Last group meeting ever

Date	24/5/11
Away	Phil
Agendas Raised	A few bugs within the code
Tasks Assigned	Jun and Phil Ø  Fix any small bugs that may arise from people testing between now and Thursday Tim Ø  Prepare for the presentation next Friday Everyone Ø  Get their diaries up to date
Summary	Tonight was a quick meeting to get everyone together before our project is due by the end of the week. Phil has mention that he couldn’t make it which was fine as the rest of the group was there. This meeting was mainly about where we are currently at and all the loose ends that need to be tied before Thursday which is when we will hand in our project and it is all over. Jun and Phil have been working very well recently fixing any small bugs that have appeared over the past few days from people testing and running the program. There had been a small change to the drawing function by Phil and Jun is working to get this finished. To the normal user this problem isn’t visible however to Jun he knows what is wrong and will fix it. Once the program is done and bugs have been corrected an installer will be made for the program. This installer will hopefully direct people to get XNA as well or it will include and individual XNA installer as well. Overall everyone is happy with the end result. Sure like many other programs there were ideas that were originally going to be implemented however time was a factor and these couldn’t be done. The most significant within our project would have been the ability for users to commit their saved knots to an online database. This ability is implemented in the code of the database by not within the code of the program. We couldn’t get this done because of time being the biggest issue. However besides this most of the things we had hoped for the program have come true with a lot of hard work done by all group members. So for the final time that is the last group meeting, it has been a fun and good learning experience by everyone.

Date	19/5
Away	Jun Phil
Agendas Raise	Ø  Things that need to be finished Ø
Task assigned	Fix the few errors within the program. Everyone to read over the user and technical manuals and add information where they think is needed
Summary	Today’s meeting as a group was a little disjointed as Jun and Phil were busy and Luke was buys till 1:30. So what happened was Allen and Tim talked about what needs to be done to get the program and documentation done by next week. Once Allen left Jernej showed and then Tim and Jernej talked about the same thing. After this Tim waited around to 1:30 to talk to Luke and tell him where we are currently at. Nothing new was raised it was just a matter of telling people what needs to be done by next week because we received an email from DFS saying that the entire project (user manual, technical manual, program , diaries and website) are all due by the end of next week. We are in a good position to get this done but it is kind of hard when everyone has their subjects requiring assignments at the same time. The best way for us to finished this project as strong as we started is by time delegation and task delegation. So the tasks for the next week are as follows: Jun , Phil , Allen – Work out the problem associated with the program in terms of the load function. Tim – Website, motivate people to get things done. Jernej – Proof read the documentation and fix any errors. Everyone – add to the documentation where they feel fit and get their diaries up to date.

Date	12/5/11
Away	-
Agendas Raised
Tasks Assigned	Tim & Jernej Ø  Work on the documentation, user and tech Jun Ø  Technical diagrams Phil and Allen Ø  Get together to implement the database aspect of the program
Summary	Today was about showing Luke a prototype that would be marked. Although he has seen our program many times and also seen it progress we still took this seriously and presented the program as if he hadn’t seen it before hand. Luke seemed generally impressed by the program and the current look of it with a splash screen and the current GUI. There were other parts we could add to the program however these will all take a back seat until we can get the load and save function working with the database. Some of the things that could be included were: Ø  Include a stats button to give the user stats about the knot they are creating Ø  Add a tutorial section that allows the program to come with pre done knots that the users can learn from These both seem like reasonable ideas however they aren’t the main focus at the moment. As for the documentation this is coming along nicely with the technical manual progressing and the user manual as well. Its difficult to fully complete the user manual at this stage as the whole program isn’t finished yet. However this will be done very shortly.

Date	5/5/11
Away	Jernej
Agendas Raised	Ø
Tasks Assigned	Tim Ø  Generate new button and documentation (the buttons haven’t been done yet because he has been busy) Jernej Ø  Work on the documentation Phil Jun Allen Ø  Get together to work out the database aspect of the program for when a user wishes to save a knot or load a knot either from local directory or from internet
Summary	Today was about showing the progress that has been made with the program since we had last meet. Jun had been asking for help from Casey Chow the uni’s resident graphics guru to help solve the problem of the rotation issue when the knot is being generated. Now this has been fixed and makes the program look a lot better when the knots are being rendered. Before hand when the render was unable to adjust for curves so part of the knot looked flat, however this is not the case. Other things that were spoken about today were the minor changes that Phil has made to the program which included: Ø  A reset camera button which allows a the user to have the camera reset to the default view incase they have moved the know to far out of view. Ø  The load/save dialogue box , before the load save buttons didn’t do much now a dialogue box appears allowing for the user to be able to chose where they want to save their file and the name they wish to give the file. At the moment this is just the graphical aspect, however once Allen and Phil get a spare moment they will work together to integrate the database functionality with the code. Ø  Other minor changes just as colour and the placing of various buttons Overall things are still moving along nicely. It is the plan to be able to have the code finished by the end of next week. This then gives us a solid two weeks to get the documentation up to standard and up to date.

