Summer Of Code 2006
Summer Of Code 2006
The Summer Of Code is a Google program that offers student developers stipends to create new open source programs or to help currently established projects. It would be an excellent opportunity for GNUstep to fund some developments.
Here is some ideas:
- Improve the Printing Support (better postcript generation, etc.)
- 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.
- KVO: The implementation was written by Richard Frith-Macdonald, and is only about 80% finished. Needs completion and testing.
- Improve the Cairo backend
- Improve Windows support
- Improve GNUstepWeb (add script language support, etc)
- Create a AJAX Framework for GNUstepWeb
- Finish input server support
- Port WebCore to GNUstep using gcc4.1
- 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.
- AppKit: 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)
- AppKit: We need NSTypeSetter, NSGlyphStorage, NSGlyphInfo, and NSGlyphGenerator implementations. If NSTypeSetter and NSLayoutManager were implemented, I (Quentin Mathe) would use them in Etoile.
- AppKit: 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)
- AppKit: 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)
- AppKit: NSDatePicker, NSLevelIndicator (and obligatory -Cell) implementations.
- AppKit: 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.
- Base: NSError improvements to allow better user messages. 10.4's NSDocument uses this.
- Base: NSLocale-compatible locale implementation could be useful for internationalization.
- Base: NSDateComponents implementation.
- Base: NSCalendar implementation.
- Base: 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.
- Base: 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.
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 AppKit related projects.
Students
Nicolas Roard