Good morning. It's January 2nd 2023. This is the first time this year I've been out with my camera out in the woods. I'm gonna have a lot of time this morning. Around my house it was really foggy, so I was hoping I went out in the woods. I'd find some fog and mist. I went to a couple different locations and just before I'd get there the fog would be gone. So I decided that I wasn't going to drive around anymore. I just pick a spot if the fog wasn't there. We just take the camera and just take a little walk. There's really no pressure to make a photograph today. It's fun to get out while it wasn't raining. Just be out in nature. My name is David Patton. When I started photography, I wanted to make art. But with bills to pay and a family to feed, I decided it would be better to be a working photographer than a starving artist. So I took a job as a photojournalist. 25 years and thousands of assignments later, it was time to go back to my first love. Come along as I follow my passion trying to create art that shows the essence of nature in a photograph. I'll be sharing my successes and my failures in hopes to inspire and educate. This is my journey. This is right in the edge. I mean, this isn't like a great section of forest, but maybe the fog will transform it. The trail runs through here. I got the trees on the side. I don't know. It was definitely worth making an attempt at a composition here. I'm gonna work my way back the way I came and see if any of that forest looks different now. It's just so thick in here. I can't really I can't get a nice clean shot into the forest. That's the way it is in the Pacific Northwest. It's just really thick up on this steepest section. It's not nearly thick, but it drops off pretty fast. So this first video of the year, 2023, there's something down my mind that I kind of wanted to address. And something that I think is kind of important, especially since I'm on YouTube. So I'm gonna try to articulate these thoughts in my head. It might take a little while to get it out. I was recently asked the question by someone who's viewed some of my videos. It was a really good question, but it's not the question that really has stuck with me and got me thinking. He started his question saying he's been comparing his photos to mine. Well, that's probably not a good thing to do. We probably shouldn't be comparing our photography with other photographers. We all do it. I'm guilty of it myself, but that really got me thinking. Thinking about my YouTube presence, what I'm projecting on my YouTube channel, what it is that people are seeing, what's the image that I'm projecting. I wanted to address that. It's not really something I thought that much about. I mean, I think about it when it comes to other YouTube channels, but I've never really thought about it that much when it comes to my channel, what I'm doing on YouTube. Let me start by saying do not use me as an example for your photography. The photography you see me doing on my YouTube channel is done for a specific reason. I have reasons to do what I do and to photograph what I photograph. I have a past that I have that carry with me. I'm looking for something specific out of my photography that really most likely doesn't match your past or what you want out of your photography. When I make videos, I'm making videos about things I'm interested in, things that I want to explore, check out, learn, or relearn. I may be revisiting something that I didn't get to do in my past. It's all all my photography shaped by a lot of different things and everybody's is. Everybody has different reasons for doing what they do. I can't say that everything I do on my YouTube channel is genuine. The whole reason I started this channel was to share my photography. I've always tried to keep this channel about photography, about making photos. My introductory trailer, when I say after thousands of assignments and 25 years of experience, that thousands of assignments, that's just not a figurative of speech. It's probably closer to 10,000, maybe maybe more assignments over the years. It's just another way of saying I've done a lot of photography. So what I want out of my photography is going to be completely different than somebody who's just starting out or who's been a casual shooter for most of their lives. There's no value on this. It's not a value judgment. It's just reality. What might seem boring and mundane to me might seem exciting to you. I may have photographed it a ton of times the same thing. I may not feel the need to do it again. I did a lot of color photography when I did it as a job. That's probably one reason why I shoot primarily black and white now. I did a lot of documentary photography when I did it as a job. And that's why I'm spending probably the last years of my life pursuing photography as an art form. But these are all my goals and desires. Now, it doesn't mean that you can't watch my YouTube channel or someone else's YouTube channel and get some ideas on how to approach a scene or you might want to look at nature in a little different way because that's what I mostly shoot is nature. If you take away looking at nature a little differently in one of my videos, it's been a success for me. My videos are less about how to settings, all that kind of stuff. I don't think that's all that useful. I'm struggling to find just that right arrangement of ferns. They're so close. I don't know if this is working or not. And I'm not bothering with the tripod right now because there's so much movement in the and we're getting a breeze off the lake. So there's so much movement in the ferns that I'm just hand holding and trying to use fast enough shutter speed. I want to be clear about my intentions for being on YouTube. I don't want to put forth this idea, this image of that of something I'm not because I'm in a completely different place in my life in photography. And if you're trying or have aspirations of becoming a professional photographer, definitely do not emulate what I do. If you see me shooting film on this channel when I shoot film, I've shot many different formats. I have my reasons. It's not, I wouldn't say that's a professional approach. I don't think that many professionals are using film nowadays. For me, it's another artistic choice because I'm doing this as an art form now. So when I use film, I'm not endorsing it. Or am I saying you shouldn't? That's up to you. That's your choice. Whatever you do in photography and whatever makes you happy, that's what you should be doing. But I'm not trying to put any kind of value judgment on what you shoot, what format you shoot, what camera you shoot, what, you know, you could be shooting glass plates or super high-end digital. That's all up to you. That doesn't matter to me. When I shoot film on this channel, I'm kind of checking some boxes of things that I wanted to do many years ago that I didn't get a chance. But the reality of using film is it's expensive. And if to shoot as much as I want to shoot, I have to shoot digital and shoot film when I can. So my answer now to film photography and the cost of it is I can't shoot it and have a YouTube channel. I can't shoot it on a daily basis. I can't afford it. I wish I could. But there are things coming up in the future that this might not be the best choice. There are limitations to using film and you just have to be, I have to be practical and realistic about it. But I want the option. So I keep this little film camera in my bag now. And when I come across something that I want to photograph with film, I pull it out and I make a shot. It works well with my digital. These same lenses. So why not? And I happen to have a camera that's super light and small that fits into my camera bag for these, for this reason. So in the future, if you see me shooting digital, it doesn't mean I, I'm making some judgment on film thing. It's not good enough for me or I don't use it anymore. It might just be that either the subject I'm shooting, I think digital might work better or it's that I can't afford to shoot film.  And when I see a shot or a frame that might work well in film as well, I'm going to also make a shot with the film.  I've been forcing a lot because of my YouTube channel. I've been wasting a lot of film. This allowed me to utilize the film to its potential. Film, film, film. That works going to be a lot in this video. So how that will work in this video format is I won't have probably the shots on this roll when I do shoot it, when you see me use it. I won't have those shots probably in that video. But there'll be some point once this roll is done that I will show you the images. A little incentive to try not to miss to-me episodes. This might take me a month to get through 36 exposures. It might take a couple days. It just depends on- I may end up going out on one day and shooting the whole thing. You just never know. But the reality is if I'm going to have a YouTube channel and I'm going to want to take as many images as I want to take, I'm going to have to do some of that with digital. I don't want to discourage anybody from doing anything, honestly. This is about my photography and when I pick up a specific camera, I usually have a specific reason. But I don't want to portray something that isn't honest and real. I've had my professional life in photography. The reality is I'm too old now to retrain. I did photography as a job for too long. I'm pretty much useless to the job market. I'm at an age now where it just makes no sense for me to try to retrain into a different career. So I still have to make some money. I still have to make some income from my photography. I'm just choosing to do it through the art of photography. I use my channel to promote my art. It's kind of uncomfortable to say that, but that's one of the main reasons to have a YouTube channel is to promote your art or your service or whatever it is you do. If you're a portrait photographer, you might want to use it to help promote that or weddings or whatever you do. YouTube, there is a promotional aspect to YouTube. I don't know if I'm getting my point across. There's just a lot of fake stuff on YouTube. There's just a lot of stuff that's alt image. It's not real. There's not that much about YouTube that's real. There are some really genuinely good photographers on YouTube. So I don't want to say that YouTube photographers are fake photographers. But there's a lot of stuff said and done on YouTube that's just because they need to come up with something to say. A lot of it isn't even important. This is going to sound negative, but there are a lot of channels out there in the photography world that they're just not they're not that good and they're promoting an image that I don't think that I think is really misleading to young photographers coming up. That's not reality. One of the tricks to this shot, one of the difficulties, I don't think you see it from here, but there's a big old white piece of sky that really distracts the image. So I have to kind of move the trees around in the frame to block as much of that as possible.  I think I've been able to move enough to where some of these middle trees are blocking that big white section. Well, I switched to the 20 and moved a little closer. It gives a completely different feel to the scene. It takes in a lot more trees. The light's still pretty contrasty. It's kind of coming and going. I was able to get a couple frames with film. We won't see those for I don't know how long, whenever that rolls done. But this video will be done probably this week. I don't know how much more I'm going to be able to get out. So this actually might be my last time out this week. It's going to be kind of a lean one. I really have a few shots to put on this video. But I really wanted to address the perception of YouTubers, YouTube photographers, and how I kind of fit into that. I don't think there are a lot of people trying to emulate what I do. I don't have that many viewers anyway. So I'm going to end this video here just in case I don't get a chance to get back out. We'll go back and take a look for you these photos, see how they turn out. And I'll have these film shots for you to look at when that rolls done. Hopefully not too long. So until next time, this should come along for the ride. Let's go Nori.


