Fwd: Google Summer of Code
I fat-fingered the reply button instead of reply-to-all... *face-palm* -- Forwarded message -- From: mehdi houshmand med1...@gmail.com Date: 6 March 2012 09:33 Subject: Re: Google Summer of Code To: Craig Ringer ring...@ringerc.id.au On 6 March 2012 00:16, Craig Ringer ring...@ringerc.id.au wrote: On 03/05/2012 09:35 PM, mehdi houshmand wrote: Because of the overwhelming popularity of this idea, I've created a link on the Wiki (http://wiki.apache.org/xmlgraphics-fop/GoogleSummerOfCode2012) for the GSoC proposals. Things that come to mind for me: - PDFBox backend (probably ideal for GSoC, nice and self contained, great for someone who knows PDFBox and wants to learn fop's codebase); - CID fonts in PostScript (good for someone who knows PS and fonts, not necessarily XSL-FO so much); There is already a big body of work that does this, check the TrueTypeInPostScript branch as well as the patch https://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=50483. This stuff needs to be merged into trunk and we do have that on our agenda, but... I don't make the rules. - Using automatic +- kerning, +- tracking *and* +- horizontal type scaling adjustment to better auto-fit text, involving support for font-stretch property. This touches on layout so it may not be practical for a 1st fop project, but may not be too bad since fop already adjusts tracking when justifying text. The key interest points would be *negative* tracking, kerning and (if nothing else works) glyph-scaling for tighter type-fitting where it's not desirable to break to a new line due to widow/orphan policy or because it'd create large holes. This is particularly important when long unbreakable words must fit a fixed width space. This sounds pretty interesting!! Could you put this and maybe a little more information in a proposal similar to https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/COMDEV-66 or https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/COMDEV-67 and I'll create a JIRA issue. - PDF/X-1a with CMYK; I have no idea what is involved here, sounds like a lot of time in the spec and battling FOP, but as I said, those are baseless assumptions. Is that an interesting project? - Anything in the proposed XSL-FO 2.0 feature list (though most of it won't be realistic for GSoC projects); - Merge fop-pdf-image and implement smart merging of font, profile, and image resources. I'm working on this one at the moment, but slowly and only amid other projects. I really don't think that's a suitable project, I responded to your post so maybe we could take this conversation else where, but this really isn't FOPs responsibilty, or for that matter the pdf-image-plugin. If anything, I'd argue that's a PDFBox project, Adobe Acrobat Pro does this kind of thing (badly may I add) as a post-process action and I think that's the correct way to do it. The other thing to say is that a new comer may not appreciate the importance of fidelity when fonts are concerned. Basically it's too difficult for a student given a few months and no previous experience. -- Craig Ringer
Fwd: Google Summer of Code
-- Forwarded message -- From: mehdi houshmand med1...@gmail.com Date: 6 March 2012 10:12 Subject: Fwd: Google Summer of Code To: fop-dev@xmlgraphics.apache.org I fat-fingered the reply button instead of reply-to-all... *face-palm* -- Forwarded message -- From: mehdi houshmand med1...@gmail.com Date: 6 March 2012 09:33 Subject: Re: Google Summer of Code To: Craig Ringer ring...@ringerc.id.au On 6 March 2012 00:16, Craig Ringer ring...@ringerc.id.au wrote: On 03/05/2012 09:35 PM, mehdi houshmand wrote: Because of the overwhelming popularity of this idea, I've created a link on the Wiki (http://wiki.apache.org/xmlgraphics-fop/GoogleSummerOfCode2012) for the GSoC proposals. Things that come to mind for me: - PDFBox backend (probably ideal for GSoC, nice and self contained, great for someone who knows PDFBox and wants to learn fop's codebase); - CID fonts in PostScript (good for someone who knows PS and fonts, not necessarily XSL-FO so much); There is already a big body of work that does this, check the TrueTypeInPostScript branch as well as the patch https://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=50483. This stuff needs to be merged into trunk and we do have that on our agenda, but... I don't make the rules. - Using automatic +- kerning, +- tracking *and* +- horizontal type scaling adjustment to better auto-fit text, involving support for font-stretch property. This touches on layout so it may not be practical for a 1st fop project, but may not be too bad since fop already adjusts tracking when justifying text. The key interest points would be *negative* tracking, kerning and (if nothing else works) glyph-scaling for tighter type-fitting where it's not desirable to break to a new line due to widow/orphan policy or because it'd create large holes. This is particularly important when long unbreakable words must fit a fixed width space. This sounds pretty interesting!! Could you put this and maybe a little more information in a proposal similar to https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/COMDEV-66 or https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/COMDEV-67 and I'll create a JIRA issue. - PDF/X-1a with CMYK; I have no idea what is involved here, sounds like a lot of time in the spec and battling FOP, but as I said, those are baseless assumptions. Is that an interesting project? - Anything in the proposed XSL-FO 2.0 feature list (though most of it won't be realistic for GSoC projects); - Merge fop-pdf-image and implement smart merging of font, profile, and image resources. I'm working on this one at the moment, but slowly and only amid other projects. I really don't think that's a suitable project, I responded to your post so maybe we could take this conversation else where, but this really isn't FOPs responsibilty, or for that matter the pdf-image-plugin. If anything, I'd argue that's a PDFBox project, Adobe Acrobat Pro does this kind of thing (badly may I add) as a post-process action and I think that's the correct way to do it. The other thing to say is that a new comer may not appreciate the importance of fidelity when fonts are concerned. Basically it's too difficult for a student given a few months and no previous experience. -- Craig Ringer
Re: Fwd: Google Summer of Code
On 06/03/2012 10:12, mehdi houshmand wrote: I fat-fingered the reply button instead of reply-to-all... *face-palm* Mehdi, Craig, snip/ - Anything in the proposed XSL-FO 2.0 feature list (though most of it won't be realistic for GSoC projects); - Merge fop-pdf-image and implement smart merging of font, profile, and image resources. I'm working on this one at the moment, but slowly and only amid other projects. I really don't think that's a suitable project, I responded to your post so maybe we could take this conversation else where, but this really isn't FOPs responsibilty, or for that matter the pdf-image-plugin. If anything, I'd argue that's a PDFBox project, Adobe Acrobat Pro does this kind of thing (badly may I add) as a post-process action and I think that's the correct way to do it. The other thing to say is that a new comer may not appreciate the importance of fidelity when fonts are concerned. Basically it's too difficult for a student given a few months and no previous experience. Sorry Mehdi I don't agree. I think this would be a great project. Craig already outlined what needs to be done and theres a lot of stuff in XGC and FOP as well as the plug-in. I'm not sure anything is needed in PDF-Box, but even if it then is an Apache project too and the student can submit patches there. Adobe Acrobat may make some assumptions that don't always hold true, but our customers are crying out for FOP to create smaller PDF files when importing multiple PDF images with embedded fonts. This also feels reasonable well defined thanks to Craig's list of TODOs and feels like it can be done in 3 months. It gets a +1 from me. Thanks, Chris -- Craig Ringer
Re: Fwd: Google Summer of Code
Font de-duping is intrinsically a post-process action, you need the full document, with all fonts, before you can do any font de-duping. PostScript does this very thing (to a much lesser extent) with the optimize-resources tag, as a post-process action. Also, the requirements aren't clear here, what is it we want here? Let me validate that, this shouldn't change the (I guess we can call it) canonical PDF document. By that I mean if you rasterized a PDF before and after this change they should be identical, pixel-for-pixel. When Acrobat does the font de-duping (I don't remember how much control it gives you, but if there are levels of de-duping I would have chosen the most aggressive), the documents aren't identical. There are aberrations caused by slight kerning differences between various verisons of Arial. This may seem trivial when compared to bloated PDFs, but it looks tacky and lowers the high standard of documents. You could argue this could be configurable... But then I'd re-iterate my first argument, this is a post-process action, not the concern of FOP or the pdf-image-plugin. The other issue is you have subset fonts created by FOP as well as those imported by the pdf-image-plugin. You'd have to create some bridge between the image loading framework and the font loading system *cough* HACK *cough*. Alternatively, just thinking aloud here, if this was done as a post-process *wink* *wink* *wry smile*... Apologies if I may seem to be argumentative here, it's not my intention, but I feel this is would be serious scope creep. I see the pdf-image-plugin as a plugin that treats PDFs as images, nothing more. If you want to stitch together PDFs, PDFBox is designed just for that. Mehdi On 6 March 2012 10:36, Chris Bowditch bowditch_ch...