[gsoc-announce] Students Welcome

[Oleksandr Moskalenko]

Hello Hermann, Henning, and Markus. Welcome to Scribus Team's Google Summer of
Code 2008 project or shall I say Willkommen! This year we're overrun by the
german Scribus/C++/Qt4 coding machine it seems and I hope you guys rock the
boat! We are very happy to have you here and hope that you'll have an
enjoyable, productive and profitable summer.

Just for the sake of others on the list here is a brief overview of this
year's selected GSoC students and their projects:

========================================================================
            Overview of GSoC 2008 projects
========================================================================

Henning Schröder will work on ScripterNG - a new scripting plug-in for
Scribus mentored by Peter Linnell.

"The current Scripter plug-in has some limitations, a less than optimal
architecture and is very difficult to extend. Therefore, I want to create a
new scripting plug-in (called ScripterNG), which will also support QtScript
besides Python and be easily extendible. Besides the technical aspects I want
to make sure that extensions are easily accessible and configurable. Another
important issue is integration. An extension should look native in Scribus and
can hook directly into the GUI. To make the plug-in usable it has to provide a
wide API which includes most of the functionality of the old plug-in plus many
new features."

Hermann Kraus  will work on  UniConvertor and GraphicsMagick integration
mentored by Jean Ghali.

"Scribus aims to be a professional level DTP application and therefore has to
deal with many different file formats. While it already supports quite a few
formats, some others are still not or incompletely supported. UniConvertor,
which is "a universal vector graphics translator" can help with vector formats
and GraphicsMagick, which is a branch of the well-known ImageMagick, does the
same for bitmap formats."

Hermann (a.k.a. Herm) is our GSoC 2007 veteran and a member of the Scribus
Team. Henning and Markus could draw on Herm's experience with completing a
successful gsoc project.

Markus Thomas Durst will work on Scribus Picture Browser mentored by Cedric
Gemy.

"Importing images is one of Scribus's core features and it's already well
implemented. However, it lacks a proper and easy to use picture browser to
make the selection of pictures from large collections easier. The basic goal
is to create a picture browser similar to OpenOffice.org's "Gallery", which
allows users to select images from a neatly arranged preview with just a few
clicks or drag and drop. Optional features like PictureFlow and the display of
additional information (metadata, color spaces, resolution) will further
enhance the browsers usability. In addition, users will be able to access
pictures from various external sources like network repositories and digital
cameras."

Student projects will be worked on roughly full time (~40 hours/week)
between May 26th and August 18th.

========================================================================
            Project information for students
========================================================================

I'm looking forward to having a successful summer of code. The following
points could help towards that goal.


0. Start talking to your mentor and other people from the Scribus Team as soon
as possible and even though you are still likely finishing up your semesters
and taking exams now is a good time to set few hours a week to think about,
discuss, and plan out your project to make sure you hit the ground running
when May 26th comes.

1. Be open i.e. use project management software.

* People from the Pluron company running http://acunote.com have made their
software project management software freely available to GSoC teams. Let's try
to use it. All of you should've received your subscription emails for
http://scribus.acunote.com. If you didn't get your email or need to change
your password - email me and I'll do it for you.

* Read the acunote help if you need to at http://scribus.acunote.com/help and
the gsoc-specific document at http://secure.acunote.com/open-source/summer-of-code-howto

* Once you log in you should go to your own project and add "sprints" based on
your roadmaps that you prepared for your applications. Mentors will use those
to track your progress, do code review, and give comments. Do it before the
gsoc coding actually starts. I've put some sample sprints and tasks into
Henning's account, so you could take a look there if you want.


2. Commit early, commit often i.e. use revision control software.

* All three of you have been added to the Scribus project on sourceforge.net
and given acces to our subversion repository there. You will use it for your
code check-ins and mentors will be able to access it from acunote and do code
reviews.

*  SVN Setup:

The top svn directory is

https://scribus.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/scribus/gsoc2008

* Your respective  branches are

picbrowser/
scripter-ng/
uniconvertor/

* Sourceforge documents on using their svn setup are at 

http://alexandria.wiki.sourceforge.net/Subversion+-+Version+Control+for+Source+Code

* The best general book on using subversion is at

http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.1/index.html

3. There's no substitute for good communication.

* Use IRC #scribus channel on FreeNode and gsoc at lists.scribus.info mailing
list as much as possible.

* If you communicate with your mentor and other Scribus Team people via IRC
and/or mailing list often, keep your acunote progress updated, and commit your
code into svn with good comments you might not have to write weekly reports.
If we don't see the progress we'll require you to submit weekly email reports
to gsoc at lists.scribus.info, so be ready for that. You may also use
gsoc at lists.scribus.info for absolutely any questions or problems you might
encounter. All of our mentors are signed up to that list, so the likelihood
that you will get help with your task when you use the list is high.

* You may elect to email your weekly reports in any case, especially if you
are in a planning phase and don't have much code to show us yet. However, you
can always commit your design outlines, ui mockups, images and whatever else
you produce into svn. You can never overuse the svn, period.

4. Don't be shy.

Since I'm the GSoC 2008 admin my email is always open to you for any concernc,
grievances, and questions you might have about your interaction with your
mentors, your schedule changes, temporary inability to work on your project,
and other gsoc-related things. I'm here for you. Remember that it's often much
easier and much less embarrassing to fix problem if you bring it up right away
then if you wait until the end, dig yourself into a hole, and we have to ask
Google to not pay you. Your future employers also might want to find out how
you handled the communications part of your gsoc project, so you don't want to
do badly there.

Regards,

Alex.

Your friendly GSoC 2008 Scribus Team Administrator