Hey, happy holidays everyone. Today's video is just going to be a bit of fun. We are going to look at OpenAI's ChatGPT. This has been in the news lots. You probably already know what it is, but it's basically a chatbot, but a super intelligent one that speaks just like a human. And so what we're going to find out in this video is ChatGPT also a good astrophotographer, or at least can it give convincing astrophotography advice. So here's what I did. I asked my Patreon community to send me questions, any kind of question at all related to astrophotography. I went through those questions and answered them all myself, wrote down my answers. Then I asked those same questions to ChatGPT and printed all of those out. And what we'll do in this video is we'll see each question. I'll give my answer. We'll look at ChatGPT's answer and determine who gave the better advice. So it's sort of like a game, but I'm also going to give sort of my perspective on the advice that ChatGPT gave compared to mine just to make the video a little bit more interesting. So I was considering having you guess my answer and ChatGPT's answer for every question. I think after we do a couple of these, it'll be very clear just based on our speaking style, whose answer is whose. But for this first one, we'll do it blind and you can guess. But after that, I'll probably just reveal who's speaking. Hi, Nico. My name is Amy and I'm an enthusiastic Patreon supporter. Thanks for everything you do. Here are a few possible questions for you. What filter should I use with my ASI 183MC Pro in Bordel 7 skies in order to help retain star color? So here's answer A. If the main object of your photograph is a dark nebula, a reflection nebula, a galaxy, or a star cluster, then the best choice for filter would be a basic luminance filter, also known as an IR cut filter, even from Bordel 7. If you're shooting a mission nebulae and you want to get a bit better contrast on those but still want to retain good star color, then instead I would suggest a gentle light pollution filter, like the Botter, Neodymium, or the Optalong-L Pro. Okay, and then here is answer B. In general, color filters can be used to enhance the visibility of certain features or colors in celestial objects. For example, a red filter can help bring out the red emission from hydrogen gas and nebulae, while a blue filter can highlight features that emit light in the blue part of the spectrum. When photographing objects with a wide range of colors, such as star clusters or galaxies, a broadband filter that transmits light across the entire visible spectrum can be a good choice. This type of filter will allow you to capture the full range of colors present in the object, resulting in more natural looking images. Okay, so which one do you think was the AI, and which one do you think was me?  All right, so answer A was me speaking. I suggested specifically an IR-cut filter if shooting broadband, or a gentle light pollution filter if shooting a mission nebulae, and answer B was the AI. It started off with a paragraph about a red filter, a blue filter. It didn't seem to catch that Amy was talking about a color camera, the 183MC, because I think that first paragraph was a little bit confusing, but then the second paragraph was pretty good. It sort of corrected itself or took a second shot at it because this part about using a broadband filter on star clusters or galaxies was a little bit more on track. But I think my answer was more specific. I think this is something we'll see again and again, and that the AI writes a convincing answer, but it's just a little bit light on the specifics and maybe throws in a few questionable things that are maybe not super relevant. Okay, so I think it's going to be pretty obvious from here on out whose answer is whose, so I'm just going to always read my answer first and the AI's answer second, but I still want us to keep in mind for yourself when you're hearing these. Who do you think gave the better advice? Because in some of these questions, I think it's sort of a toss up or maybe even the AI wins. It's not always a slam dunk. Okay, this question is also from Amy. Will the Alec stream help bring out color in M45? Okay, here's my answer. So no, Messier 45, also known as the Pleiades, is an open star cluster with an embedded reflection nebula. Stars and reflection nebulae are broadband objects, so a dual narrow band filter like the Optalong L Extreme is not the right choice, in my opinion. Instead, I'd suggest using a luminance filter like the Astronomik L2 and use that if you're shooting full spectrum, like with an astronomy camera, or if you're shooting with a stock DSLR or mirrorless camera, you don't have to use any filter at all. Just go no filter and you'll get a great result on M45. Here's chat GPT's answer. It is possible that using an L Extreme filter with a telescope or camera to observe the Pleiades, also known as M45, could help bring out certain colors or features in the nebula. Okay, however, the effectiveness of this filter will depend on a number of factors, including the characteristics of the telescope or camera being used, the conditions of the sky and specific features that you're trying to observe. In general, filters can be a useful tool for enhancing the visibility of certain features in celestial objects, but they are not a magic solution and the results may vary. Okay, so I think it sort of bungled this answer. It obviously didn't know what the L Extreme filter does, that it's really only great on emission nebulae or bringing out emission pockets in galaxies. It's not the right filter choice for M45, but it didn't really go as far as saying that. It just sort of waffled about talking about filters. So I think I won this question and I think most people would agree. All right, next question. Hi Nico, this is Barry. My question is, in suburban Los Angeles, what is the easiest way to find the flaming star nebulae without using plate solving? I have just a manual setup, as you can see. This one was challenging. I feel like I could have written a big essay about finding things. I actually have a whole video about finding objects just with a DSLR on a Star Tracker setup. Maybe I'll link that here. But here's my answer. I tried to just keep it as brief as I could, but it's still got a little bit long. Okay, the flaming star nebulae is in the constellation Araiga, which this time of year from Los Angeles will basically start the night towards the eastern horizon and then it will be up all night transiting basically straight overhead and setting in the morning to the west. What I would suggest doing to find the flaming star is look at a planetarium app like Skychart or something like that or a paper star chart, where you can find the flaming star marked and then use either a red dot finder or a green laser pointer to Star Hop. And you're going to start at Capella, which is the brightest star in Araiga will be easy to find. And then Star Hop from there to El Nath and Hossalay, which are on the opposite side of the constellation. And the flaming star nebula is right in between those two stars and but a bit towards Capella, so sort of in the middle of that big shape that Araiga makes. So with your red dot finder or laser pointer and looking at that star chart, you should be able to work out roughly where the nebula is and get pointed towards it. And then what you want to do is start taking test shots at high ISO on your DSLR. And there's this very distinct grouping of five bright stars right next to the flaming star. And so when you see those five stars, you're going to know that you're very close to the flaming star nebula. And then you can perfect your framing from there. If you happen to be using a zoom lens on your DSLR, start zoomed out when taking the test shots. And that's going to help you find the star patterns a lot easier. You'll be able to center the flaming star and then you can zoom in to get your actual framing that you want for the shot. And remember, if you're taking test shots at high ISO, like 12,800 or something, put it back to the ISO you actually want to use for shooting when you're done finding the object. Okay, so that was my advice a little bit long and rambling. But I think I got all the important points in here is chat gpt's answer. To find the flaming star nebula from suburban Los Angeles, you can follow these steps. Number one, determine the best time to observe the flaming star nebula is visible in the northern hemisphere from late fall to early spring, and is best seen when it is high in the sky. Check an online almanac or astronomy app to find out when the nebula will be its highest point in the sky. Locate the constellation Araiga, the flaming star nebula is located within the constellation Araiga, which is visible in the eastern sky during the winter months, sort of use a star chart or sky map to locate the constellation or use an astronomy app on your smartphone to help you find it. Number three, use a telescope to locate the nebula. Once you have identified the constellation Araiga, use your manual setup to scan the area for the flaming star nebula. It will appear as a bright diffuse cloud of gas and dust within the constellation. You may need to adjust the focus and magnification of your telescope to get a clear view of the nebula. Okay, I'd say that answer was a mixed bag. I liked the detail about in number one, about finding the best time to observe and pointing out that the flaming star nebula is in the northern hemisphere available from late fall to early spring. I think I just assumed from when the question was being asked that, you know, this was being done now, but that was good detail. The last part about using a telescope to find it and that you'd be able to see a bright, diffuse cloud of gas, probably not. I mean, with a DSLR and lens, I don't think you're really going to see it even in a test exposure. It's not really a bright nebula. It's a dim emission nebula. So that part was a little bit off. Hey, Nico, this is David in Seattle. My question for the chatbot challenge is if you asked a thousand astrophotographers, what would be the top three reasons that they pursued the hobby? Okay, this one's sort of interesting, a little bit more creative, opinion based kind of question rather than just facts. So we'll see how the AI did on this one. Here's my answer first though. If you asked a thousand astrophotographers, I think you'd get lots of different kinds of answers as to why they pursued the hobby. But three answers that I think would come up a lot would be number one, that they've always loved space and telescopes. And so astrophotography is just a natural progression for someone who