@hotmail.com wrote: On 06/03/2012 10:12, mehdi houshmand wrote: I fat-fingered the reply button instead of reply-to-all... *face-palm* Mehdi, Craig, snip/ - Anything in the proposed XSL-FO 2.0 feature list (though most of it won't be realistic for GSoC projects); - Merge fop-pdf-image and implement smart merging of font, profile, and image resources. I'm working on this one at the moment, but slowly and only amid other projects. I really don't think that's a suitable project, I responded to your post so maybe we could take this conversation else where, but this really isn't FOPs responsibilty, or for that matter the pdf-image-plugin. If anything, I'd argue that's a PDFBox project, Adobe Acrobat Pro does this kind of thing (badly may I add) as a post-process action and I think that's the correct way to do it. The other thing to say is that a new comer may not appreciate the importance of fidelity when fonts are concerned. Basically it's too difficult for a student given a few months and no previous experience. Sorry Mehdi I don't agree. I think this would be a great project. Craig already outlined what needs to be done and theres a lot of stuff in XGC and FOP as well as the plug-in. I'm not sure anything is needed in PDF-Box, but even if it then is an Apache project too and the student can submit patches there. Adobe Acrobat may make some assumptions that don't always hold true, but our customers are crying out for FOP to create smaller PDF files when importing multiple PDF images with embedded fonts. This also feels reasonable well defined thanks to Craig's list of TODOs and feels like it can be done in 3 months. It gets a +1 from me. Thanks, Chris -- Craig Ringer
Re: Fwd: Google Summer of Code
On 06/03/2012 11:08, mehdi houshmand wrote: Hi Mehdi, Font de-duping is intrinsically a post-process action, you need the full document, with all fonts, before you can do any font de-duping. PostScript does this very thing (to a much lesser extent) with the optimize-resources tag, as a post-process action. At least that is transparent to the user, but re-parsing the input is a sub-optimal solution as it incurs a performance penalty so we should investigate if there are alternatives first. I can't recall why the Postscript Paintewr/Renderer was architected in that way but thats a separate topic. Also, the requirements aren't clear here, what is it we want here? Let me validate that, this shouldn't change the (I guess we can call it) canonical PDF document. By that I mean if you rasterized a PDF before and after this change they should be identical, pixel-for-pixel. When Acrobat does the font de-duping (I don't remember how much control it gives you, but if there are levels of de-duping I would have chosen the most aggressive), the documents aren't identical. There are aberrations caused by slight kerning differences between various verisons of Arial. This may seem trivial when compared to bloated PDFs, but it looks tacky and lowers the high standard of documents. You could argue this could be configurable... But then I'd re-iterate my first argument, this is a post-process action, not the concern of FOP or the pdf-image-plugin. The requirements are perfectly clear: Given a set of input PDFs, XSL-FO, create a single merged PDF with a consistent and unduplicated set of fonts. Why would there be slight kerning differences if the assumption that the font name is unique holds true. If that assumption is wrong then I agree with what you say. Ultimately that should be down to the user though, they know their fonts, so they can decide whether to merge them or not via a setting in the fop.xconf. Your argument is not sufficient to say this approach should never be used. It brings a lot of benefit to users who know their font names are unique. The other issue is you have subset fonts created by FOP as well as those imported by the pdf-image-plugin. You'd have to create some bridge between the image loading framework and the font loading system *cough* HACK *cough*. Alternatively, just thinking aloud here, if this was done as a post-process *wink* *wink* *wry smile*... Jeremias and Craig have already sent e-mails on this topic. It is perfectly valid for any image loaded via the image loading framework to pass around contextual information. If the