Google Summer of Code 2012

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Google Summer of Code 2012 is now being planned. As in previous years, Google has generously sponsored students to work on Free Software projects. AbiWord plans to participate in the program, as it did in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011

Organizations may apply to the GSoC program between February 27th and March 9th, 2012. Students may apply to approved mentoring organizations between March 26th and April 6th, 2012 - please see the Google program page for specifics on the timeline!

Google Summer of Code 2012 program page

Contents

Project Ideas

This is a list of project ideas with the name of a potential mentor. You can use these ideas as a basis for your proposal, but if you have an idea that is not in this list, feel free to propose it.

Projects with an interested mentor

Table improvements

Proposed by: Martin Sevior

AbiWord's table support currently lacks the ability to make a selected row repeat at the top of every page the table is broken over. This useful for big tables with a heading above each column. Repeated rows allow the headings to be visible at the top of every page. This project would implement that.

This includes both the backend work to enable AbiWord to display those tables and to fix the table dialog to enable the user to implement the feature.

Important note: during the 2010 SoC, a lot of work was done by student Sander Bogaert in the "gsoc2010tableimprov" branch to tackle table related problems. If you take up this project, it would be wise to investigate how and if this work should be merged first. The state of that branch is described by Sander in a recent mail: 

It's a while ago I wrote or even had a look at this code ( shame on me ) but I'll try to describe where I left of as best as I remember.

Three major things were accomplished during this summer;

* Rectangular selection in Tables. Users no long have to select row-by-row. There is some strange bug left in this Uwog knows about ( ask him ). [uwog here: if you drag a table selection across your screen very fast, the redrawing will not be done properly; this might be related to our event dropping mechanism to prevent the queueing up of events]

* Table-to-table copy and paste. When copying data from a table in AbiWord and pasting it in another cell it will create a nested table. I received email asking to change this so the data would be transferred cell-to-cell instead. This works in the branch, it's functionality is currently limited with some if checks because for some sort of selections it would make more sense of copying with a nested table. Ideally the contextmenu should offer both options.

* The most important change in the branch is the fact that the back-end is prepared to handle multiple-range selections. Currently AbiWord has only 1 range in the document for a selection. In this branch it uses a vector of ranges. This allowed the above mentioned changes and with some small extra work regular shift & ctrl click behavior for selecting would be implemented. This isn't just in tables but also in text. It needs to be tested to detect and remove remaining bugs.

I forgot why I thought at that time I needed to implement support for multiple ranges to enable implementing repeating table headers but maybe it becomes clear to anyone who has a look at the code.

Good luck with your GSoC!

Speed ups for large documents

Proposed by: Martin Sevior

AbiWord support for very large documents (> 400 pages) has improved a lot but we still have a way to go. Currently editting at the start of a very large document, say over a 2000 pages, is painfully slow. This is because when ever a line is either created or destroyed while editting AbiWord shuffles the all the lines following the line to reflect this change. This project would be to investigate ways to either speed up _breakSection (which places places on a pages) or to run it in the background so that only onscreen changes are immediately reflected when new lines are created or destroyed.

Read and write SVG to odt

Proposed by: Martin Sevior

odt has native SVG support as does abiword. This project would be to enable all svg items in odt document to be fully preserved on import and export to odt.

Dialog improvements

Proposed by: Martin Sevior

AbiWord's table and Frame dialogs do not expose all the feature available to users. In the case of tables, this includes the ability to precisely set cell widths and heights.

In the case of Frames with includes the ability to allow the frame height or width to expand the capture all the text enteed into the table.

This project would also allow the Table and Frame dialogs to accept rotated text, which is the subject of another GSoC Project.


Implement Rotated text

Proposed by: Martin Sevior

AbiWord does not presently allow rotated text to be displayed in table cells and text boxes. This project would implement that feature by first enabling it the cross platform graphics classes, then adding the ability to abiword's table cells and frames. The final part of the project would be to enable this feature to imported and exported to rtf, odt and docx formats.

Add a testing framework

AbiWord needs a functional/regression test suite. You would propose testing frameworks, methodologies, key areas of the code that you would test, etc. You may want to address the following points in your proposal:

Improve ODF support

Proposed by Martin Sevior

AbiWord has rather good ODF support but it is not perfect. There are a collection ODF import/export bugs that need fixing. This project would be to fix these and improve our ODF compliance.

Improve import/export of maths

Proposed by Jean Brefort

Implement and improve the import and export of maths to rtf and odt. Investigate import and export of maths to docx. While we can in principle import and export maths to odt there are many bugs. We cannot import/export maths to rtf or docx. The project would to improve and implement this filter.