wants to see more of what's out there in the universe. Number two, that they enjoy complexity and problem solving. And this is why I think a lot of astrophotographers I've met are engineers. They like figuring out how things work and optimizing all the gear and getting it all to work together. And number three, and this might be the most common answer, is it started with just curiosity? You know, answering questions for themselves, like, can I really take a photograph of another galaxy in my backyard? And then after they realize they can, they just become hooked on the hobby because it's a very deep hobby and addictive to try to get better and better pictures. Okay, here is chat GPT's answer to the question. Here are a few possible reasons that astrophotographers might pursue this hobby. Number one, a love of the night sky. Many astrophotographers are fascinated by the beauty and majesty of the cosmos and enjoy capturing and sharing the beauty through photography. Number two, a desire to learn more about the universe. Astrophotography can be a way to learn more about the objects in the sky such as stars, planets, galaxies and nebulae, and to better understand their properties and behavior. Number three, a sense of accomplishment. Astrophotography can be challenging as it requires a combination of technical skills and patience. Successfully capturing stunning images the night sky can be a rewarding and fulfilling experience. Of course, these are just a few possible reasons and there may be many other reasons that astrophotographers pursue this hobby as well. So, I think the AI knocked it out of the park on this one and it was oddly similar to my answer. I swear that I did not look at the AI's answers. I wrote all mine first, but if you compare mine to theirs, our three possible reasons are very similar in a lot of ways, sort of in the same order even. It's weird. The first two answer reasons they gave, a love of the night sky and a desire to learn more about the universe, I sort of combined those into my first answer, which is just sort of like they've always loved space and telescopes. And then they don't have the one sort of about engineer and figuring things out. But the sense of accomplishment answer about like how it's really fun to just successfully capture stunning images, that's very similar to my answer of like it started with curiosity, but then it just becomes this addictive thing of getting better and better pictures. So, I think the AI did excellent on this one. If someone wrote out this as like a little essay for why astrophotographers are so interested in this hobby, I would believe this was a person writing this because it worked really well. So, this video has obviously been about the practical applications of artificial intelligence, which is a big topic in 2022. But I really wanted to understand AI and how it actually works. And so, when I want to understand something like that, I go to Brilliant. Brilliant is the sponsor of today's video. And Brilliant is just this amazing place for learning interactively through these little courses and interactive activities that you can just do for a few minutes every day. And they have a whole course on an introduction to neural networks. And neural networks are sort of an approximation of how our brain works and they're how they're training these huge AI models like GPT-3, which is what chat GPT is based on. It's the largest language model in the world and it uses this neural network technology to work. So, you can head over to Brilliant today and see exactly how these things work. You can get a really good basic understanding by following along with these lessons and learning how this all works for yourself. And I, of course, have a great offer for you today. If you're interested in Brilliant, if you head over to Brilliant.org slash Nebula Photos, link will be in the description. The first 200 to sign up, you get a free trial. If you do decide to purchase an annual membership, you're going to get 20% off by following my link. All right, next question. Hey, Nico. This is David in Las Vegas. I have a question. For astrophotography, are there different methodologies for capturing emission and reflection nebula? Thank you. Okay. My answer, I got pretty involved on this one too. Sometimes I just go on and on, so excuse my length for this answer, but here we go. Yes, there are. Emission nebulae are nebulae that emit their own light because the atoms in these giant clouds of gas are ionized. And the neat thing about them is that they shine at these very particular frequencies called emission lines. So, with emission nebulae, we can use narrow band filters that block most of the visible spectrum, but pass these emission lines like hydrogen, alpha, and oxygen 3. And these narrow band filters are very good for improving contrast with emission nebulae and also for blocking almost all of the light pollution. You can either use single line narrow band filters, which is common with mono cameras, or with a color camera, there are now dual band or tri band narrow band filters that allow you to capture many emission lines at the same time by using the Bayer matrix and the color camera to separate out the signals. You can also capture emission nebulae without narrow band filters, but most will be dominated by the hydrogen emission, so they appear just red. The important hydrogen emission line H alpha is a deep red, and it's partially blocked by the IR cut filter inside most stock consumer cameras. So, to get the most out of these cameras for capturing emission nebulae, many people will modify their cameras, meaning changing out the IR cut filter inside the camera for one that fully passes the HA signal. Reflection nebulae, on the other hand, are clouds of dust particles that are lit up by starlight, and so they take on the color of the star or stars that they are near. So, you can have yellow reflection nebulae, like the one near ontaries, or blue reflection nebulae, like the Pleiades. Unlike emission nebulae, reflection nebulae are broadband targets, meaning to get the most out of them we don't want to use special filters. Narrow band filters do not help here, meaning light pollution makes capturing reflection nebulae much more difficult. The best way to capture reflection nebulae is just to go to as dark a sky as you can, and capture them in full RGB. And you can use a stock color camera. Modification does not help with reflection nebulae at all, because their light falls completely within our normal visible spectrum. There is nothing blocked by a normal stock camera when it comes to reflection nebulae. So, that was a long answer. I have an even longer video on this kind of subject that's an exclusive Patreon video. If you're interested, you can join my Patreon to watch that. It goes into all the different kinds of deep sky objects, and the best approach for capturing them. Now here is chat GPT's answer to that question. Yes, there are different methodologies for capturing emission and reflection nebulae in astrophotography. Emission nebulae are clouds of gas and dust that emit their own light, often due to the presence of hot young stars within them. To capture an emission nebula, astrophotographers typically use a camera with a high sensitivity to hydrogen alpha wavelengths as these wavelengths are commonly emitted by the gas and emission nebulae. It is also important to use a telescope with a wide field of view and a long focal length to capture as much of the nebula as possible. Long exposures are typically required to capture the faint light from the nebula, and filters may be used to block out light pollution and other unwanted wavelengths. Reflection nebulae, on the other hand, are clouds of dust that do not emit their own light, but rather reflect the light of nearby stars. To capture a reflection nebula, astrophotographers typically use a camera with a high sensitivity to blue and ultraviolet wavelengths as these wavelengths are commonly reflected by the dust in reflection nebulae. It is also important to use a telescope with a wide field of view and a short focal length to capture as much of the nebula as possible. Long exposures may also be required to capture the faint light from the reflection nebulae, and filters may be used to block out light pollution and other unwanted wavelengths. Okay, so this answer was an example of one where I think the AI answers can be tricky, because on the whole it sounds good, but there are enough details wrong in here that I think this answer is fairly misleading if you were new to astrophotography. So for instance, one thing that I think is just straight up wrong is for emission nebulae, it says to use a long focal length, and for reflection nebulae, it says to use a short focal length. No, not really. I mean, there's a couple famous reflection nebulae that are pretty big. Ontario's in Roe, Fuyuki, and Pleiades, but other than that, reflection nebulae are mostly small, so you would need a long focal length to capture them. While emission nebulae, those are some of the, those are the biggest objects in the sky usually. Those are huge, like look at Cygnus. I mean, there's just huge swaths of emission nebulae there. So a short focal length works perfectly. You definitely don't need a long focal length to capture emission nebulae. So sort of mix that up, or at least shouldn't have even mentioned it. And then it sort of gave the same answer about filters, but that's the main thing that this question should be answering is what's the different methodology? It has to do with filters. With emission nebulae, you can use narrowband filters, including dual narrowband filters. With reflection nebulae, you don't. You just want broadband, so you can use a stock camera. But it sort of gave the same stock thing of like filters can be used to block out light pollution. Yeah, not really. You know, filters are really only effective for emission. So not my favorite answer there from chat GPT. Hi, I think I reached a level where I can produce an astrophotography image, an okay image. What should I do to produce a wow image? Okay, this is an interesting question. I'll be interested to see what the chat bot says about this. Here's my response. The difference between an okay image and a wow image is of course going to be in the eye of the beholder. For instance, if you show a non astrophotographer like just your family and friends, one of your okay images that you've taken now, I think they're going to be completely wowed by it. So maybe the question is more asking, how can I produce a wow image that's going to impress astrophotographers, including yourself? And that's a whole different game because astrophotographers have