changes are done properly then it is not a hack. Sure there are some easy ways to do it that classify a hack, but I prefer to follow the approach outlines by Jeremias in one of his off list e-mails about storing contextual information for images loaded via the image loading framework. Apologies if I may seem to be argumentative here, it's not my intention, but I feel this is would be serious scope creep. I see the pdf-image-plugin as a plugin that treats PDFs as images, nothing more. If you want to stitch together PDFs, PDFBox is designed just for that. It's true that this work touches more than FOP, but I don't see that as a good argument against using this as a GSoC project. All the code that this touches is open source, with the exception of the image loader plug-in and that is something the PMC is discussing with Jeremias. Thanks, Chris Mehdi On 6 March 2012 10:36, Chris Bowditchbowditch_ch...@hotmail.com wrote: On 06/03/2012 10:12, mehdi houshmand wrote: I fat-fingered the reply button instead of reply-to-all... *face-palm* Mehdi, Craig, snip/ - Anything in the proposed XSL-FO 2.0 feature list (though most of it won't be realistic for GSoC projects); - Merge fop-pdf-image and implement smart merging of font, profile, and image resources. I'm working on this one at the moment, but slowly and only amid other projects. I really don't think that's a suitable project, I responded to your post so maybe we could take this conversation else where, but this really isn't FOPs responsibilty, or for that matter the pdf-image-plugin. If anything, I'd argue that's a PDFBox project, Adobe Acrobat Pro does this kind of thing (badly may I add) as a post-process action and I think that's the correct way to do it. The other thing to say is that a new comer may not appreciate the importance of fidelity when fonts are concerned. Basically it's too difficult for a student given a few months and no previous experience. Sorry Mehdi I don't agree. I think this would be a great project. Craig already outlined what needs to be done and theres a lot of stuff in XGC and FOP as well as the plug-in. I'm not sure anything is needed in PDF-Box, but even if it then is an Apache project too and the student can submit patches there. Adobe Acrobat may make some assumptions that don't always hold true, but our customers are crying out for FOP to create
Re: Fwd: Google Summer of Code
My reply is interleaved below, but there's something important to cover before reading on. There's clearly a difference in what I mean by de-duplication vs what you're thinking I mean by de-duplication. As far as I can tell you're looking at font substitution and un/re-embedding, where (eg) Helvetica LT Std is replaced with Helvetica Neue Sans, a different version of Helvetica LT Std, the built-in Helvetica derived from Adobe's multi-master fonts, or whatever. The replacement font might not have matching metrics and certainly wouldn't be identical. That's *not* what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the case where multiple embedded subsets derived from the *exact* *same* *font* exist, each containing partially overlapping sets of glyphs where each glyph is *identical* to those in the other subsets. This is best illustrated by example. Take three input PDFs that are being placed as images (say, engineering diagrams, advertisments or breakouts in a layout, or whatever), named 1.pdf, 2.pdf and 3.pdf that will be written into out.pdf. For the sake of this example, presume that content in out.pdf uses Arial Regular for its own text so that font must also be embedded. 1.pdf: Helvetica Neue Sans subset [a cde h] Utopia Black [abcd] 2.pdf: Helvetica Neue Sans subset [abcde ] Helvetica LT Std [ab def ijk] 3.pdf: Helvetica Neue Sans subset [ c efgh] Desired output is: o.pdf: Helvetica Neue Sans subset [abcdefgh] Utopia Black [abcd] Helvetica LT Std [ab def ijk] Arial Regular (whatever the text in out.pdf requires) Fop and fop-pdf-image currently produce: 1.pdf: Helvetica Neue Sans subset [a cde h] Helvetica Neue Sans subset [abcde ] Helvetica Neue Sans subset [ c efgh] Utopia Black [abcd] Helvetica LT Std [ab def ijk] Arial Regular (whatever the text in out.pdf requires) ... meaning that there are 3 copes of h.n.s c plus 2 copies of d, e and h from *identical* fonts (presuming each input had the same version of h.n.s as verified by metrics or for the truly paranoid even glyph data checksums). You appear to think I want to produce: o.pdf: Helvetica Neue Sans[abcdefghijk] Utopia Black [abcd] Arial Regular (whatever the text in out.pdf requires) or even: o.pdf: Arial Regular (out.pdf glyph usage plus [abcdefghijk]) Utopia Black [abcd] ... where Helvetica Neue Sans and Helvetica LT Std