Long term: updates to the scripts to make it easier for task forces to use

[kimdhamilton]

For the IFTF to discuss.

Ted's comment here points out that task force minutes for the DID resolution group looks different from the main CCG group (and VC-EDU). Truth is, it takes some wrangling to work with these scripts if you're not using the default CCG tools.

Whether the IFTF wants to support task forces that don't use Jitsi is one question they should consider. If they do want to, I wanted to share my experience based on the VC-EDU task force.

The index.js and scrawl.js scripts are quite tangled, generating both the summary index.html and individual index.html off of the irc.log file (and they'll try to recreate, making it tricky in the current form to directly write .html), so I found it was easiest to force my formats into the irc.log format; e.g

<date>\t<alias>\t<message>

Within that message, the scrawl script will look for magic words like "Action:", etc.

Going that path of least resistance, I ended up creating 2 command line tools:

1. vtt2irc: takes a zoom auto-transcribed transcript and converts it to irc.log. I stopped using it because these transcripts are very noisy.
2. txt2irc: takes a simpler txt file that basically contains <message> and converts it to an irc.log the scripts are happy with.

More about txt2irc: note that, in VC-EDU, our task force members decided that we wanted the audio recording and a much shorter summary: decisions + resolutions. Because we are very "working session" oriented, most of our work happens in github anyway, so the scribe function is sort of a distraction.

I also experimented with a cleaner solution involving mustache templates, but it because too messy because of the above-mentioned script entanglement, so I abandoned it.

What's interesting is that @peacekeeper seems to have landed on this same pattern as VC-EDU did; i.e meetings are working session oriented. Most of the work happens in github, and minutes are only needed for very high-level things.

This issue is mostly to capture my thinking on the topic while it's fresh, so that the IFTF can decide how they want to pursue this, including if they want to not support this path. But because our two current active TFs seem to be using patterns where CCG scripts are cumbersome, I thought you might want to be aware.

If you find any of my utilities useful, I'll happily transfer them to the ccg org.

[TallTed]

Something seems to be missing in the No.2 txt2irc comment -- "basically contains _____ and converts"?

[kimdhamilton]

thanks @TallTed. Of course, markdown hid the stuff in the angle brackets, so I added ticks around to help. ___ was <message>

[peacekeeper]

At some point in the past, I tried to use the tools @kimdhamilton created for the DID Resolution calls (I think involving Github actions/workflows? Not sure). I remember this never worked quite how I expected, so I just continued doing what I have always done (= manually upload recordings, notes, and other materials to Github).

I agree it would be better to use the same tools and processes for all task forces, so I'd like to try again but would probably need some more information and training on what exactly I have to do.

[kimdhamilton]

Hey Markus, the scripts I'm mentioning are different and more tailored for task forces -- these should be much easier for task forces. But we can wait to see that the IFTF recommends before taking any action.