Summer Of Code 2006

Summer Of Code 2006

The Summer Of Code is a Google program that offers student developers stipends to create new freely available programs or to help currently established projects. It would be an excellent opportunity for GNUstep to fund some developments.

Here is some ideas:

• Bindings, KVO support
  • We need NSController, NSArrayController, NSObjectController, NSTreeController, NSUserDefaultController, NSValueTransformer implementations. NSSortDescriptor has already been implemented by Saso Kiselkov. The current NSController is known to be buggy, as Apple rushed the release of this Class in 10.4. It is widely believed that these shortcomings will be fixed in Leopard (10.5), so perhaps we should wait a while.
  • The implementation was written by Richard Frith-Macdonald, and is only about 80% finished. Needs completion and testing.

• Porting
  • Port WebCore to GNUstep using gcc4.1

• General Improvements
  • The Printing Support (better postcript generation, etc.)
  • The Cairo backend
  • Windows support
  • GNUstepWeb (add script language support, etc)
  • Finish input server support
  • Compare current API with Tiger API, indicates which are missing, and the status of the existing ones, then work to complete them... ;)

• AppKit
  • A PDFKit wrapper implementation around the Freedesktop Poppler library, which is also used in ViewPDF, a GNUstep PDF Viewer. Afterwards, having a built-in NSImageRep for NSBitmapImageRep would be great.
  • there is PopplerKit/Vindaloo which works well, but is currently lacking a maintainer.
  • The Text System should be cleaned, profiled and finished. Many methods in NSLayoutManager are unfinished or unimplemented, so we currently cannot tweak the test system as much as the one provided by Cocoa. (Quentin Mathe)
  • We need NSTypeSetter, NSGlyphStorage, NSGlyphInfo, and NSGlyphGenerator implementations. If NSTypeSetter and NSLayoutManager were implemented, I (Quentin Mathe) would use them in Etoile.
  • NSTextTable, NSTextTableBlock, NSTextList, & NSTextBlock implementations would also bring the GNUstep text system in line with that of Cocoa as of Panther. NSTextList could be useful to build a powerful word processor. (Quentin Mathe)
  • Finish once and for all the NSTableView class, and have it work properly with any kind of cells. This is a big job, but sorely needed (Quentin Mathe)
  • The NSOpenGL Classes could be improved, made compatible with current Cocoa implementations, and further tested (Quentin Mathe)
  • NSBitmapImageRep formats: Currenly, we support only reading and writing for TIFF, read-only for GIF, JPEG, PNG, PNM. We would like to have write support for these NSBitmapImageRep categories. Afterwards, SVG reading, then write support, would be nice. (Quentin Mathe)
  • NSDatePicker, NSLevelIndicator (and obligatory -Cell) implementations.
  • Updating NSDocument architecture with numerous modern methods which were introduced in 10.4. In 10.4, Apple deprecated many methods in NSDocument in favor of a more flexible and well-designed implementation.
  • NSFormatter isn't working very well at this time (Quentin Mathe)

• Base
  • NSError improvements to allow better user messages. 10.4's NSDocument uses this.
  • NSLocale-compatible locale implementation could be useful for internationalization.
  • NSDateComponents implementation.
  • NSCalendar implementation.
  • NSIndexPath implementation.
  • Finish the NSPredicate implementation. This was mostly done by Quentin Mathe, but is untested. The most important part is not done, which is to write a parser and lexer for the custom language used by NSPredicate. Also needed for this are NSComparisonPredicate, NSCompoundPredicate, and NSExpression implementations.
  • Test the NSXMLParser Cocoa class wrapper around GSXML, written by Richard-Frith Macdonald. Once this is thoroughly tested, NSXMLDocument, NSXMLDTD, and NSXMLDTDNode, and NSXMLElement, and NSXMLNode implementations may be useful for compatibility.

• Misc
  • Create a AJAX Framework for GNUstepWeb

Feel free to add other ideas !

Note

We need mentor(s) to manage the volunteers...

Mentors

- David Wetzel (dave at turbocat dot de) could mentor GSWeb related projects

- Quentin Mathe is willing to mentor GUI/AppKit and some Base related projects.

- Adam Fedor (backup mentor)

Students

Nicolas Roard