[kde-edu]: This KDE Science thing

[Stuart Jarvis]

Hi everyone,

(I subscribed so no need to cc me)

Some of you may have picked up on the stuff about KDE and Science that Luca and 
I have been working on (planet, Dot etc) and some of us who are interested in 
raising the profile of KDE science applications managed to talk to some of you 
at Akademy. Sorry for not getting around to contacting you as a list before, 
this has all happened pretty quickly. Anyway, we wanted to send an email to 
try and explain what we're up to and ask for your views, if you're interested.

There's one thing that we want to make clear to start with:
For what we would like to achieve, we see zero changes required in KDE-Edu

Here's the basic issue we're trying to address: there isn't a place to 
discover KDE apps that are useful in science and are not part of KDE-Edu. 
There is also no dedicated place to find out who else is working with similar 
apps to discuss issues. For the science apps in kde-edu it's fine as you have 
http://edu.kde.org/applications/science (nice, btw). However, there are many 
other science apps that are not part of KDE-Edu.

We held a KDE Science BoF at Akademy and came up with a few short term 
proposals:
- Set up a subforum on forum.kde.org for scientists and science apps (created, 
not yet publicised)
- Set up a mailing list (low traffic, coordination only - chat is for forum). 
We've since found out that kde-science already exists but is dormant since 
2005 so we'll just use that
- Have a webpage somewhere that summarises KDE applications of use in science.

That last point is probably the biggest overlap with Edu, since it would 
include also the apps at http://edu.kde.org/applications/science The way that 
we see it is that the 'KDE Science' page would also list those apps, but have 
links to further information on the relevant page on kde-edu (i.e. 
http://edu.kde.org/applications/science/kalzium/). For projects outside KDE-
Edu and the SC we'd link to whatever their webpage is.

Our consensus seemed to be that the KDE science page would sit best on the 
main www.kde.org - so it could be a page 'Science' under applications and 
probably  much like http://www.kde.org/applications/education/ Of course, this 
needs discussion in various other places (promo and web for example). Another 
possibility it to use Userbase, but this would be less visible to someone 
stumbling across the KDE website and trying to see what we have (though 
userbase would be a great home for additional info)

Any input on the above would be welcome :-)

We'll be discussing things on kde-science at kde.org mostly, so please sign up if 
you'd be interested. We'll be sure to discuss anything that could affect Edu 
here too.

One final question -  a few people have floated the idea of having a separate 
science module, though not - I think - KDE-Edu people. This is not something 
that's on our agenda. Actually, it seems like a bad idea - KDE Edu works well 
as it is - but we're not well placed to make that judgement and it definitely 
isn't our decision ;-) But if any of you were thinking of doing something like 
that it would be good to know as that could have some impact on KDE Science 
plans.

Please feel free to mail us with any questions: on this list, kde-science or 
privately. I (Stu) am also on IRC in #kde, #kde-promo and #kde-forum as 
jakamoko while Luca is einar77

Cheers,
Luca and Stu