Les Cahiers du Studio

A time-based documentation tool to collaboratively keep notes and capture media from live experiences.

The documentation for this app can be found here (in french).

License

This app is under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. It can be used, modified and shared freely as long as no commercial use is made and the attribution and link to L’Atelier des Chercheurs are kept.

The typeface embedded in this tool, STVitry, was created specifically for the Studio-Théâtre of Vitry. Its use is expressly restricted to this tool, and it cannot be used anywhere else without prior authorisation by the Studio-Théâtre or Maxime Fittes, the creator of this font.

Credits and origin

This tool was made for and in collaboration with the Studio-Théâtre of Vitry, a place for theatrical creation and research that welcomes and hosts theatre companies. It is installed on a computer inside the Studio-Théâtre and allows companies to keep track of their time and process inside the walls of the Studio-Théâtre. Studio-Théâtre of Vitry is supported by la ville de Vitry-sur-Seine, le Département du Val-de-Marne, la Région île-de-France et la DRAC île-de-France.

The creation, design and code for this app was done by L’Atelier des Chercheurs following a series of workshops and field studies at the Studio-Théâtre, and meetings with persons in charge there (specifically Bérangère Vantusso, Florence Kremper and Ella Gouet).

Furthermore, it was developed with the precious help from the following persons:

• Vincent Desclaux (who participated in the creation of the user interface)

• Maxime Fittes (who created the typeface STVitry)

• Nolwenn Maudet, Benoît Verjat, Émilie Coquard, Nicolas Taffin, Julien Taquet, Thibéry Maillard, Anthony Masure, Mike Sabbagh, and others who gave feedbacks and helped refine the concept and use cases of this app.

Finally, we should mention that this app wouldn’t be the same if it weren’t for two other, older free and open-source apps: Rekall and Ligne de Temps. Both had very interesting ideas and use cases that we drew inspiration from to make Les Cahiers du Studio.

Install Les Cahiers du Studio

Method 1 — the easy way

Download the latest release from the release page.

Method 2 — the long way

You need node.js version 8.2.1 and python 2.7 to install this app with this method. On Windows, you also need to install Microsoft’s Windows Build Tools by following the instructions here.

1. Download this repository

Click on Clone or Download in the top right corner of this page, then Download ZIP. Unpack this folder.

2. Open a terminal window

Open a terminal window:

• Windows: (XP) use this tutorial to open a terminal on Windows or open Command Prompt in the start menu
• macOS: go to Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal
• Linux: use a terminal app such as Terminal or Konsole

In your terminal, navigate to the Les-Cahiers-du-Studio-master folder with your terminal using the cd command:

cd path/to/Les-Cahiers-du-Studio-master

3. Install dependencies

If you haven’t already, install the tool that will enable native modules to be used. To do this, follow the instructions here: https://github.com/nodejs/node-gyp

Then, install les Cahiers’s dependencies (may take up to 5 minutes):

npm install

4. Run Les Cahiers du Studio

Start from the folder in a terminal window with the following command:

npm start

Troubleshooting

Most install errors (and especially the Module version mismatch. Expected 50, got XX.) are due to native packages such as sharp, a powerful image manipulation library.

The first thing to check is whether you use the right version of node.js: it must be version 8.2.1. To know the version you are running, write node -v in a terminal window.

The reason you have to use this version of node.js is because this app uses Electron, a tool to package node.js and a webbrowser as native apps. The version of Electron this app is using is version 1.8.2, and it uses node version 8.2.1. However, when native modules are built, they are built using the local node version and not Electron’s. Hence, you have to run the exact same version as Electron to prevent this type of error to happen.

Because switching between node version is annoying, it is recommended to use nvm to do so (nvm windows for Windows).

Here are a few other things you can try (but only after making sure you run the right node version):

1. Sometimes, Electron is not installed when running npm install on the repo. It may help to run npm install electron@1.8.2 just to be sure it is actually installed locally.

2. Follow the instructions here, and specifically:

# Electron's version.
export npm_config_target=1.8.2
# The architecture of Electron, can be ia32 or x64.
export npm_config_arch=x64
export npm_config_target_arch=x64
# Download headers for Electron.
export npm_config_disturl=https://atom.io/download/electron
# Tell node-pre-gyp that we are building for Electron.
export npm_config_runtime=electron
# Tell node-pre-gyp to build module from source code.
export npm_config_build_from_source=true
# Install all dependencies, and store cache to ~/.electron-gyp.
HOME=~/.electron-gyp npm install

3. electron-builder (which builds electron to an app) embeds a script that rebuilds dependencies according to electron. To use it, write:

./node_modules/.bin/electron-builder install-app-deps

sharp on ubuntu

It seems the dependency sharp cannot be built easily on Ubuntu. Install an older version to fix this:

npm install sharp@0.17.3

Tweak, fork and debug

server-side

• Run npm run debug to start the server with a better debug in terminal

client-side

The client-side code is in the public folder. To write some new CSS or client-side JS, you need to run the following tasks:

npm run install

and then, to start the dev tasks:

npm run dev

To build for production, use

npm run build

This will create minified JS files in the public/dist folder.