are de-duplicated despite not being true duplicates of each other, or in the latter case both are replaced with the equivalent (approximately) Arial Regular. That is *not* what I want; that would be completely incorrect to do automatically. On 03/06/2012 07:08 PM, mehdi houshmand wrote: Font de-duping is intrinsically a post-process action, you need the full document, with all fonts, before you can do any font de-duping. PostScript does this very thing (to a much lesser extent) with the optimize-resources tag, as a post-process action. I absolutely disagree that font optimization must be done in a second pass. Font de-duplication requires knowledge of all the fonts in the document, yes. That doesn't make it necessarily a post-process operation. PDF is a wonderfully non-linear format, and it's trivial to delay writing out fonts until the end of the document. PDF simply doesn't care where the fonts appear in the document. Once you know the last content stream has been written out (say, just before you write the xref tables) you know no more new glyphs will be used and no new fonts will be referenced, so you can write out the fonts you need. The only operation in PDF that is (almost) forced to be post-process is writing out linearized (fast web view or web optimized) PDF. That's because web-optimized PDF must have a partial xref table and the trailer dictionary near the *start* of the file. It's actually still possible to create linearised pdf by streaming it out in a single pass, but you need to know more in advance about what you'll be writing out so in practice it's much simpler to linearise by post-processing. Also, the requirements aren't clear here, what is it we want here? Let me validate that, this shouldn't change the (I guess we can call it) canonical PDF document. By that I mean if you rasterized a PDF before and after this change they should be identical, pixel-for-pixel. I agree. When Acrobat does the font de-duping (I don't remember how much control it gives you, but if there are levels of de-duping I would have chosen the most aggressive), the documents aren't identical. That's because it's actually substituting fonts, replacing one font with another with non-identical metrics. That's not what I want to do, I want to *merge* overlapping subsets of fonts
Re: Fwd: Google Summer of Code
On 03/06/2012 07:29 PM, Chris Bowditch wrote: On 06/03/2012 11:08, mehdi houshmand wrote: Hi Mehdi, Font de-duping is intrinsically a post-process action, you need the full document, with all fonts, before you can do any font de-duping. PostScript does this very thing (to a much lesser extent) with the optimize-resources tag, as a post-process action. At least that is transparent to the user, but re-parsing the input is a sub-optimal solution as it incurs a performance penalty so we should investigate if there are alternatives first. I can't recall why the Postscript Paintewr/Renderer was architected in that way but thats a separate topic. At a guess, because PostScript is much less capable of non-linear references and access than PDF is. It's more expensive and slower to forward-reference resources because PostScript has to parse and execute all the rest of the document to find the resource it wants, while PDF just seeks to the object at the byte offset referenced in the xref table and reads only the object it requires. The requirements are perfectly clear: Given a set of input PDFs, XSL-FO, create a single merged PDF with a consistent and unduplicated set of fonts. Why would there be slight kerning differences if the assumption that the font name is unique holds true. Assuming the font name is unique is dangerous, since it's provably true that in the wild there are numerous subtly (and sometimes grossly) different fonts with the same name. The font dictionary contains glyph metrics information that along with the font name, slant, weight etc can be used to match the font rather more closely. For extra caution, checksums of subset glyphs can be done to make sure they're *identical*, but honestly that's unnecessary if the metrics match. If that assumption is wrong then I agree with what you say. Ultimately that should be down to the user though, they know their fonts, so they can decide whether to merge them or not via a setting in the fop.xconf. Your argument is not sufficient to say this approach should never be used. It brings a lot of benefit to users who know their font names are unique. It should be safe to do automatically and transparently by default, because only partially overlapping subsets of identical fonts should ever be merged. Anything else is a substitution not merging duplicate subsets, and has entirely different considerations because of the possibility of visible changes caused by non-matching metrics etc. -- Craig Ringer