seen it all, right? And so I think the easiest way is to pick an object that is off the beaten track, but you think maybe has the potential to wow. So this is hard. It requires some research. But what I would suggest is maybe find an object that only like you can find maybe 10 images of online, like very few images of it exist. But it speaks to you in some way. You think that there's something there and then be prepared to put lots of time into capturing this and processing it because if very few have imaged an object, it's probably super difficult. But I think that's going to be the clearest path to a wow image to impress yourself and other astrophotographers is to pick something obscure and then put your own stamp on it to create sort of like a world class image of that maybe like the what we call the reference image for a particular object. That's going to be your best path to a wow. Okay, here's the chat GPT answer. There are several steps you can take to improve your astrophotography skills and create wow images of the night sky. Here are a few suggestions. Number one, practice, practice, practice is with any skill, the more you practice astrophotography, the better you will become. Number two, invest in quality equipment. Investing in good quality equipment can make a big difference in the quality of your images. Look for a camera with high dynamic range and low noise levels, a fast lens with a wide aperture and a stable mount for your telescope. Number three, learn about post processing techniques. There are many software options available for post processing such as Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom. Number four, shoot at a dark site. Light pollution from cities and towns can greatly reduce the visibility of faint objects in the night sky. Number five, experiment with different objects and techniques. There are many different objects in the night sky to photograph such as stars, planets, galaxies and nebulae experiment with different objects and techniques to find what you enjoy the most and what produces the best result. By following these tips and continuing to learn and improve your skills, you should be able to produce stunning astrophotography images that will wow your friends and family. Okay, this is an okay answer but very generic. If I just googled deep sky astrophotography advice, I think this is the kind of stuff that would come back. Go find a dark sky, learn about post processing, invest in a good mount, practice. The one I do like is the last one, experiment with different objects and techniques. That sort of goes to my answer, it's that the best way to do a wow is to really challenge yourself. Go after some object that's really obscure and hard and do a really good job with it and you'll wow everyone. But yeah, experiment, that's probably the only really great piece of advice here. The other ones are good pieces of advice but they sort of, I think, miss some context in the question because Gregory said, I've reached an astrophotography level where I can produce okay images. That suggests they're already, you know, know some of this basic advice. They don't need to hear this again. Okay, next question. Is using AI to process astrophotography images cheating? Okay, my answer to this is pretty short. Here's my answer. No, it's not cheating. As long as the astrophotographer isn't trying to hide their use of AI tools in processing, the only way it could be considered cheating is if the astrophotographer is trying to deceive through the use of AI and they won't admit what processes they used. That is a kind of deception that could be considered cheating. ChatGPT's answer is a little bit longer. Using AI to process astrophotography images is not necessarily cheating, as it is simply another tool that can be used to improve the final image. Like any tool, it can be used effectively or poorly. And the final result will depend on the skill and judgment of the user. In general, AI can be a useful tool for enhancing astrophotography images by automating certain tasks such as noise reduction, color balance, and contrast. It can also be used to perform more advanced tasks such as removing celestial objects from the image or creating a synthetic long exposure for multiple shorter exposures. However, it is important to note that AI is not a replacement for good photography skills and judgment. Astrophotography is still a creative pursuit that requires a good understanding of the technical aspects of photography, as well as an eye for composition and aesthetics. Using AI to process astrophotography images can be a helpful tool, but it is not a substitute for these skills. Wow. Okay, so I, this is I think ChatGPT's magnum opus of this test. This is a great answer. I really liked this one. I think I liked this answer even better than mine. I mean, mine really sort of got into what would it mean to cheat? But ChatGPT's answer, I just agree with everything it said here. You know, this is a really good point that using AI tools doesn't mean you're going to create the best image. Astrophotography is an art form, a creative pursuit, as it says. And it really requires on the judgment and skills of the photographer to use these tools effectively. So I really liked that, that answer. Hi, Nico. It's James here from the UK. Here's my question for your astrophot. Sorry if you can hear my son squealing in the background, but he's very excited about the video probably about stars. So yes, my question is, what in your opinion is the most reliable prime lens and DSLR setup for a beginner to astrophotography? Would you recommend zoom? Would you recommend wide angle? And thus why, what targets would you go for if you'd never shot astrophotography before? Untracked because I don't have a tracker. Here's my answer to that question. When I hear untracked, I think deep sky. So for deep sky astrophotography, I'd recommend a fast telephoto prime lens. And I think the most useful focal length for untracked might be 85 millimeter. So a fast 85 millimeter, you can't go wrong. But if I had to just pick one reliable lens, as you put it, I'd go for the tried and true Samyang, aka Rokinon 135 f2. The 135 f2 is just an amazing value for how well it does on the stars. It works well on tracked, but it will also serve you very well down the road if you do get a tracker. So I think it's well worth the cost. And it's available for all the major camera mounts. So if you already have a camera, just use the one you have. If you are a beginner who's buying a camera, I would suggest a used Canon or Nikon DSLR made after 2012, preferably one with a flippy screen. So don't spend too much on a camera for astrophotography. It's probably the least important part, but I like Canon or Nikon DSLRs and the flippy screen is nice, so you don't have to strain your neck getting on the ground. Okay, and the final chat GPT answer here. For a beginner shooting untracked astrophotography, a good starting point might be a DSLR camera with a fast lens and a wide aperture. Some examples of DSLR cameras that are popular among astrophotographers include the Canon EOS 60, Nikon D5300, and Sony Alpha A7S2. These cameras offer good image quality and low noise levels, which are important for capturing faint objects in the night sky. As for lenses, a wide-angle lens with a fast aperture f2.8 or lower is a good choice for untracked astrophotography. This will allow you to capture a wide field of view and gather as much light as possible, which is important for capturing faint objects. Some examples of wide-angle lenses that are popular among astrophotographers include the Rokinon 14mm f2.8, the Canon EF 16-35 f2.8L, and the Nikon 14-24 f2.8G. Okay, that's a fine answer. They never mention Milky Way, and sort of, you know, 14-16mm lenses, those are basically Milky Way or Aurora lenses, you're not gonna maybe constellations, but for capturing faint objects, not, you know, when I think objects, I think deep sky astrophotography, and wide-angle doesn't really do that so well. So my interpretation of the question, untracked astrophotography, I think deep sky, like I said, so that's why I suggested a telephoto lens. You know, sort of following my philosophy on YouTube, you know, capturing things like Orion and Pleiades and Andromeda untracked, I think is more fun, you know, for me than just a lot of wide field. But that's really an opinion kind of thing, you know, and also an opinion over what the meaning of untracked astrophotography. I think the term really came about with doing deep sky without a tracker.  So that's my interpretation, but I didn't think chat GPT's answer was bad in this case. It was perfectly fine. All right, that's it. We got through all the questions.  It was fun for me just to see where this AI technology is at. It does a great job of sounding like a human. I think its confidence is interesting because it sounds confidently like a human, but you could see in a few of the answers, it got things a bit wrong. But because it sounds so natural and confident, it might be sort of a little bit dangerous because if people are using this technology irresponsibly, we're going to get some bad advice out there. At this point, I don't think I would use it for astrophotography advice, just because I think that there might be too much in there that would be a little bit misleading. I want to thank everyone who submitted questions for this video. They were all members of my Patreon community. And speaking of Patreon, you're now seeing everyone who supports me and this YouTube channel over on Patreon.com slash Nebula Photos. It is an excellent community of dedicated amateur astrophotographers, people who want to learn more. We have over 800 members now. There's an active Discord community you can get involved in. And I can't thank my Patreon community enough. I am now doing this full time thanks to all of you. And it really means the world to me to get that kind of support and allows me to make these videos and to really pursue what I want to do in life, which is help people learn astrophotography. So thank you to everyone who supports me on Patreon. And if you enjoy this channel, I think, you know, you can get a lot of benefits out of joining my Patreon community. It starts at just $1 a month and you get all kinds of support and a monthly Zoom call where you can ask me questions directly. We do a monthly imaging challenge, different objects every month. And you can see sort of people's different results. We pick a pick a couple winners every month. And so there's a lot of fun stuff going on. So if interested, head over to patreon.com slash Nebula Photos. Till next time, this has been Nico Carver. Happy holidays and clear skies.