Improve docx format support

Proposed by Martin Sevior

AbiWord has reasonable support for MicroSoft Open XML file format (docx) however it is far from perfect. The project would be to gather together a collection of sophisticated .abw file and translate abw => write out docx => read in docx to MS Word => write out docx (MS Word) => read in to abiword> write out abw. Perfect translation would be the final abw is identical to the original. The project would be to improve docx support as we find errors in the translation.

Haiku Port for AbiWord

Proposed by Kathiravelu Pradeeban

Haiku is an operating system inspired by BeOS. AbiWord used to support BeOS, but the support was removed from the tree a long ago. This will be a project co-mentored by Haiku and AbiWord.The student will ideally start by looking into the svn logs, and bringing back the BeOS support back to live. This will also involve stabilizing the AbiWord trunk build on Haiku, getting AbiWord available for a release for Haiku/BeOS. The students will be expected to have the respective operating system. Feel free to contact the Haiku community for the questions related to installing the operating system, using it and building the projects on it.

OpenMedSpel plugin for AbiWord

Proposed by Martin Sevior

OpenMedSpel http://www.e-medtools.com/Hunspel_openmedspel.html is a open source GPL compable dictionary with over 50,000 medical terms. The project would be to develop a plugin that would simultanously spell check against OpenMedSpel and whatever language is set in the document.


Application process

AbiWord is primarily written in the C++ programming language (and to a lesser extent, C). Ideal applicants would have some experience in one or both of these languages and would be able to demonstrate this.

Google start accepting student applications from March 26th, 2012. Students wishing to work on AbiWord over the 2012 summer for USD $5000.00 should follow the steps outlined here. Google Summer of Code Student Guide provides more insights to the program.

A presentation on applying for Google Summer of Code focusing on AbiWord can be found here - Google Summer of Code Introductory Presentation - AbiWord

The Application 

*Name:*
*Email:*
*Project Title:*
*Synopsis:*
  A short description of your project.
*Benefits to the AbiWord (and/or other) project(s):*
*Deliverables:*
  Quantifiable results. E.g. "At the end of my project, AbiWord's piece table will be 50 times faster."
*Project Details:*
  A more detailed description of your project.
*Project Schedule:*
  How long will the project take? When can you begin work? Do you know of any planned absences or 
  other major conflicts (summer classes, vacations, etc.)
*Bio:*
  Who are you? What makes you the best person to work on this project?

Application Review

Applicants are encouraged to discuss their project ideas on the mailing list, irc, or with individual mentors before submitting the proposal. However, it's unlikely that you'll get much useful feedback by posting your application to the mailing list.

Google's application submission system allows applicants to edit their proposals after they've been submitted. It also allows mentors to read your proposals and comment both publicly & privately on them. Our advice is to submit your proposals to the GSoC program as soon as you are reasonably comfortable with them. If we feel that your proposal is unclear or otherwise "lacking", we will ask you to edit it.

Additional Requirements

In addition, we require you to make a screenshot as described below:

  • Checkout abiword from our svn repository.
  • Make a debug build of the application. (Pass --enable-debug to configure, or when compiling on Windows, use Visual C++ build)
  • The file abi/src/wp/ap/xp/ap_EditMethods.cpp is the file that describes the functions that are called from the Graphical User interface.
  • The function "fileInsertGraphic" is called when the user chooses to insert a picture. Just before returning, add a debug statement: 
UT_DEBUGMSG(("Image has been inserted!!\n"))
  • Take a screenshot of the debug output from abiword showing this statement has executed.
  • Attach a png image of this screenshot to your application email or post the screenshot on the web somewhere and include a link to it in your application.

More detailed building instructions are available in the "Compiling AbiWord" article. "Developing AbiWord on Windows using Visual C++" discusses building Abiword for Windows.

Where do I actually apply?

Submit your application through the GSoC 2012 website. Register as a student first then submit your application. http://socghop.appspot.com/gsoc/homepage/google/gsoc2012

Mentoring Organization Application

Describe your organization

The AbiSource community consists of a highly skilled group of people interested in, as our tagline states, bringing Word Processing to Everyone. We do this for example by making our software, AbiWord being our flagship product, available on as many (operating) systems as possible, and adapting it for use on the One Laptop Per Child system.

Why is your organization applying to participate in GSoC 2012? What do you hope to gain by participating?