Re: Google Summer of Code
Because of the overwhelming popularity of this idea, I've created a link on the Wiki (http://wiki.apache.org/xmlgraphics-fop/GoogleSummerOfCode2012) for the GSoC proposals. On a serious note, this is literally work for free. Google pays the bills and I'm happy to mentor any applicants and do the admin, all you have to do is provide ideas for projects. If you have a wish list or a list of TODOs that you think a newbie could do for a summer project (I do appreciate that's quite a big caveat), now's your opportunity. Mehdi On 1 March 2012 16:26, mehdi houshmand med1...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Glenn, The GSoC doesn't relate directly to the ASF or FOP directly, however, putting a few FOP projects as proposals would be a good way to get some new interest into the project. I think it would be good for us as we benefit from any work done, and it helps whomever does the work learn the various skills that we as a community can impart upon them. I've included a link to the GSoC below, but if you do some research, there's plenty of information out there. http://code.google.com/soc/ Mehdi On 1 March 2012 16:13, Glenn Adams gl...@skynav.com wrote: could you provide a link to the Google Summer of Code Project? how does it relate to ASF and FOP activities? On Thu, Mar 1, 2012 at 3:50 AM, mehdi houshmand med1...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, We're thinking of submitting a proposal or two to the Google Summer of Code project and wanted to get some input from the community on ideas. Once we've got a few proposals I'll create a wiki page and put all the ideas on there, but for now I just wanted to gauge interest. In terms of mentoring, I'm happy to be a mentor and I've registered as one and if any other committers fancy the job, do register, the more the merrier. The deadline is 9th March, so that doesn't give us long to bounce around ideas, but here are a few I was thinking: - There have been recent discussions between Jeremias, myself and others about extracting the Fonts packages into their own library. I think this would be a great idea for a project because essentially it only involves a few, well defined specifications (TTF, Type1 etc) and doesn't expose the person to too much complexity. The way I'd suggest this to be done, is by re-writing rather than porting, that way it gives the person much more flexibility and also the current code would give them good tips and tricks on how to deal with parsing fonts. - TTF in AFP. I know we still have the TrueTypeInPostScript branch flying around, and however much I'd like to fob that onto someone else, I don't think it's fair to do so. I have no idea how long this project would take, but I think FOP could really benefit from it. Currently we're forcing users to use AFP fonts for AFP documents, a lot of which are archaic and use EBCDIC, for those of you who haven't been exposed to EBCDIC, count yourself lucky. There may be something to do with PCL?? I'm not at all familiar with the format, but I do remember discussions about upgrading to a newer PCL standard? I'd be happy to acquaint myself with the format if there's interest in the idea. Hopefully we can get a proposal together in time. Mehdi
Re: Google Summer of Code
I would suggest whittling down the fop bug list, starting from the beginning. On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 6:35 AM, mehdi houshmand med1...@gmail.com wrote: Because of the overwhelming popularity of this idea, I've created a link on the Wiki (http://wiki.apache.org/xmlgraphics-fop/GoogleSummerOfCode2012) for the GSoC proposals. On a serious note, this is literally work for free. Google pays the bills and I'm happy to mentor any applicants and do the admin, all you have to do is provide ideas for projects. If you have a wish list or a list of TODOs that you think a newbie could do for a summer project (I do appreciate that's quite a big caveat), now's your opportunity. Mehdi On 1 March 2012 16:26, mehdi houshmand med1...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Glenn, The GSoC doesn't relate directly to the ASF or FOP directly, however, putting a few FOP projects as proposals would be a good way to get some new interest into the project. I think it would be good for us as we benefit from any work done, and it helps whomever does the work learn the various skills that we as a community can impart upon them. I've included a link to the GSoC below, but if you do some research, there's plenty of information out there. http://code.google.com/soc/ Mehdi On 1 March 2012 16:13, Glenn Adams gl...