I can't fit through one door. Oh wait, I can. That's good, okay Funny funny joke, you know good one good one. Did this game get fairly positive reviews? I don't know 5xl I don't remember hearing an awful lot about us.  Don't ever talk to me again.   I think


In this video, we're going to have a look at the second principle of readability, which is chunking. So why should we chunk our documents? Well, chunks make it quicker to scan, much easier to skim, and much more approachable to work with the document. And there are essentially three ways in which you can do it. You can do it with paragraphs, bullets, and you can also do it with section headings. So let's have a look at the section headings first. So as you can see, here is an original text, a history of a school. Without changing any of the text, maybe without even increasing the font, you can make it much quicker to somebody to approach by simply adding section breaks and a little section headings. And that is a very beneficial thing that you can do. And it's not only for the readers, because they can quickly scan through the headings and know where to go. But it's also useful for people who use a screen reader, who very often when they land on a web page, will first listen to all the headings to get them a sense of what's on that web page. And again, they really will appreciate that sort of a structure, because they cannot see it. And it's much more difficult for them to get a sense of the overall structure of the document. And you should always make sure that you don't only mark those documents, those section headings visually, but you also need to mark them with heading labels. And in Microsoft Word or in any web editor, you will always have styles that you can mark them with. And you will know in Microsoft Word that if you go to view and choose navigation pane, that you're going to see the outline of the document. So if you're not seeing this outline of a document, that means you haven't marked your sections properly. And as I mentioned, you need to use styles for that. And again, that's in the Microsoft Word, but it's in all the other editors as well, including web editors. So you click on the paragraph that you want to make into a heading, then you click on the heading to style. And that changes the formatting, so it's consistent, but also tells all the other technology that may want to use it to make that into a heading. Now, you can find a much more on LinkedIn learning about both how you can make accessible documents in Microsoft Office, but also how you can use styles to create good outlines. One more benefit of that is that if you've made a document that's properly formatted in Microsoft Word, you can then export it into a PDF and the headings will then become bookmarks in the PDF and the table of contents will become clickable. And that is something that can be very useful because there's nothing more frustrating when you come to a 50 page document and you look for bookmarks so that you can navigate around it and you don't find any. This is, there's another benefit to you actually, when you're drafting your documents in Microsoft Word, if you use this approach, because you can actually even drag sections around using the navigation pane. So that is a very useful thing. So if you want to move something up and down, you can simply go in the navigation pane and then you can remove them. You can also demote entire subsection. So it's an easier way of managing your outline. So you will find that by doing the right thing, you're actually benefiting yourself as well as your readers. And of course, the final benefit that I've already mentioned is that you can easily create a table of contents with just one click. You can go to references, choose table of contents, insert that table of contents, and there it is. It has all the right pages. It will always be up to date because if you then go ahead and move the sections around, like it's happening right here, then you can go back to your table of contents, click on update table and say, update the entire table. And what that will do is it will update the table of contents to reflect the current structure. And again, as I mentioned before, you can then very easily export it into a PDF that maintains that structure. And again, you've made it more accessible and just simply easier to read and access and navigate for your readers. So that is on the importance of chunks and navigation of chunks. In the next video, we're going to have a look at text guides.


Hello. Hello, everybody. Welcome. It was explained to me that apparently people are interested in this in development wiki font. So here we are. Basically, to preface this a bit, a few months ago we were working on getting some icons in flow. We were already there, but for the most part we were using SVGs. Now, when I came along, one of the main issues that we were experiencing was a lack of support for Internet Explorer. The older versions, really. And the icons just didn't scale at all. And to implement any sort of scaling for that would have involved having to use PNGs which are converted automatically from the SVGs. But it gets a lot more complex than that and it just basically made it a nightmare and our CSS would have gotten quite bloated from having to load all these different data URIs and remote URLs. So it eventually came to be that we would create an icon set. Basically, glyph icons. And the primary inspiration for this was Twitter's bootstrap which has a pretty good icon set. We even used that for a while while we were developing our new version of flow as an interim solution. So we did that, but then May over the course of one random weekend basically just kind of implemented a bunch of them made a whole glyph icon set and we've been using that since. It's been iterated upon. And the end goal is to make it fairly robust and try to meet as many of the needs as possible for everybody at the foundation and media weekend users in general. So that's where we're at now. It's still a work in progress, so keep that in mind as we do explain this to you. So I mean, what I'd like to go through with you guys is to give you a quick rundown of what it looks like and how you can use it. And we'll also talk about how you guys can get involved in requesting icons that you might need for your project and how you could submit your own icon you need to. And May will be covering those topics. I'll be covering more of the technical aspect of this. So what I'll do with you guys now is I'm going to share my screen. Let's see if I can hold that up for you. Oh, God. No. Let's take a look. So currently WikiFont is up on GitHub at this point in time. Under one May's account, WikiFont, you might be a little confused as to why it's called WikiFont. I was too for a while. Essentially right now what we have is WikiFont glyphs, which is a subset of an eventual WikiFont. I think May's goal at some point is to develop the entire font. But at this point, the beginning part of it is just the glyph icon set. So that's what you'll have access to at this point in time. So this is where you would put any issues that you have with this, pull requests, whatever else you need to do. And it's quite in development. And this is basically the current set of icons. It might be a little bit more expansive than this. I think there's a few more that aren't listed here. But in general, this is what we have so far. And more will be added. You'll see there's even a few icons that can be layered and will cover layering icons in a bit as well. But essentially this is what you have. And if you find, I think this should meet a lot of needs, especially these first few right here. But beyond this, there will definitely be more icons that need to come out. And I know even on Flow, we do have a few more icons in the pipeline that we're going to be needing. Now let's take a look at this CSS. Basically what we do is we determine font face, which is just the glyph icon set. And then we create a base class, which is WikiGlyph. And this just puts on that font and then sets some very basic styles on it, so that it always looks crisp.  So I mean, the way you would use this, in the instance that you wanted to use a flag, you would create, say, a span, for example, and then name the span's class as WikiGlyph. And then a second class, which is WikiGlyph flag, that would essentially assign the font and all the other styles that goes along with it, and then insert the actual icon itself. Now what this would do is this would work for pretty much most browsers. However, it wouldn't work for IE6 and 7 because they lack support for this selector. However, should we actually need support for IE6 and 7, we could easily drop in a CSS rule that does it with basically CSS JavaScript and only for IE6 and 7. So I mean, it's a small performance hit, but not a huge one, given that it doesn't need to be super dynamic. So if you had a question whether or not to support IE6 and 7, it could and at some point the goal is for it to actually follow. But right now, it's not really concerned for us because we're not really using it anywhere that really mandates IE6 and 7 support in that regard. So this is what it looks like right now in use. We're using a few icons here and that's kind of all over the place. Now, the nice thing about this is you'll notice we actually color our icons. They're all differently colored here. And this is something that, you know, you couldn't easily do with SVGs or PNGs without having to have multiple images. I think this is probably the biggest benefit to it, even that we can actually put context-aware colors that match the text that goes along with it. And in some scenarios, like this icon, we could just invert it and there's even a little drop shadow there.  