Google Summer of Code 2010

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Google Summer of Code 2010 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 and 2009.

Organizations may apply to the GSoC program between March 8th and March 12th, 2010. Students may apply to approved mentoring organizations between March 29, 2010, to April 9, 2010 - please see the Google program page for specifics on the timeline!

Google SoC 2010 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

Add Hyphenation support

AbiWord currently does not support automatic hyphenation. The hunspell dictionaries support this feature, so we could use that as well.

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.

In addition the project would also implement rectangular selections inside tables. We now have the backend infrastructure to enable this. The second part of the project would be to implement it as a supported mouse behaviour.

Dialog Implementations/Improvements

Proposed by: Martin Sevior

AbiWord now has the ability to display paragraph borders and shading. These features can be imported from ODF and abw. The first part of this project would be to build a GUI dialog to set these properties from within abiword. The current frame and table dialogs have most of the features needed for this already. Preference will be given to students who can implement this feature in Windows. Extra preference will be given to students who implement this feature in all of Windows/OSX and Linux.

In addition there are new features in the table and frame backends. For tables these features include vertical alignment of cells, precise setting of cell heights and widths. For frames we now have ability to allow the height of the frame to be automatically increased to match the total height of the contents given a fixed width. (Elastic frame heights.)

The second part of this project would be to expose these feature in the table and frame dialogs.

Improve OOXML support

Proposed by: Dominic Lachowicz

AbiWord now has good compliance with Microsoft's OOXML format but it can be improved. AbiWord has an importer and exporter. This project would be to improve this so that a wide range of documents can be exported from AbiWord, imported to Office 2007 then exported back into AbiWord with no data loss.

You can include the "OOXML DrawingML" project in your proposal, but be aware that this will likely be a lot of work. You'd probably want to combine DrawingML support with tying up loose ends in the OOXML importer. You could ignore the OOXML export project entirely.

Reduce Flicker

Proposed by Martin Sevior

AbiWord does not use a double buffered graphics subsystem. This means that large scale updates pages show up as repaints of the screen. An example of this effect in action is shown in this ogg video demonstrating multipage view implemented in last years GSoC. 

(Warning 55 MB ogg file!) http://abiword.com/~msevior/multipage.ogv

This project would be to investigate the use of an optimized offscreen drawing buffer. The idea would be to draw to an offscreen buffer and only update changed regions of the buffer so that small changes to the document (like pressing a single key) do not result in a complete copy from off screen to on screen. There was an unsuccessful attempt to implement this last year. Let's see if we can learn from the mistakes and complete it this year.


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:

Port librsvg away from GTK+ dependencies

A growing number of projects (including AbiWord) are interested in SVG support, but without dragging in GNOME/GTK+ dependencies. Your goal would be to split librsvg into 2 libraries:

  1. One that had a GTK+-free API
  2. One that preserved API and ABI compatibility with the existing library

This project would likely not last the entire summer. Students choosing it are encouraged to come up with additional projects on their own (eg. improve libwmf2's SVG output) or pair it with another project from this list (eg. OOXML DrawingML support).

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.

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 23rd, 2009. Students wishing to work on AbiWord over the 2009 summer for USD $4500.00 should follow the steps outlined here.

Google Guide to SoC applicants

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?
*Amount Requested:*
  (Put in $4500.00)

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.

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 2010? What do you hope to gain by participating?

AbiWord has had a very rewarding experience with GSoC during the past 4 years. We hope to improve on our successes by attracting new talented developers to our organization.

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 14 successful projects and only one missing student over three 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 and Google Summer of Code 2009for information related to our involvement in GSoC.

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

????

What license(s) does your project use?

What is the URL for your ideas page?

http://www.abisource.com/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code_2010

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 $4500.00)

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 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.

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.

Dom Lachowicz; Marc Maurer; uwog AT uwog.net

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

  • Marc Maurer; uwog AT uwog.net
  • Dominic Lachowicz; domlachowicz AT gmail.com
  • Martin Sevior; msevior AT gmail.com

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

All of these individuals 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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