Group Alpha Minutes

Meetings

• Meeting One
• Meeting Two
• Meeting Three
• Meeting Four
• Meeting Five
• Meeting Six
• Meeting Seven
• Meeting Eight

Meeting One

• Date: Saturday, 18^th January 2003
• Time: 6:30pm-9:30pm
• Location: Cockcroft Building, Floor 4
• Attendance: All members were present

1. The roles of the members of the group was decided:

   Manager(ess)

   Nikhath

   Coders

   Ed, Mark, Viktor

   Testers

   Mike, Tim, Yuan

   Website, user manual

   Stephen

   CVS

   Tim

2. The interpretation of design brief was agreed upon, and discussed other issues of the project were discussed, in particular:
   • Who the end user is - the lecturer ('developer') or the student ('viewer')
   • What assumptions are to be made about the user - developers will know Java
3. The actual implementation of the design brief was agreed upon. There were two general ideas, presented by Viktor and Stephen. A vote was taken, and Stephen's and Mike's idea was taken as being the most appropriate.
4. Existing animated algorithm websites were looked at, and the advantages and disadvantages of each GUI were discussed.
   • http://www.seanet.com/users/arsen/avltree.html - very impressive, but difficult to implement and not easily extensible to other algorithms.
   • http://ranger.uta.edu/~cook/aa/lectures/applets/sm/e.html - very clear, but very basic graphics.
   • http://www.dcc.ufmg.br/~cassia/smaa/english/ - the race option was a very effective way of comparing the algorithms
5. The time and location of the next meeting were decided.

Meeting Two

• Date: Saturday, 21^st January 2003
• Time: 3:00pm-5:00pm
• Location: Room GS13, William Gates Building
• Attendance: Tim was unable to attend

1. The coders each gave an overview of what they have been working on. The final implementation was agreed, and the programming split between Ed, Mark and Viktor.
2. It was decided on which algorithms should be animated - sorting and string matching as the two main groups, and, if time permits, then trees and graphs will be investigated. It judged desirable to be able to race the algorithms.
3. Once more, the brief was looked at, and assumptions about the end user, the inputs and graphics were considered.
4. The time and location of the next meeting were decided.

Meeting Three

• Date: Friday, 24^th January 2003
• Time: 1:00pm-2:30pm
• Location: Room GW01, William Gates Building
• Attendance: All members were present

1. Nikhath and Viktor suggested one last time to consider having a scripting language and a parser. Heated debate followed. Steven Hand was called in to clarify the situation concerning the design brief. The original method is fine, so group have decided to stick with that.
2. Decided on final points of what needs to be completed for specification.
3. The time and location of the next meeting were decided.

Meeting Four

• Date: Monday, 27^th January 2003
• Time: 9:00am-10:00am
• Location: Room GW01, William Gates Building
• Attendance: All members were present

1. Nikhath presented initial version of the specification.
2. Outstanding issues were resolved.
3. The time and location of the next meeting were decided.

Meeting Five

• Date: Wednesday, 29^th January 2003
• Time: 9:00am-10:00am
• Location: Room GW01, William Gates Building
• Attendance: Yuan did not attend

1. Final draft of specification presented and passed around. Everyone read through, last minute changes, and spelling and typing errors corrected.
2. The next meeting will be the review meeting.

Meeting Six (Review Meeting One)

• Date: Friday, 31^st January 2003
• Time: 2:00pm-3:00pm
• Location: Room FW09, William Gates Building
• Attendance: All members present (plus Steve Hand)

1. Introductions were made, then a brief overview of the project design given by Nikhath. A general question and answer session followed, with questions aimed at programmers about the specifics of the code, as well as testing procedure details. Specification was given the thumbs up. Brief discussion about pitfalls to be wary of.
2. The time and location of the next meeting were decided.

Meeting Seven

• Date: Tuesday, 4^th February 2003
• Time: 9:00am-10:00am
• Location: Room GW01, William Gates Building
• Attendance: All members were present

1. Viktor suggested following Steve Hand's suggestion from the review meeting about running the algorithm and then watching the animation script as this may make other parts of the implementation easier. Decided to stick with the method as it stands because it should work - waiting for Mark to give the go ahead for the modules he has been working on.
2. Testers had a few problems setting up the testing directory on CVS - Got them resolved.
3. Discussed what needs to be done over next two weeks- detailed plan of action need from Nikhath, coders know what bits they're doing, testers have their testing plan ready to carry out.
4. The time and location of the next meeting were decided.

Meeting Eight

• Date: Thursday, 6^th February 2003
• Time: 9:00am-10:00am
• Location: Room GW01, William Gates Building
• Attendance: All members were present

1. Nikhath went through the detailed schedule for the next couple of weeks.
2. Coders discussed what's been done and what hasn't - there's a status spreadsheet up in CVS now, so group can track programming progress.
3. Testers have divided themselves up: Mike is testing animation package, Yuan is testing Widgets, Tim is testing AA.
4. The time and location of the next meeting were decided.