Today there was no group meeting to Luke having a exam for a subject he is teaching at 11:30 and with the late notice it was easier to call of the group meeting.

However Tim went  to see Luke to show him the progress that had been made since he had last seen the program. Here they discussed the simple changes that were still going to be made to the program such as the look of the buttons and adding more functionality. Luke also suggested that the Splitscreen Fullscreen and Wireframe buttons across the top be spaced away from the first three because these contained other commands. Overall Luke was happy with what has been done to date and thinks as a group that we are on track.

As for the rest of the group everyone knows what they are doing at the moment and communication for this week has mainly been through emails. Jun as also brought in the help of Casey Chow to help with the way the string renders. Previously the string was rendering fine however is that was to be a curve within the string the rendering wouldn't factor this in and make that curve look flat.

Casey was helpful enough to give Jun some source code which he has used to help solve the problem of the rendering. The picture below shows the most current state of the rendering but the highlighted areas are parts where the program seems to be over correcting to much.

Date	21/4
Away	Jernej Allen
Agendas Raise	Ø  Possible things to add to the program Ø  Deciding what is needed and what could be added
Task assigned	Fix the few errors within the program. Add to the program Everyone continue to work on their assigned tasks Jun and Phil work together to get the graphics right on the rotation of the string
Summary	Todays meeting consisted of only Tim, Jun and Phil and Phil demonstrating the progress with the GUI he has made. First impression makes the most and Phil had done this successfully with the progress he has made. The GUI buttons aren’t the new ones but the idea is still there. The GUI looks good and has some new features. Phil had taken it upon himself to add a tabbed tool bar. This allows for different commands to be categorised under the categories across the top. For example the three main categories at the moment are the edit, snap shoots and camera. When a user in either of these modes different buttons appear and only these certain actions can be achieved. This is great because it doesn’t overcrowd the GUI with to many buttons and gives the user better control of the system After Phil’s demonstration there was discussion as to what could be changed and what should be added. Phil had made some point he want to run past the group. These points included little semantics such as changing the colour and width of certain areas. To more complex issues such as when pressing the select button and selecting a point, then changing buttons and coming back the selection button keeps a memory of the point that was selected. These point made by Phil were great because he is definitely thinking in more detailed and about the end user. As we discussed through these point it was obvious that a few of these could be implemented but they will only be implemented if time isn’t a factor when we get around to them. They are some good points but not necessary for the program to run and run well. Overall everyone in the group seems happy with the progress that has been made and everyone is doing their work and moving along nicely. At the moment it seems like we are on track and then shift our focus to mainly the documentation.

Date	31/3/11
Away	Jernej
Agendas Raised	Ø  Buttons need to be fixed. People feel like the buttons could be better. Ø  Access to the labs Ø  Make minor changes to the program
Tasks Assigned	Tim Ø  Document and continue to test the program Jernej Ø  Create new buttons Ø  Diary Ø  Create some example knots Phil Ø  Continue to work on the GUI Allen Ø   Diary Ø  Help out where needed Jun Ø  Updating the kernel part of the program Ø  Fix any slight changes that may need to be made
Summary	Overall today was about showing Luke what had changed within the program since he had last seen it. Phil had implemented the some buttons of the GUI to the program but Luke and the rest of the group through like the buttons could be better and more suited to the example given above. Whilst Luke was fiddling with the program he also raised some functionality issues that could be changed around such as when trying to move a point it remembers where the initial positions of the point and once you wish to move to the left or right you need to go past this position to be able to change directions. Luke thought that it would be more user friendly is the user moved the mouse left the point moves left and same when the user moves the mouse right instead of having to move the point so far before the direction changes. Other discussion raised was with the snapshot functionality of the program. Luke suggested that it could be usefully to have this function run automatically in the background taking a snapshoot of what the user has done every X amount of time. Others agreed with this decisions however it the problem was then raised what if the user starts to create a knot then get side tracked. The program would continually be taking and saving snapshots of the knot slowly eating up the user’s hard drive space. The last point made was that if anyone doesn’t have a lot to do they could spend some time and create examples or demo pictures of proper knots. These examples could be used for the website and possibly on the poster that is due latter in this semester.