AbiWord has had a very rewarding experience with GSoC during the past 6 years. we have many new feature implement and bugs fixed. In addition we have attracted enthusiastic new contributors. We hope to improve on our successes by making further improvements and by attracting new talented developers to our organization. In fact 2 of the mentors list in this application were previous GSoC students. We think this is a fantastic validation of both GSoC and our own organisation.

Did your organization participate in past GSoCs? If so, please summarize your involvement and the successes and challenges of your participation.

We've had a fantastic run so far and are really grateful for Google's support. We've had 25 successful projects and only one missing student over seven years. Some of biggest improvements and new features have been implemented through the GSoC program. Our biggest complaint has been that not all students have been truthful and forthcoming with their availability.

See Google Summer of Code 2006 , Google Summer of Code 2007 , Google Summer of Code 2008 , Google Summer of Code 2009, Google Summer of Code 2010, and Google Summer of Code 2011 for information related to our involvement in GSoC.

Who will your organization administrator be? Please include Google Account information.

Martin Sevior

What license(s) does your project use?

What is the URL for your ideas page?

http://www.abisource.com/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code_2012

What is the main development mailing list or forum for your organization?

abiword-dev AT abisource.com (Archives)

Does your organization have an application template you would like to see students use? If so, please provide it now. 

*Name:*
*Email:*
*Project Title:*
*Synopsis:*
  A short description of your project.
*Benefits to the AbiWord (and/or other) project(s):*
*Deliverables:*
  Quantifiable results. E.g. “At the end of my project, AbiWord’s piece table will be 50 times faster.”
*Project Details:*
  A more detailed description of your project.
*Project Schedule:*
  How long will the project take? When can you begin work? Do you know of any planned absences or 
  other major conflicts (summer classes, vacations, etc.)
*Bio:*
  Who are you? What makes you the best person to work on this project?
*Amount Requested:*
  (Put in $5000.00)

In addition, we require you to make a screenshot as described below:

  • Checkout abiword from our svn repository.
  • Make a debug build of the application. (Pass --enable-debug to configure, or when compiling on Windows, use “ABI_OPT_DEBUG=1 make” in place of “make”)
  • The file abi/src/wp/ap/xp/ap_EditMethods.cpp is the file that describes the functions that are called from the Graphical User interface.
  • The function “fileInsertGraphic” is called when the user chooses to insert a picture. Just before returning, add a debug statement: 
UT_DEBUGMSG((“Image has been inserted!!\n”))
  • Take a screenshot of the debug output from abiword showing this statement has executed.
  • Attach a png image of this screenshot to your application or post the screenshot on the web somewhere and include a link to it in your application.

More detailed building instructions are available in the “Compiling AbiWord” article.

What is the main IRC channel for your organization?

irc://irc.gnome.org#abiword

Who will be your backup organization administrator? Please include Google Account information.

Marc Maurer; uwog AT uwog.net

Who will your mentors be? Please include Google Account information.

  • Marc Maurer; uwog AT uwog.net
  • Martin Sevior; msevior AT gmail.com
  • Kathiravelu Pradeeban; kk.pradeeban AT gmail.com
  • Hubert Figuière; hfiguiere AT teaser.fr
  • Xun Sun; xun.sun.cn AT gmail.com ??
  • Jean Bréfort; jean.brefort AT gmail.com

What criteria did you use to select these individuals as mentors? Please be as specific as possible.

Our mentors are highly-motivated, long-standing contributors to the AbiWord project. All of them have a deep first hand knowledge of the AbiWord codebase and are community members "in good standing". All have been involved in previous GSoC projects through proposing ideas, reviewing applications, and mentoring students.

What is your plan for dealing with disappearing students?

We've had a student disappear before. It's thoroughly unpleasant. We hope to minimize the damage done by a missing student by requiring routine code updates.

What is your plan for dealing with disappearing mentors?

This has not been a problem in previous GSoC programs. But we plan for each project to have at least one "backup" mentor who remains involved in each student's particular GSoC project, who shall assist in cases where the primary mentor cannot fulfill his/her obligations.

What steps will you take to encourage students to interact with your project's community before, during and after the program?

All of our mentors strongly encourage would-be students to get involved on both the mailing list and the IRC channel, where most of the developers hang out.

This year, our project list has generated a lot of interest before we'd even submitted it to Google. All of the mentors with their contact info listed on the proposal page have gotten at least 1 email from an interested student.

What will you do to ensure that your accepted students stick with the project after GSoC concludes?

AbiWord's main strength is its community. We strive to provide a fun, cooperative atmosphere with interesting and rewarding projects.

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