ixa book questions/complaints

[swo]

I'm collecting notes on the ixa book here. I'm new here, so feel free to tell me I'm off base.

• Where is the crab? -- Resolved by docs: added links and getstarted to homepage #767
• Trace logging example doesn't work: called `Result::unwrap()` on an `Err` value: "Invalid log level format: ixa_model:trace" -- Resolved in docs: Small improvements to book #719
• Command line syntax is confusing without knowing how to call ixa from the command line. This doesn't seem to be typical usage anyway? Probably relates to Add cli #708
• AnAgentBasedModel needs a white background to be visible on dark mode
• Agent vs. person vs. entity -- Just wanted to double-check what the current conventional language is. I'm sure people have feelings about "agent."
• the example seems a little outdated; makes reference to prelude where it seems like now there are traits defined in other places (e.g., ContextPeopleExt) -- see note about the setup script below; I think that's the resolution
• Deploy the book to the website? -- This was my confusion.
• The setup script referenced in the docs adds the release branch (listed as version 0.0.1?) rather than from the main branch, versus what appears in the example Cargo.toml -- I think this should point to main -- suggested resolution in docs: Small improvements to book #719

[k88hudson-cfa]

Thanks for taking the time to write this up and also opening PRs!

The book is deployed at https://ixa.rs/book/, obviously we need to have a link from the front page/ a better front page – I filed / prioritized #757

Re agent/person/entity, I would assume we should align on entity now that we support that as feature, or person is ok if the entity is specifically a person in an example – however, open to thoughts if this is awkward

[swo]

re: book. This is great! That resolves a bunch of my problems. I also put https://ixa.rs as the main link on this repo, so make it easier for new users to find. Love the crab game.

re: CLI. Am I doing something silly here? It seems like we use ixa as a library and make the individual model projects as bins.

re: agent vs. entity. I imagine there's a lot of refinements to nomenclature and improvements to pedagogy that could be made. My guess is that it's not worth pursuing those for now, while development is so active. If that's not true, and it would be useful for me to try to update the book some more, let me know.

I think #719 has the fixes that will resolve most of my other concerns and make the book run-able.

cc @RobertJacobsonCDC