There's really nothing else to do. It inherits whatever color you need, whatever drop shadows, whatever else it is that you need and it's just there. As opposed to before where we would have had to have multiple variants of an individual icon, drop those into the CSS, you know, it would reduce a lot of flexibility that we had in these scenarios. And here it's just in line. It's already the correct blind height. It just matches. So I mean, there's really not much to say about it. It's really, really straightforward and the usage is incredibly simple. If we take a look at this, that's really all it is for that little edit icon right here. There's your span with the wiki glyph pencil and then edit, that's it. That's really all that we need to do for that. And as far as this goes, you can basically drop this into anywhere you need and start using it. Currently, we are doing so in flow. So if we take a look here, we've dropped this into our CSS for the flow extension. Maybe I'll increase my font size a bit if it wants to. Feel free, I guess not. Well, it doesn't seem to want to increase my font size. Let's pretend it did. So that's basically it. We dropped it into this interactive dotless file that we have in flow, and this gives us our glyphs and we can use it anywhere in our templates. We've modified it slightly on flow because we wanted to have larger icons by default. But other than that, it's really all it is. I don't really have much else to say. Does anybody have any questions about the technical side of this? So one question I got before for some reason here, couldn't be here today, was that they use the current SVGs and sometimes raster images as backgrounds, like they specified as a background with an element, and they were curious to know whether that was going to be possible with the wiki fonts. It's possible. You would have to do it in a strange way where basically the content of the element itself would be the icon, and then you just have to give it, I guess, a large font size. But I mean, it wouldn't work quite as well as an image in that instance. Browser support for that type of sizing of an element that's text like this wouldn't really work so well. I'm not entirely sure how we could go about doing that, and I personally wouldn't recommend it. If you want to use a background, then you should probably just use a background for that. But I'm not entirely sure what the context is, so it varies. If you had, say, a reasonably large version of one of these icons in the side that's just kind of faded out, it's doable. If you wanted a full-size background that scales to the exact size of your element, no, that's a lot more complicated to do and really wouldn't be possible with a font. Does that answer your question? I will get back to them. The question from IRC is, is it possible to show this in quick-fiddle or something? In quick-fiddle? That sounds like two things. I don't know what that is. What is quick-fiddle? I don't know. You're shooting the messenger. I think I'm in the wrong chat room. The person who will listen to the question will know eventually. So the very question, hang on a chat, by the way, about RTL. Yeah. Amir has RTL questions. Sorry? If we can ask questions in the IRC channel just to keep it clean, that would be awesome, but there are questions in the chat too. Those of you in the media... Those of you in the hangout, I'm still free just to ask. Yeah, okay. So what are the questions? What's the channel? I'm not in it. It's your IRN. It's a chat of the hangout. Oh, it's the chat of the hangout. God. Sorry, guys. Take four questions to the side. Okay. Middle East rules. Thanks, Amir. How will RTL work? So RTL is... I haven't really... We haven't implemented anything with regards to RTL. For the most part, the icons should be fine and they will render somewhat fine, but the issue specifically would be that some of the icons actually need to be flipped and that's doable with the CSS. Essentially, all it would be is a separate selector in the scenario where an element or the page or anything is actually RTL. We would use a separate selector that overrides the previous one and uses a flipped icon to that solve your issue. I think there is probably a bit more specific issues in that with regards to RTL. But for most cases, that should solve it. That will probably kind of work. It's a bit of a regression from the way it works now where you can put bash LTR in the file name and CSS Genes will automatically make it bash RTL if you're viewing an RTL language. Yeah. It should be fine, I mean for the most part, because this is all done in CSS as opposed to directly with the files themselves.  We already have to do that, that's not the concern. Oh, alright then. Then I guess we're good? Wait, so maybe I'm trying to take some notes, but I don't follow. If the whole point is to have a single glyph that's flipped with code, why would we have a second flipped glyph? It's not flipped, he misspoke. You have to have two separate glyphs the CSS selector that chooses what icon is just going to choose one or the other symbol. Oh, I'm saying why wouldn't we flip the character in code? It's not possible. Transport? I think it is possible, actually. I've seen it in use. Yeah, using CSS transforms which aren't going to work. Yeah, CSS transforms won't work in this scenario because the glyph would be more complex than just flipping it. When I say flip, I mean we'll have to create an extra glyph that's visually flipped but the icon could be different in an RTL scenario. There could be even very specific language, specific icon overrides that might need to be made. So do what you will with that information. Any other questions? I see this I mean, you know Github's been doing this for a long time. I think there's a lot of really cool things about the technology but CSS is like a major barrier to contribution because right now we have very, very low cost to sending icons from like a huge number of sources. Extensions, core software, skins and this is sort of making this huge model with or if extensions or skins or core have separate files now we're forced to load them separately which you're adding like a lot of extra requests whereas we used to be able to embed things on the fly into the CSS where we're already loading which is combined with JavaScript so like bare minimum you're adding one request and likely you're adding a lot more but I think more problematically that this is going to require I assume you're probably using like font forge as part of your build process and this is going to require a more complicated build process and it's going to like make it a lot more complex when we're trying to like get contribution from a variety of sources Right What's your what's the plan with that? I mean right now essentially what this is for the most part is one a proof of concept and two a solution for the flow project the long term goal is for this to become a global tool for the entire media wiki usage on whatever projects you need to and we haven't gotten to the point where we need where we need to figure out what the process will be and how we'll kind of automate this I would envision ideally essentially an automated font build whenever we modify the files if we need to but we're not quite at that point and I don't think we will be for a while I think it's small enough that there's still warrants being built by hand and I'm okay with that I yeah wow okay so I just assumed that you were using something like custom font to build it automatically May is currently building them using which tool it's called font prep I found the thing to get a repository it was made open source recently but it's only available on 64 bit osx there's also a custom font which uses font forge which is available on multiple platforms and is that open source yes it is I'm okay with switching this to a more automated process like I said May kind of started whipping this up over the course of a weekend so I haven't had a chance to really kind of look at changing the technical aspect of building the font in a few weeks or a couple of months down the line I'd be happy to do some work in switching that unless anyone else wants to take it over feel free and I mean it should be too much work automating that given that font and all the SPGs are already available two other questions that came in before this one was around accessibility and specifying alt text and how that will differ from using an image or an SPG and then you were also going to actually talk a bit about stacking so as far as the alt text goes or rather the title what would happen in that scenario is you would still have a separate element which has whatever icon and you can give it a title and we do that here on flow where when you hover over this you have alt text which is edit header there and it applies here too and essentially that's really all there is to it go ahead Sharon is there a way I don't know if there's a way less or something to make that sort of happen automatically I guess you wouldn't the individual user would have to know the edit the edit icon to represent edit title so I guess it can't really be generalized because the specific tool tip isn't just the meaning of the icon the meaning of that context exactly so I mean we can't do it in the less either way and even if we could it wouldn't make sense because like flow is case for example we use one icon in multiple places for different context alright so that's nice as far as stacking goes so what Territor is referring to is the ability to stack these icons now what you'll see here I'm gonna share my screen again here we've got a few glyphs that are actually separate this little lock here there's a little pencil what you could do is take this lock and put it on top of say this user now right now the CSS hasn't been implemented for this but essentially there will be a wrapping class that you would be able to start stacking icons with and the purpose for this would be so that you can layer multiple different icons with different colors so what this would allow you to do is kind of create more colorful icon sets as opposed to a single color that we have now so this has been a limitation of using this type of font as a glyph set but people have gotten around it simply by using multiple icons I think the best case the best example of this that I saw that Jared had sent me was the actual github logo that little tentacle creature I forget what it's called they've built that using entirely with a font set so it's like six or seven layers all separate colors and it looks great and it scales perfectly so that's something that's really available to us in this scenario because once we do have a larger set of icons you could take this male icon and back this on top of it and it would actually look alright because you could have them as separate colors as opposed to having two gray on gray icons which would not really make any sense so I don't have any examples of it in use right now but it's doable I pasted some URLs to some pretty neat examples of the exact same thing but using a different font people want to play with that later it's kind of neat another question from IRC is what would happen in text browsing what happens in text browsers is essentially nothing those browsers have because this is using what is it PUA there's basically a reserved range of font characters and all the glyphs are in that range so those browsers essentially show nothing in this scenario well it's also rendered using CSS which those browsers don't use it doesn't really matter what range you use well I think the concern was more because it still show a tofu character like just a square it's a text browser you don't use CSS you need CSS to play the icon the weird characters inserted with code in the border CSS3 if you're using a text browser it probably doesn't support CSS3 yeah content that's right I'm pretty sure that it doesn't support CSS3 it's not a text browser there's a question in the bug about whether this should be loaded first or not because if it's an external reference then in most browsers there's a flash one style content maybe that was covered before I got in no we haven't covered this I mean we could avoid that I guess by putting a data URI no it's not going to fit in a data URI there's a 2048 limit it's a 2048 limit so yeah I guess that's the downside of it presumably it appears as nothing because it's