Swarm User Guide: New Interest!

[Paul E. Johnson]

A few people in the last day or so had great ideas about the Swarm User
Guide and so let me endorse your efforts.  I had begun to despair at the
magnitude of the project, and I'm delighted and encouraged that people
are going to contribute.  

Here is where the project stands now.  In Santa Fe last fall I wrote a
first chapter and since I've fiddled around on a few sections of chapter
2.  We started with the outline that Benedikt used for the tutorial
presentation last spring at Swarmfest and then I decided to rip it up
pretty much to put my stamp on it.  Roughly speaking, the first chapter
is an overview of Swarm, where Obj-C fits with C, and the second chapter
is supposed to be a macroscopic "in principle" view of how sims can be
designed and what they can do.  That chapter so far has sections about
"what you are supposed to learn from the Swarm Tutorial" and "creating
objects and managing simulations".  That chapter uses examples from
heatbugs, swarm sugarscape, arborgames, and possibly others.

The remaining chapters were supposed to be topical/library treatments,
roughly parallel to the library list in the user guide.
I can easily imagine chapters on

-random number generation (did Sven volunteer for this?)
-scheduling/activity (who but DDD is the ideal author for this?)
-collections (no obvious candidate is singularly qualified)
-managing guis (this is up in the air in Swarm itself, I have heard, so
don't know what to say).

I think there probably out to be a chapter on installation and hardware,
and I'm probably qualified for that.  I wish there were a chapter on
"repeating simulations," "using the data output features (swarm 1.4)"
and other handy topics.  The field is quite open for chapter topics and
such.

Here is the way this process has been working. Alex Lancaster did a
great job (amazing to me, actually) of setting up Benedikt's outlines in
a DocBook framework. They are now in SGML markup and the program "jade"
is used to convert the SGML into postscript, html, and whatnot.  I try
to write stuff in SGML using the DocBook format and check it into SFI,
where Alex then fixes and beautifies it.  If you are extremely eager to
see chapter 1, just to see what is going on, I bet he could accommodate
you on a private basis, but I don't think we are quite ready for mass
distribution.  

I have not put as much effort into the User Guide as I expected to
because SGML was unfamiliar to me and I don't like it much, but I've
overcome that and I'm committed to having a first and second chapter for
you to see by the end of february.  

The idea of a FaqManager document where people can punch in anything
they like is a good one, but until I'm proven wrong, I will go on
believing that very few people will spontaneously contribute.  Actual
User Guide will be generated only if specific individuals will step up
and volunteer to handle things and then actually do them. So we probably
ought to make sure which chapters we think are most important and then
get solid commitments for them.  That's about as pushy as I can get.

-- 
Paul E. Johnson                       email: address@hidden
Dept. of Political Science            http://lark.cc.ukans.edu/~pauljohn
University of Kansas                  Office: (913) 864-9086
Lawrence, Kansas 66045                FAX: (913) 864-5700

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