Re: Setting sReview for the Marseille and the Hamburg mini-confs

[Wouter Verhelst <wouter@grep.be>]

On Mon, May 06, 2019 at 09:38:43PM +0200, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
> Hi pollo,
> 
> I'll have a look at it soon. I'm currently back in Belgium for my sister's
> wedding, and we're flying back home to Cape Town on the 8th, so joining this
> meeting is going to be complicated. Beyond that though, I'd be happy to set
> things up. I'll have a look at doing so next weekend.

So, I did that (have a look) today.

Setting up SReview requires me to do these steps:

- Add the event to the database (done!)
- Review ~sreview/sreview/config.pm and update for the new event, in
  sync with the changes made to the database where relevant (done!)
- start sreview-web inside a screen session or something (done!)
- Parse the event schedule and add it to the database (see below)
- Create an event-specific template for opening and closing credits,
  or use the generic one (todo)

Unfortunately, the marseille miniconf's organizers went very very french
on me. There is a schedule, but it says "This schedule might be amended
until the last moment." Fine, so I was going to create something to
parse and auto-update the schedule in the SReview database. Except
that's just... not really possible? Or something.

- Individual talks don't have start and end times (only the sessions
  do). SReview assumes it knows when a talk is supposed to start,
  because the first cut for that talk is generated based on that
  information.
- The schedule is only available as part of a bootstrap webpage, which
  was written with no regard for structuring the tags: h4 follows h5,
  and all data is in a <dl> with no real link to the date and time, etc
  etc.

Of course it's possible to parse this (everything is possible), but it
seems like a lot of work that I'd prefer to avoid if possible. Does
anyone know who organizes the schedule? Can we ask if that person has a
somewhat more structured version of the data online somewhere? Bonus
points for some well-known format (e.g., penta xml), that would make it
easier for me to parse things.

While we're at it, does anyone know if the miniconf marseille prefers
any particular opening or closing credit thingy? If not I'll just use
something generic.

Thanks,

-- 
<Lo-lan-do> Home is where you have to wash the dishes.
  -- #debian-devel, Freenode, 2004-09-22