Date	24/3
Away	Jernej
Agendas Raise	Ø  Possible things that could be changes Ø  Bugs within the code
Task assigned	Continue from previous tasks
Summary	Today’s meeting was mainly a discussion amongst the group. Luke showed up for a bit to see if things are progressing which they are, He was happy and left. The main aim of today was a discussion between Phil and Jun. Phil , at the moment is implementing the GUI side of the program. He has found as he works and adds more to the code some errors arise in sections of the code. He felt like he needed to discuss this with Jun to see if he should change massive sections of the code before implementing and GUI aspects. Some changes are minor like making the code more Object Orientated then there are other changes which are more time consuming. These two discussed it with input from Allen and Tim as to which path was better to take. At the moment the main concern is to get the GUI in place and test the program. Once this is done, then section of the code can be rewritten to make it more understandable. As a group we realise that this is not a good practice but we would rather have something that function with some slightly messy code then have something that doesn’t function at all with neat code. As for the majority of the group everyone is continuing with the tasks they have been assigned. Most are moving to testing the program to find some bugs that may occur when certain scenarios are tried. Jernej is still working on the graphics for the buttons.

Date	17/3/11
Away	-
Agendas Raised	Testing methods GUI layout
Tasks Assigned	Tim Ø  Test the program Ø  Document Jernej Ø  Graphics for the buttons Ø  Test the program Ø  Diary Allen Ø  Work on the database aspect of the program Ø  Diary Phil and Jun Ø  Work in tandem on the GUI Ø  Contain to update the Kernel part of the program
Summary	Today everyone showed and it mainly about showing the progress that had been made with the GUI to Luke. There wasn’t a lot to show but there was deffinately a GUI slowing taking place. Phil demonstrated to the group what he had done and the direction he was thinking of taking to finish what he had started. This was good because the it raised a discussion in the group and some brainstorming was done as to whether we should move in one direction or another direction. Decisions made were: Ø  What style of buttons should be used Ø  The graphics of the buttons Ø  The layout of the GUI – this had been done previously but that was back when we thought we could use Win Form Ø  Seeing if we could get the program into certain states or modes. For example editing mode would only allow the user to add , remove, redo and undo knots. A discussion about testing was also made. Phil made the idea of creating a file which contains a list of all the limitations that have been tested on the program. This way everyone can see what has been tested on the program and if these tests cause any issues. Overall today was a good meeting and a lot was discussed as to where we will take the interface and ways to sort out possible bugs that are laying within the code.

Date	14/3/11
Away	Jun, Allen, Jernej
Agendas Rasied	Ø  Phil’s Progress on the GUI Ø  Peoples concerns
Tasks Assigned	People are still continuing with what they have been assigned during the meetings last week. At the moment more focus is being placed on the actual program itself and ways to improve it, this is good but it means that the documentation is kind of taking a back seat at the moment.
Summary	Today only Phil and I (Tim) showed up for this meeting which was OK. There is still progress being made however there is concern from other group members that this progress isn’t going along fast enough and people may be getting off track. Jun had expressed his concerns that to me that we needed to continue to remind Phil to get on track and get the GUI working and implemented as quick as possible. I told Phil this in the possible way that I could without trying to raise conflict within the group. Conflict is the last thing we want at this point of the project. Phil was quite understanding with this because he knew he did fiddle around to much last semester when he was assigned a task. He had told me that he has been making progress with the GUI and hopefully would be near done with it by Thursday if not the weekend at the latest. Hopefully this is early enough for other group members. This may sound like Phil hasn't done anything for the group but this is quite the opposite. Phil has worked hard over the break but was just over whelmed when he got back to uni that was the first time he had seen the code that Jun had written. Not being able to spend 24/7 towards the project he had taken Phil sometime to go through the code and throughly understand just what each function was trying to achieve. Phil was even rewritting the code to make it easier to understand and taking out the repetitiveness in the code and just adding simple functions

Date	10/3/11
Away	Jernej
Agendas Raise	Ø  Possible ways to test the program Ø  User interface ideas / possibilities
Task assigned	Tim Ø  Update the documentation Ø  Try to attempt to Unit test the program Jernej Ø  Test the program graphically Phil Ø  Continue to develop the user interface Jun Ø  Implement changes to the program that people have mentions Allen Ø  Work on the database aspect of the program
Summary	Today’s meeting was short but simple. The main discussion was about possible ways to test the program so it can become more secure code. Tim had the idea that unit testing with XNA was easy to do however it is near impossible to be able to unit test when graphics are involved. So from here the discussion then moved onto how would you test the graphical aspect of the program. Jun said that the best way to do this would be to keep running what we have and fiddling with the program until bugs and any issues arise. The conversation then moved onto it if it was possible to still unit test the code but mainly unit test the sample functions such as the Key pressed functions. Some simple tests could be written to test all the possible solutions and methods for this. This task was assigned to Tim. After this discussion it was about how Phil is going with the user interface. He said that he hasn’t implemented anything permanent yet but is more toying with ideas and demos that he has found on the internet. Hopefully once he gains a better aspect of all of this the user interface will begin to take shape