in this special Unicode block and then when the font loads in suddenly the icon snaps into view yeah honestly at this point I'm not really sure it does make sense to load it first but it does end up blocking further loads until that file gets picked up I don't know I'm not really sure what our solution could be in that scenario I'm open to suggestions no one knows what we should do to avoid a flash one style content the thing is even if we loaded it at the top you're going to end up with so many different ones it's going to like like the perceived performance of the page because you're going to have to block on GRLs that are loading like fonts for every single extension and yeah I would I would suggest not trying to do that well sorry not trying to make sure that the fonts are all loaded before just accept it so I have another question which is kind of about the open source nature of it all I know the get a repository is BSD licensed but I don't seem to get a repository or maybe it's there but I just haven't seen it is like the actual source like the format that you would make most of the pages to the icons in is that in the scg file or is it in some other file that's not in the repo may you can answer that where are the original source files for the glyphs in the scg I assume yes like if you're making a modification to an existing glyph what file would you edit you can take ttf file and unfortunately you can just do that okay so ttf file is the one that you would edit and you would generate the other ones for a ttf file and if you were trying to review that that would sort of change on gear that's your problem which doesn't get up right now well in any code review tool I guess like the point he's making which I share concerns that this is like this current process I believe this can be done in a way that can be more open source friendly and custom font for instance like you can just give it a directory of SVG files that are built for you but like we need to move to that before this is even reasonably viable because it's like not a cloud format is ttf binary yeah oh god yeah that's not gonna be very good um well you have the SVGs which are essentially plain text inside whereas ttf and eotr binary again if you can modify the source in an open format that's not binary you could do it with SVG SVG is open right so that's what I'm saying is we're gonna need to migrate toward that being the build process yeah it makes sense and I'm okay with that I need to look into that I think I'm good sure sure yeah I just you know without that we're gonna end up with like there's a few people who have like the software set up and the expertise to work on it it's gonna be this whole gatekeeping mechanism and there's always gonna be somebody who wants to use font sorry an icon that hasn't been accepted yet or hasn't been like brought into the ecosystem or is like one version of me would be behind or whatever and it's like a total nightmare we're we yeah we need to make sure that it's possible to contribute an icon directly to like the source repository in its source form and then just add it to the build process and they're right yeah I think essentially the SVG would probably be the best step for that we could probably automate this with Grunt or something that would be pretty straightforward I think to add on to the last question about the licensing currently the license is supposed to be BSD however the font files themselves accidentally have CC5SA 3.0 as their license that'll be rectified this week I think May is updating the font files on Friday with some other changes and the license should be fixed at that point as well there is a concern that the commons logo is probably not BSD compatible I have a meeting with legal to discuss the W mark on the commons logo and how we'll handle that okay I've really doubted that W is going to be an issue but the commons logo could pose problems so I mean you let us know what happens there and we'll see whether or not we pull that out in this particular scenario assuming legal does decide that no this does not qualify to stay in this font set for what do you call it wikimedia itself we'll have to create a separate build that includes our own logos in general is this something where if a site wants to reskin or change it or would we say just to make your own copy of wikifont or would we encourage them to make my special wikifont and change CSS rules to point to that I think the majority of use cases will simply be using the font set as is however once we do switch to an automated build process especially if it's as simple as something like grunt or like a little make file then other people can very easily have their own custom sets with their own fonts and it doesn't really conflict because A the font file name would be different and B since we're just depending on class names what this does is even if they were to add their own icons that conflict with an icon in the exact same space as one of our fonts the class name is different and that's all that's important so yeah ideally people would be able to make their own cliffs and have their own little font set and I'm fairly sure that will be the case at the wikimani foundation since we'll want to drop in the various logos that we have which are not in a public license that may be a good segue for me to jump in and show a little bit about how we've used this on the app project thus far because we've had that exact issue come up where there were a few glyphs that weren't quite what we wanted for a particular layout and we've done something a little bit different we've created just a second font where we have some of these supplemental characters yet we're still using the core font and that's allowed us to kind of experiment with these glyphs that may or may not make their way back into the wiki font or option that people can use you can have this and then add your own if that's an approach that's working for your particular project on the screen share right now basically every icon you see on that screen is from a font the wiki font characters are the W and the supplemental characters are the other ones that you're seeing with the exception of the pencil which is defined in CSS if we actually tap on the edit pencil for this particular article those icons that you see at the top are both wiki font and if we make a change to this piece of wiki text you can see how we're able to encode you know change the background color of the right arrow we're actually flipping that encode as well and we can do that in a RTL aware fashion and changing you know the background color to represent a disabled state versus a disabled state is just trivial now and as a result of using wiki font we were able to take a few dozen PNGs and I think their total size exceeded like 150k and we're able to reduce that to because we had to have separate PNGs to all these various states and some of these buttons have many different states that can be in and now that's just a single file that I believe covers around 20k for the entire wiki font some other examples in the app are like if I tap it might be hard to see on the screen share but as I tap on any of these icons like I'm tapping on the W there there's actually a tiny animation that I'm able to run natively and because we're doing this I suppose you'd have similar tricks you could do you know if you're using this in HTML but because we're using native iOSE things here we can do fun little tap animations and things like that if I bring up this secondary menu you'll see a bunch of other font glyphs which this might be changing because we're kind of tweaking this particular menu specifically but those are also wiki font characters and from a code complexity kind of standpoint it's just been very nice we've been able to eliminate entire parts of the code that had previously gone in and automated kind of the process to crank out the SPGs that we needed for all of these various things and it's kind of simplified the objects that now handle those sorts of buttons and button states so it's actually been pretty easy to use let's see we're even probably going to be doing a few stacking related things in the future we're not presently doing anything with that but I could see like if we're displaying an edit pencil for an article that has like a protection status using those icons of layer and coloring say the edit pencil a lighter gray than the lock because if you gray out the lock you know it just maybe starts looking a little confusing and if you can draw more attention to the lock it could be a little clearer we're also able to not only do the sorts of animations that might just pulse but we could do any sort of either directional rotations or just whatever we would need but what's been cool for the apps project is this has kind of given us a nice touchstone that allows our designs to be kind of more consistent with a lot less work presently we're only using this on iOS because there are some compatibility issues with older versions of Android so they're still doing the you know PNG to SVG process there but yeah it's been a really neat tool that maybe we can experiment a little more freely with because the apps are kind of more experimental right now so I think maybe one thing we didn't cover was just an actual example of the stacking and I'll just bring up a page really quick that shows kind of a neat example of that let me switch my share real quick so this is one of those links that I pasted into the chat and it's a little small so let me show them but it's just showing an example of the sorts of things you can do and you can see how a lot of these icons have many colors going on because they're able to stack and change the colors of the individual parts when they do that probably from the apps perspective the thing that's coolest about this is when we get to the point where we're going to do a sprint where we're focusing more on how's the app going to lay out on a tablet we'll be able to increase the size of say the chrome at the top and the bottom and then just pick a larger size for these visual icon elements and because they're you know not raster they're going to scale and they're going to look crisp you know even at that larger size and from a code perspective it's trivial then to manage that so mobile targets you guys use and it doesn't support SVG it goes pretty far back I'm sorry what mobile targets are you guys trying to support that doesn't support SVG well specifically for let's say the native iOS app they don't have a process right now like a built-in object for rendering SVGs and I think they do that kind of for performance reasons perhaps and so if you're going to display an image you create basically a raster version of it or if you really want to do it quote-unquote the right way you do it in core animation or something like that where it's basically allowing you to present vector information in a you know nice way it's like on mobile web like it goes back pretty ancient like well before I signed for it it was still like it was a launch on the clock but I'm going to just