GSoC/2016/Ideas

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See also: GSoc Instructions, Last year ideas

Guidelines

Information for Students

These ideas were contributed by our developers and users. They are sometimes vague or incomplete. If you wish to submit a proposal based on these ideas, you may wish to contact the developers and find out more about the particular suggestion you're looking at.

Being accepted as a Google Summer of Code student is quite competitive. Accepted students typically have thoroughly researched the technologies of their proposed project and have been in frequent contact with potential mentors. Simply copying and pasting an idea here will not work. On the other hand, creating a completely new idea without first consulting potential mentors is unlikely to work out.

When writing your proposal or asking for help from the general KDE community don't assume people are familiar with the ideas here. KDE is really big!

If there is no specific contact given you can ask questions on the general KDE development list [email protected]. See the KDE mailing lists page for information on available mailing lists and how to subscribe.

Adding a Proposal

Note

Follow the template of other proposals!

Project:

Brief explanation:

Expected results:

Knowledge Prerequisite:

Mentor:

When adding an idea to this section, please try to include the following data:

• if the application is not widely known, a description of what it does and where its code lives
• a brief explanation
• the expected results
• pre-requisites for working on your project
• if applicable, links to more information or discussions
• mailing list or IRC channel for your application/library/module
• your name and email address for contact (if you're willing to be a mentor)

If you are not a developer but have a good idea for a proposal, get in contact with relevant developers first.

Ideas

Your Own Idea

Project: Something that you're totally excited about

Brief explanation: Do you have an awesome idea you want to work on with KDE but that is not among the ideas below? That's cool. We love that! But please do us a favor: Get in touch with a mentor early on and make sure your project is realistic and within the scope of KDE. That will spare you and us a lot of frustration.

Expected results: Something you and KDE loves

Knowledge Prerequisite: Probably C++ and Qt but depends on your project

Mentor: Try to see who in KDE is interested in what you want to work on and approach them. If you are unsure you can always ask in #kde-soc on Freenode IRC.

Kdenlive

Kdenlive is an intuitive and powerful multi-track video editor, including most recent video technologies. Our software is completely free, as defined by the GNU foundation. Using Kdenlive is investing in a community driven project, which aims to establish relationships between people in order to built the best video tools.

• Kdenlive project web site
• Kdenlive wiki
• Mailinglist
• #kdenlive IRC channel on Freenode

Amarok

Amarok is a Music player that helps you organize and rediscover your music.

• Amarok project web site
• Amarok wiki
• Mailinglist
• Google+ page
• #amarok IRC channel on Freenode

digiKam

digiKam is an advanced digital photo management application for Linux, Windows, and Mac-OSX.

• digiKam project web site
• Exiv2 project web site
• digiKam port to KF5 status
• Mailinglist
• Google+ page
• #digikam IRC channel on Freenode

Marble

Marble is a virtual globe and world atlas — your swiss army knife for maps. Find your way and explore the world!

• Marble project website
• Mailinglist
• #marble IRC channel on Freenode

KStars

KStars is a very powerful tool for anyone interested in astronomy. It is part of the KDE Edu suite.

Project: KStars Lite

Brief explanation: Currently KStars only runs on desktop/laptop computers. Due to the proliferation of tablet/mobile devices, a lite version of KStars should be available to users on these form factors. The goal is to develop a QML/QtQuick2 frontend for KStars with basic functions:

1. Sky map: Pan, zoom...etc
2. Search
3. Color schemes
4. Simulation time
5. Location/Time from mobile/phone or by user
6. Optional: Projection Systems
7. Optional: FOV Symbols

The student is expected to work initially on separating GUI/Data coupling in KStars, and then write a QML/QtQuick2 frontend to present the necessary functionality to the user. The work must be performed against the primary branch, i.e. there will be no separate application specific for tablet/mobile, all form factors must share the same code base. The sky map shall contain the default stars and DSO catalogs with possibility of additional catalogs in the future.

Expected results: Lite version of KStars for Mobile/Tablet form factors.

Knowledge Prerequisite: C++, Qt, QtQuick2

Mentors: Jasem Mutlaq (IRC: knro)

The student will need to:

• Look at the relevant code, and propose a tractable plan for implementing some of the improvements within the GSoC time frame.
• Implement some of the improvements, producing production-ready code that can be included in the next release of KStars after GSoC 2016.

