Re: Google Summer of Code

[Fred Kiefer]

On 07.02.2012 09:21, Sebastian Reitenbach wrote:
> On Monday, February 6, 2012 09:54 CET, Fred Kiefer<address@hidden>  wrote:
>
> > Looks like GSoC 2012 was announced at FOSDEM (Did anybody notice?). Here
> > is the timeline for it
> > http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/events/google/gsoc2012
> >
> > If GNUstep is interested we will have to come up with an application
> > until the 9th oh March. We could either do this as a stand alone project
> > (of course together with Etoile!) or under the GNU umbrella project as
> > we did the last two years.
> > I really would like to volunteer as a mentor again, I learned a lot from
> > Niels during his project. But we should only invest any effort here if
> > we see suitable students. Last year we were not able to attract such
> > students and so the whole application to GSoC was a waste of time.
> >
> > Please ask around, if any students you know are interested.
>
> I don't know anyone specifically, but I think we should give some ideas what 
> could be
> done, and what would be good to have.
>
> For example, a lot of applications in GAP should be checked if still work with 
> latest releases,
> or could be enhanced with new features. Maybe a good job for a beginner with 
> basic
> objective-c skills, and just want to learn, starting from reading others code, 
> and enhancing
> existing applications, before sometime starting an own application.

This may be a bit too unspecific to be accepted as a GSoC project. We 
should turn it into something more specific as for example, get 
FlexiSheet fully implemented :-)

> Another thing I'd really like to have is some more cross desktop integration, 
> for example,
> allowing .desktop files, used in KDE and others,  to work. I'd really like to 
> define Firefox or
> something similar as my default browser. (until Vespucci is production ready ;)

We already once had a Google Summer of Code student to work on cross 
desktop integration. Sadly not much came from that.
I remember writing .desktop support ages ago. The file specification may 
have changed in between, most certainly it has, but it should be really 
easy to update our file generation to match the current standard. What 
is currently broken?
As for specifying a default browser, this should be as easy as to write 
a GNUstep wrapper, that is just a .plist file and to copy it to where 
make_services will find it. There must already be a lot of these 
wrappers out there, where do we collect them? Maybe we should set up 
some space in our source code repository to collect them?


> Or like you said in your presentation, this drag 'n drop between GNUstep and 
> non-GNUstep
> applications is also something I really miss much.

I would be willing to help with the attempt to implement this. This 
actually is a fairly interesting project which should be combined with a 
complete rewrite of pasteboard support in GNUstep.

> Otherwise, students still can come up with their ideas, what they want to work 
> on.
>
> Maybe something like this should be sent to the discuss-gnustep@ list, to maybe 
> find interested people?
>
> I'm by far no expert, also still learning, but could at least also try help out 
> where possible.