ask yeah it's pretty far back just as I got a launch like like what percentage like are you 67%ish I think it's double good two phones easily like yours like there's a lot of the cheaper knock-off phones or a lot of cheaper phones in general and that as a requirement may change as those usage numbers change but I think just for the first version of the rebooted app we said we're going to support like 2.3 yeah that's kind of what we've been doing on the app with it does anyone have any questions about that so May did you want to chat a little bit yeah so on the design side it's also been very easy for us because previously what we had to do was change icons and has been really challenging to let other people know that you know this icon has been iterated on and to update everyone every engineer and every designer that this icon has been changed has been proven very challenging and every single icon that we create new we would have to pass it on to the developer and they would have to convert it to PNG and whatsoever and that was a long process we also had to create each SMG file for any color that we're using so that was a pain too so hopefully this could help streamline that process a little bit and make it so much more easier on both ends so if you have any icons that you guys meet from us in the future you can go to the site on media we can use right here on my screen share so if you go down to icon requests at the bottom of the page you can see that I set up this thing here this is what I can think of that we can start to do for now I'm sure we can come up with better process in the future but for now I think this could be the best place to start that's all for me any other questions shoot if you're on the hangout and you have a question you can just unmute yourself now is there an easy way to get from the picture of the icon to the CSS class I think that's just one giant image they don't yet have an HTML demo which is probably it's not loaded on media well the demo right now is just one big empty image of all the icons or an SMG or whatever but they could probably fairly easily build an original icon demo which is what we have at OUI as well which is just like use every single icon with the tooltip it's like the CSS class or whatever or a description or whatever you generate it for the simple HTML page you slap the CSS on it it just works it better just work it's like your proof that your thing that can work but yeah we found that in OUI development HTML demos like that with explanatory sort of clear labels help a lot in making itself document so I believe we have this demo thing going on right now here it's also on a github it's called demo.html try our make list I believe say eventually something like this would be integrated into the living style guide so it would just be a section of the living style guide that would cover the icon font pretty much this is what I was talking about you might want to increase the font size of the icons whatever I think it's a really really great thing in general some small steps is to try to all these things to make it more automated like if you there's a more automated process you add the icon and automatically that's a demo that would be nice and the part that I was worried about the automation there is the stacking idea with colors I think that the ideal solution to support that would be perhaps for example in the source SVG some kind of naming convention or you add some information to some layers that become separate and then separate things because otherwise I find it a bit hard to imagine which would be the process of adjusting an icon like this that people post in many different places you can probably just have a JSON manifest with the entire directory and build on that that's going to be a lot of information I'm sure we can come up with something reasonable I don't know the accessibility but it's just, I mean I would like us at least to have something in mind before we start creating a lot of these composable elements but it's the both things that later we want to keep track of even if this file just presented say of the icons that save a little lock overlaid nicely and had those kind of groups even if it was just for the purposes of the presentation here yeah yeah so that I can work with them modify them yeah that's a suggestion that's good I've also found the concept I think it's really cool just driving consistency for the desktop web and apps any kind of kind of experiences that we build so one thing that I think would be great is I don't know how we would share the SVGs or the AI file of a lot of group of people we were talking about including the source files in our request but that's I think probably the biggest challenge that we maybe identified today is just how to open that process up and automate it something that I would in an ideal world, something that I would build which I don't know how feasible it is to build with like today's technology is if we had all the I mean we'll probably end up with Rust where we have all the icons we'll have some builds but like that still leaves the problem of like what if you want to add icons to the standard set or whatever if the font build process were fast enough and were quarters of languages that are using using the web you could just do it on the client resource I mean it's probably not very feasible with today's technology but I like want the future to happen that's the font's written in Ruby for instance that's probably great but I mean all they're really doing is interfacing with font forge so I don't know there's a huge difference it's probably you know how we know it's like C is a janitor like C is a janitor it's a simple stream processing library it's easy to port it's like zero lines of code, easy to port to php whatever it's probably not going to be true for like a free font system I like to dream resource loader Node.js that also needs to happen there's also another kind of small element that complicates this when it comes to designing a font glyph you have considerations like with a letter G the part of the G that descends below the line and the part of the letter that might ascend above a certain range and it's not necessarily you can just take an SVG that's trimmed around the elements and instantly create a font glyph there may be some other considerations that are required usually the way it works is it just based on the view box currently with the way it's been set up all of the glyphs are the exact same size like they have the exact same size bounding box and we kind of build all of the glyphs to be within that size currently we're not doing anything where a particular is kind of paying slower or something okay it's not really a line that well with text so it's the extra instance it will actually be fixed after this Friday I'm already fixing it so I think that's the part that when we say this is part of media UI that's the thing that there's still that kind of hand needed if someone submits an icon where it is maybe mathematically centered but not optically centered that's the kind of thing where an automatic process might not catch those kinds of things there's also the potential for us to use combining characters like we could have an icon that automatically overlays on previous pictures instead of having to position that I'm sorry, multi-byte strokes there was something some minutes ago it's using the ligature features of fonts to deal with that but that probably will not allow to have different colors but it could help in also composing elements so it's also something to explore I mean right now like we're a super basic tool layer you could simply use before and after what I mean if you wanted something a bit more complex than just two layers and you'd have to create multiple elements in HTML and then there will be a parent element that kind of stacks them on top of each other without you having to do anything I mean basically the SVGs and PNGs they already have limitations this has limitations as well this is a hack it's a clever hack but at some point the web will have a better way to handle this and just like PNGs you have to replace the SVGs at least for a short time this will replace something else so I think the important thing is so far with the approach is like it's based on CSS classes so like we can adjust the implementation I don't think that in all cases it's going to be enough of an abstraction but it should I think it's a pretty defensible first line of events like giving too deep into having to have all these layers all these crazy things but like this will have limitations like right now because of like visual trends everybody uses monochrome icons but like five years ago we didn't and nobody else did either and once that becomes out of style and like everybody starts using colored icons we're going to be like going crazy trying to figure out how to make these things look color and then we're going to switch back to SVGs so I mean you know I think it's as long as we can keep it abstract enough at the actual at the actual access point level I think we should be in good shape but if we get too crazy with like trying to like maximize I think it's going to be for not so we're going to hurry all the way just a reminder we have five minutes left and so if there's anything else that needs to be covered otherwise we have five minutes we'll have to stop one time I was wondering the flow is using WikiGlyph and the example CSS is using WikiFont or maybe vice versa is that which is the recommended CSS names there is a patch in Garrett that corrects it to the latest version but what is it? WikiFont? The class name is WikiGlyph the font name is WikiFont-Glyph So the thing in GitHub is the way it's the way you want it to be and this was asked a while back on Bugzilla is when will it be available for people to start using in Core? That is a good question it's still in its infancy I wouldn't put it into Core just given that there's a lot of work that needs to be done I would not wager it to be there for at least minimum in another month we still need to figure out any RTL issues there's a lot of things that need to be done before we get to that point so that's where you guys really you guys got to get in touch with May in particular get up on that GitHub page and let us know what your needs are what your requirements are what issues you have with this thing and we'll see what we can do about getting those things out there Can we not use GitHub for this bit of our development isn't on GitHub except for this There's already a patch to putting in Core I get it 1,3,7,8,8,8 we'll eventually move to that I think that has the assets in but maybe not the SVGs and stuff I wanted to get it a bit more cleaned up fix up the string issues and everything before we put it out to Core In the meantime can we just make it a Garrett project that's not Core Yeah I'm okay with that Yeah it was just on GitHub for convenience I guess we'll get in touch with one of the projects over here Alright any other questions concerns arousals Not yet I think we're done Okay thanks everybody