March 2024 - This site, and Kamaelia are being updated. There is significant work needed, and PRs are welcome.

Project Task Page: Whiteboard

Status: Stasis - This tool is currently useful, so no effort allocated, future work possible however
Current Developers: na
Current "inflight" dev location: /Code/Python/Kamaelia/Tools/Whiteboard
Start Date: 16 Apr 2006
Expected End Date: n/a
End Date: n/a
Date this page last updated: 3 December 2006
Estimated effort so far: 15 (estimate based on logs)

Description

This whiteboard application is designed to allow two or more people using tablet PCs (or similar devices) to collaborate effectively at a distance, and also to make good use of the fact they're using tablet PCs.

Two users should be able to talk and scribble to each other. It should not matter who starts up first allowing connections in either direction. It would be useful if any client could be a server. Having a history is also useful and how this can be used is worth exploring.

This tasks sits in the context that the Kamaelia team inside the BBC (Michael/Matt) is now split site, and a tool was needed to assist with collaboration. Since Kamaelia is network friendly, this tasks started opportunistically - to see if something worthwhile could come of this. This has turned out to be an extremely useful tool since then.

Direct benefits as a result of this task:

Current issue:

Inputs

This section is largely about WHO has influenced this task to do WHAT, and where possible WHY. It is also about WHO to contact with regard to this task to influence what's going on.

Task Sponsor: Michael/Matt

Task Owner: Matt (varies)

Developers involved in the task at some point

Users:

Interested third parties

Requirements

The people listed here should be real people. Unless you have agreement however, this this should be their initials rather than name.

Relevant Influencing factors:

Outputs

Expected

Actual

Code sits here:

Documentation

Event

Realistic possibilities arising as a result of activity on this task

Two potentially highly interesting possibilities arising as a result of work on the whiteboard were discussed in Summer of Code 2006 project applications:

Other

Tasks that directly enable this task (dependencies)

Sub Tasks

Task Log

Written after the fact, so only key highlights

This is a list of time indexed day to day item. There should ideally be an entry here every time you work on this task. Ideally the time taken relating to each entry should be listed as well, preferably in man days, down to 1/4 day granuarity. (ie 2 hours). Sanity is expected to prevail when noting this down. They should be annotated by who made the entry, when, and any status changes.

When a task is running, then this is where most updates will occur.

Please put Output in bold prior to any entries where an output was produced
Please put Task status changed in bold when the entry relates to a task status change.
Example entries:

Discussion

The whiteboard was started to solve a particular problem caused by split site working. History & Pagination was added due to a need for these features at OSCON for note taking. As a result the whiteboard has a very minimalist UI to keep out of the way of the user.

-- Michael Sparks, December 3rd 2006