as one alternative.
+
+\subsubsection{EasyMercurial}
 \label{sec:easyhg}
 
+Our attempt to address the difficulties faced in learning version
+control user interfaces is EasyMercurial, an application we developed
+based on existing work [citation needed].
+
 \subsection{Platforms and Reuse}
 
 introductory note here: the barrier is that software that is published
@@ -222,8 +267,7 @@
 \cite{vamp} and implemented it in Sonic Visualiser and the subsequent
 Sonic Annotator \cite{cannam2010}.  The Vamp system has since been
 used by the Centre and others with some success for publishing working
-methods.  We have been able to take advantage of this system in
-several cases such as the following.
+methods.
 
 \subsubsection{Hands-on Help} % porting, etc