GSoC/2011/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

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

To see previous Project ideas, see: 2010 ideas. Obvious sources of projects are the bugs database, the forum, and your list and IRC channel ideas.

Amarok

Amarok is a powerful KDE based music player for Linux and Unix, MacOS X and Windows with an intuitive interface. It makes playing the music you love and discovering new music easier than ever before - and it looks good doing it!

Website - Mailing list - IRC channel: #amarok on Freenode.

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digiKam

Photo Management program

digiKam project web site - Mailinglist - IRC channel: #digikam on Freenode.

Project: Camera UI Revamp

Brief explanation: DigiKam features a UI for accessing and downloading pictures from cameras. The code is rather old, using Qt3Support classes for the icon view, the UI code intermangled deeply with backend code, and has not seen very much care and love for some years.

This project would involve taking the old code apart, rewriting a clean code base backend and frontend, but also adding user interface elements to make the most important everyday task as easy as possible.

In more detail: Write a model listing images on a camera (There are two backends, USB mass storage cameras, which are basically files on disk, and gphoto2 cameras, which require access through a library). Take the existing digikam icon view and delegate classes, which are prepared for code reuse, and put together an icon view for the model. Cleanly separate the code that does the actual work (downloading, converting, renaming) from the UI. Wrap that in the main window.

UI design: The current interface is powerful, exposing many options. We want to preserve that. But at the same time, there are three very common actions: a) Download all new files to the last used album b) Download all new files to a new album c) Download all new files to an existing album.
It should be possible to carry out task (a) with one click, task (b) and (c) with two or three clicks, without opening a dialog. Friendly to the new user, preserving access to all options for the poweruser.

Expected results: A camera UI based on Qt model/view and clean code which provides the currently available functionality, offering a quick path to download new pictures.

Knowledge Prerequisite: Qt, C++. Interest in Qt model/view and UI code.

Mentor: Gilles Caulier? (Marcel Wiesweg)

Project: Presentation View

Brief explanation: The presentation view is a full-screen workplace which you can use to present photos to yourself or your audience. At first glance it is looking like the current slide show, but then it is much more flexible: At any moment, you can access UI components like the map view, the metadata tab, the image properties tab, to access information, assign metadata, or show your audience the location of the picture on OpenStreetMap. You can access an icon view component to change the collection your are currently presenting, or a thumbbar component to switch to a different image.

The main view typically shows one image full screen, but you can zoom; You can also change to a layout that shows four or five images at a time, like images put in a paper album. You can change the order of images presented, and store order and layout (preferably in some XML format). You can load these presentations later, playing them automatically, coming back to the traditional slide show.

Technically, it should be future proof as much as possible (Qt Quick. QGraphicsView. scene graph in the future? Will embed QWidgets though) The job is not to develop any of the components mentioned above, but to avoid that, and reuse the existing digikam components and models.

Expected results: Something resembling the vision outlined above

Knowledge Prerequisite: C++, Qt

Mentor: Marcel Wiesweg

KDE Edu

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KDE Games

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KDevelop

KDE-based Integrated Development Environment, specializing in c++ support, but including a powerful generic framework (definition use chain) which makes it possible to relatively easily support multiple different languages.

Website - Mailing list - IRC channel: #kdevelop on Freenode.

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KDE PIM

KDE PIM is the interest group working on applications related to personal information management, e.g. contacts, calendar, mails, etc.

There are interesting projects on all levels of the software stack: libraries, application porting, new applications, access to online resources, etc.

Website - Project Wiki - Mailing list - IRC channel: #kontact and #akonadi on Freenode.

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Calligra

KDE's integrated work applications suite

Web - Mailinglist - IRC channel: #calligra on Freenode.

Project: Improve the quality of Words

Brief explanation: Currently there are around 500 bugs and wishes registered at bugs.kde.org for Calligra Words. Some of those bugs and wishes are esoteric while others are rather fundamental things missing or not working as expected.

For the gsoc-proposal your job would be to explain on which of the bugs you like to work for what reason (you don't need to select them all just some - we will be able to add later more if time permits). So, it is up to you to set priorities where Words need to improve. Once your proposal was chosen you then implement them. My job will be to make sure you can get started, can get into the code and progress on the issue(s) you selected.

Expected results: A decreased number of open bugs and with it an improved quality of Calligra Words.

Knowledge Prerequisite: C++, Qt

Mentor: Sebastian Sauer

KDE on Windows

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KWin

KDE's window manager

Techbase page - Mailinglist - IRC channel: #kwin on Freenode.

Project: Modularization of Workspace

Brief explanation: The Workspace class is the monolithic core of KWin. Nevertheless many parts of it do not depend on each other and can be split out of Workspace into own classes. The modularization is an important prerequisite to a port of KWin to Wayland and providing a small window manager for mobile devices.

Expected results: A concept for what can be moved into own classes exists and several classes have been split out of Workspace. The X11 dependend code is moved into an own plugin. Plus if tests for the new classes are written.

Knowledge Prerequisite: Qt/C++ and general understanding of window management. Plus for X11 knowledge

Mentor: Martin Gräßlin (mgraesslin)

Project: Unit Testing Framework

Brief explanation: Testing a window manager is rather difficult as it requires a running instance and windows need to be created and interacted with. This project should set up a test framework based on Xephyr, KWin's scripting interface and QTest.

Expected results: An infrastructure to test the core of KWin with simple KWin scripts should exist and several unit tests for existing functionality should be implemented

Knowledge Prerequisite: Qt/C++, JavaScript, QTest

Mentor: Martin Gräßlin (mgraesslin)

Project: Initial Support for Wayland Clients

Brief explanation: Wayland is the next iteration for composited window management. The task of this project is to add support for managing Wayland clients on X11 and integrate them into the existing compositing rendering code for GLES.