Project: KStars on Windows

Brief explanation: While KStars is available on Windows by KDE via the KDE Windows Initiative, it is out of date and requires a lot of installation prerequisites in KDE4. The primary goal is to develop a single KStars installation Windows executable to install KStars and any prerequisite libraries in KDE5/Qt5. The secondary goal is to use ASCOM under Windows to drive telescopes. KStars relies on INDI Library to control astronomical devices in Linux, and currently INDI Library is not available on Windows. You need to update KStars to accommodate ASCOM telescopes under Windows. The student may utilize any open source and/or free installation frameworks to build the final executable.

Expected results: KStars single executable for Windows. ASCOM telescope support under KStars for Windows.

Knowledge Prerequisite: C++, Qt, INDI/ASCOM

Mentors: Jasem Mutlaq (IRC: knro)

The student will need to:

• Look at the relevant code, and propose a tractable plan for implementing some of the improvements within the GSoC time frame.
• Implement some of the improvements, producing production-ready code that can be included in the next release of KStars after GSoC 2016.

Project: DSS Overlay

Brief explanation: DSS is a digital version of an all-sky photographic atlas. The goal is to add a KStars component to superimpose the DSS images unto the sky map. Therefore, the end user shall be able to view the real sky view against the simulated sky map. The user should be able to enable/disable the overlay just like any other sky component (e.g. Milky Way). Utilize DSS tiles spanning 1x1 square degrees for a total of 41253 tiles all over the sky map. Due to the storage and resource limitations, the tiles should be only displayed at high zoom levels starting with FOV 10 degrees or lower.

Expected results: DSS overlay component covering the whole sky.

Knowledge Prerequisite: C++, Qt

Mentors: Jasem Mutlaq (IRC: knro)

The student will need to:

• Look at the relevant code, and propose a tractable plan for implementing some of the improvements within the GSoC time frame.
• Implement some of the improvements, producing production-ready code that can be included in the next release of KStars after GSoC 2016.

Project: Propose your own project

Brief explanation: If you have some interesting ideas about KStars that can be implemented within the GSoC timeframe, you are very welcome to propose them, because we seem to have run out of ideas.

Mentors:

KDE PIM

The KDE PIM community work on a set of libraries and applications for Personal Information Management, including email, calendaring, contacts, and feed aggregation.

Simon

Simon is a speech recognition suite.

Website - Mailing list - IRC channel: #kde-speech on Freenode.

Okular

Okular is a Document Viewer.

• Okular project web site
• Mailinglist
• #okular IRC channel on Freenode

Trojitá

Trojitá is a fast IMAP e-mail client. Since late 2012, it is a part of KDE's extragear. The project focuses on delivering a usable, fast, standards-compliant, cross-platform and reliable e-mail client which can scale from cell phones to huge e-mail archives without annoying slowdowns.

Gluon

Gluon is a project to build a Qt and KDE based game engine and game development tool. The engine is designed to support both mobile and desktop game development. We have ported the engine to Qt5 last year and are currently working on releasing a first Qt5 based version.

Krita

Krita is an advanced 2D painting application. It support creating images from scratch from begin to end. Krita is a complex application and developers need to have a fair amount of experience in order to be able to do something.

Calamares

Calamares is a distribution-independent installer framework (code). Calamares is participating to Google Summer of Code with KDE as umbrella organization. We are a young project, we are developing quickly, we are working with state of the art technologies (C++11, Qt 5, KDE Frameworks 5, Boost.Python) and we are solving exciting problems.

Calamares is already shipped or is about to be shipped as the default system installer for several Linux distributions, including KaOS, BBQLinux, Fedora KDE, Manjaro, Netrunner Rolling, OpenMandriva, Tanglu, and others.

See this post for instructions on how to structure your Google Summer of Code proposal for Calamares.

Kopete

Kopete is an instant messenger supporting AIM, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, GroupWise, ICQ, Jabber (XMPP, Google Talk, Facebook, ...), Meanwhile, QQ, Skype, Windows Live Messenger, WinPopup, Yahoo and more. It is designed to be a flexible and extensible multi-protocol system suitable for personal and enterprise use.

Mailing list: [email protected] (archive at: lists.kde.org)