On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 1:10 PM, Benjamin Gramlich <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Greetings all, > > I am interested in applying to work on a project for Gnome during the > summer of code 2008, and I have a few ideas. > > Idea #1) Re-implement the panel-applet library/interface to depend on > DBUS. > > Idea #2) Migrate the panel to GIO/GVFS and DBUS. > > Idea #3) Develop a tutorial for GIO/GVFS. > > Idea #4) Create more compositing effects for metacity and develop a gui > configuration tool for the effects.
Great to hear you're excited, and great that you've come to d-d-l for advice! Some advice from someone who hasn't been involved in SOC for several years now, so take with a grain of salt :) * "widgets": Vista, OSX, and KDE4 all have widgets/gadgets/Kthingies that are pretty, very easy to use, very easy to develop (since they are web-based), and which display more information when needed while staying hidden when not needed (both unlike our panel applets.) Some work has already been done on doing this with gtk-webkit[1]- perhaps that could be built on? (It seems to me that from a user perspective this approach is really superior to applets and what we should be focusing on long-term instead of reworking applets, but YMMV.) * panel: there are two promising new panel alternatives: bigboard and the combination of AWN and gimmie. Bigboard hasn't had public releases in a while[2], so I'm not sure where it stands, but there is some very interesting gimmie-AWN work going on[3]. Helping one of those projects get in shape for use by 'normal' users would be interesting and productive work. * menu/run-dialog: Windows and KDE4 both have search and MRU deeply integrated into how users find and run applications, and it makes them simultaneously easier and more powerful to use. These features have been prototyped but not deployed into mainline GNOME, via deskbar[4] and Novell's 'slab'/gnome-main-menu. Diving into those projects, figuring out what prevents them from being mainlined, and working on those rough edges may be worthwhile. (May not be worthwhile; the big problem for deskbar may be python rather than anything that can be solved on the gnome side, and g-m-m seems to lack a webpage, so I have no idea what the status of that project is.) * mozilla 'prism' integration: gratis-free webapps are a big part of the future of the desktop; making sure they integrate well into GNOME should be an important task. So investigating Mozilla's prism[5] or similar technologies, and doing a good job at tying them to GNOME (e.g., currently prism places a launcher on the GNOME desktop but not in the menus) might be interesting and worthwhile, and educate you about two codebases instead of just one. This may also tie into the bigboard work mentioned above. * people browser: this may fall into the category of chasing windmills, but there is some hacking going on in soylent again[6] and I think it would be cool ;) * testing framework: there has been recent discussion here on d-d-l about testing frameworks[7]. They aren't glitzy or glorious, but they are critical. Working with the QA, buildsquad, and a11y folks to evaluate the three competing technologies and ensuring that one of them gets run automatically every single day would make you a very serious hero with an impact all over the project. So... those are my suggestions; like I said, take them for what they are worth, but I think they'd be a worthy starting place for anyone. Luis [1] http://www.atoker.com/blog/2007/10/29/gtk-matters/ - see screenshot mid-page [2] last release of new tarball built for fedora was in October: http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/packageinfo?packageID=4385 [3] http://groups.google.com/group/gimmie/browse_thread/thread/6bbc370656777f47 [4] http://raphael.slinckx.net/deskbar/ [5] http://labs.mozilla.com/2007/10/prism/ [6] http://svn.gnome.org/viewvc/soylent/trunk/?view=log [7] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2008-February/msg00103.html _______________________________________________ gnome-love mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-love