Expected results: KWin is able to manage Wayland clients and can render the clients. Plus for support to interact with them (move/activate/restack).

Knowledge Prerequisite: Qt/C++ and general understanding of Window management. Plus for OpenGL knowledge

Mentor: Martin Gräßlin (mgraesslin)

Nepomuk

Website- Documentation/Howtos - Ontologies - Mailing list - IRC channel: #nepomuk-kde on Freenode.

(Also see the Nepomuk techbase page for a long list of Nepomuk-related ToDos and ideas.)

IRC channel:

#strigi on Freenode

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Plasma

Website - Mailing list - IRC channel: #plasma on Freenode.

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Phonon

Abstraction library for sound and video support. Used by KDE notifications, Amarok, Dragon Player and Qt Software.

Website - Mailing list - IRC channel: #phonon on Freenode.

Community wiki with TODOs and outstanding issues.

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Kate

Kate is a powerful programmer's editor.

Website - Mailing list - IRC channel: #kate on Freenode.

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Konqueror

Mailing-list: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kfm-devel/ https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kfm-devel/

Project Page: http://www.konqueror.org/

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Krita

Krita is a KDE program for sketching and painting, offering an end–to–end solution for creating digital painting files from scratch by masters.

Mailing-list: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kimageshop/ Project Page: http://www.krita.org/ Irc channel: #koffice on irc.freenode.net Forums: http://forum.kde.org/viewforum.php?f=136

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KDE Finance

KDE Finance is an emerging group of applications dedicated to financial topics, such as Personal Finances Management, Invoices Management, Point of Sales...

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Rekonq

Rekonq is a web browser for KDE based on WebKit. It first focuses on being a light, fast & clean way to access to net. Its development is doubly based on using the new amazing features offered by the WebKit rendering engine and on the rock solid network KDE technologies.

Project: Adblock improvements & elements manipulation

Brief explanation:

Rekonq currently has an initial implementation of an ads blocking mechanism. This project aims to expand it providing the feature parity with AdBlockPlus and implement a sort of HTML elements manipulation system (enable it, and then click on the page on the elements you want to hide. When you're ok, save your changes, reset them or leave them just for this time)

Expected results:

An improvements in the adblock rules handling, some (new) tests to check adblock behavior and performance, the elements manipulation feature with (possibly) the ability to save and remember applied changes.

Knowledge Prerequisite:

C++ programming and hopefully Qt

Mentor: Andrea Diamantini

ownCloud

An open personal cloud which runs on your personal server. It enables accessing your data from all of your devices. Sharing with other people is also possible. It support automatic backups, versioning and encryption.

Website - Mailing list - IRC channel: #owncloud on Freenode.

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Brief explanation: Build a client to sync your ownCloud files with your local disc to enable offline use.

Expected results: Development of an application you run on your local PC. This applications syncs local folders with folders on your personal ownCloud server everytime you are online. This applications needs a GUI written in KDE/Qt to configure the ownCloud url, folders, login and password. The applications sits in the systray and informs the user about the syncing progress or sync conflicts. The idea is that the clients mounts the ownCloud folders via WebDAV into a "hidden" directory and syncs the folders via rsync or an own syncing script. Errors should be reported to the user. To quote Frank from the mailing list:

"The client should:

1. read a configuration file so see which folders to sync and which owncloud server to use.
2. mount the owncloud server via fuse or a different tool into a hidden directory.
3. call a syncing tool like csync to sync between the local directory and the mounted directory
4. unmount owncloud
5. write a log-file about the synced files and potential conflicts which the user has to solve.

The client should be as portable as possible of course."

Current inactive projects such as Cloudsync or owncloud-sync-client (both on GitHub) may possibly be starting places worth investigating.

Knowledge Prerequisite: Python, Ruby, PHP or C++ and KDE/Qt depending on the technology you choose for the desktop syncing client. Enthusiasm for Cloud/Desktop integration and trying new things.

Mentor: Kyle Cunningham? Robin Appleman? Frank K?

KDE Usability

Project: Usability Survey Framework

Brief explanation: Surveys are one of many methods used in creating more usable software. Surveys allow designers to collect information about user's experiences and usability problems with software. A Usability Survey Framework would allow designers and developers to create small, custom surveys that can be attached to events or services. Users could subscribe to the Usability Survey Service and opt in to current studies. Survey studies could be one-time surveys, or several survey entries over a period of time.

For example, if we wanted to learn more about how users interact with workspaces, a survey could occasionally open when a user accesses or configures the workspace. If we wanted to learn more about the Plasmoid installation process, we could open a survey when a user installs the next plasmoid.

A Usability Survey Framework would help users become more involved in KDE through direct participation. Developers would be able to easily design and launch surveys to collect important usability feedback. Designers would be able to easily conduct usability studies.

Expected results: The Usability Survey Framework could be implemented as a web service, downloadable Plasma widget, or mini application. It should be an easily configurable survey that collects data based on an event.

Possible features:

• Uses XML for survey design to make it easy to create and launch new surveys
• Uploading or emailing data at end of study
• Can be a single survey, or a survey study over a period of time
• Configured to open on a specific event

Knowledge Prerequisite: JavaScript, C++. Qt/KDE/Plasma knowledge would help greatly.

Mentor: Celeste Lyn Paul, someone else?

KDE SDK

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KDE Language Bindings

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Solid

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