@skynav.com wrote: could you provide a link to the Google Summer of Code Project? how does it relate to ASF and FOP activities? On Thu, Mar 1, 2012 at 3:50 AM, mehdi houshmand med1...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, We're thinking of submitting a proposal or two to the Google Summer of Code project and wanted to get some input from the community on ideas. Once we've got a few proposals I'll create a wiki page and put all the ideas on there, but for now I just wanted to gauge interest. In terms of mentoring, I'm happy to be a mentor and I've registered as one and if any other committers fancy the job, do register, the more the merrier. The deadline is 9th March, so that doesn't give us long to bounce around ideas, but here are a few I was thinking: - There have been recent discussions between Jeremias, myself and others about extracting the Fonts packages into their own library. I think this would be a great idea for a project because essentially it only involves a few, well defined specifications (TTF, Type1 etc) and doesn't expose the person to too much complexity. The way I'd suggest this to be done, is by re-writing rather than porting, that way it gives the person much more flexibility and also the current code would give them good tips and tricks on how to deal with parsing fonts. - TTF in AFP. I know we still have the TrueTypeInPostScript branch flying around, and however much I'd like to fob that onto someone else, I don't think it's fair to do so. I have no idea how long this project would take, but I think FOP could really benefit from it. Currently we're forcing users to use AFP fonts for AFP documents, a lot of which are archaic and use EBCDIC, for those of you who haven't been exposed to EBCDIC, count yourself lucky. There may be something to do with PCL?? I'm not at all familiar with the format, but I do remember discussions about upgrading to a newer PCL standard? I'd be happy to acquaint myself with the format if there's interest in the idea. Hopefully we can get a proposal together in time. Mehdi
Re: Google Summer of Code
Haha, if only it were that simple... The projects have to be interesting and fulfilling and at least bordering on fun. They also have to be an opportunity to learn and encourage opensource development. There's little fun to be had fixing bugs hidden in the depths of FOPs fairly difficult to delve-in code base, also - probably more importantly - I can't imagine it would serve as encouragement. Mehdi On 5 March 2012 14:36, Glenn Adams gl...@skynav.com wrote: I would suggest whittling down the fop bug list, starting from the beginning. On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 6:35 AM, mehdi houshmand med1...@gmail.com wrote: Because of the overwhelming popularity of this idea, I've created a link on the Wiki (http://wiki.apache.org/xmlgraphics-fop/GoogleSummerOfCode2012) for the GSoC proposals. On a serious note, this is literally work for free. Google pays the bills and I'm happy to mentor any applicants and do the admin, all you have to do is provide ideas for projects. If you have a wish list or a list of TODOs that you think a newbie could do for a summer project (I do appreciate that's quite a big caveat), now's your opportunity. Mehdi On 1 March 2012 16:26, mehdi houshmand med1...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Glenn, The GSoC doesn't relate directly to the ASF or FOP directly, however, putting a few FOP projects as proposals would be a good way to get some new interest into the project. I think it would be good for us as we benefit from any work done, and it helps whomever does the work learn the various skills that we as a community can impart upon them. I've included a link to the GSoC below, but if you do some research, there's plenty of information out there. http://code.google.com/soc/ Mehdi On 1 March 2012 16:13, Glenn Adams gl...@skynav.com wrote: could you provide a link to the Google Summer of Code Project? how does it relate to ASF and FOP activities? On Thu, Mar 1, 2012 at 3:50 AM, mehdi houshmand med1...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, We're thinking of submitting a proposal or two to the Google Summer of Code project and wanted to get some input from the community on ideas. Once we've got a few proposals I'll create a wiki page and put all the ideas on there, but for now I just wanted to gauge interest. In terms of mentoring, I'm happy to be a mentor and I've registered as one and if any other committers fancy the job, do register, the more the merrier. The deadline is 9th March, so that doesn't give us long to bounce around ideas, but here are a few I was thinking: - There have been recent discussions between Jeremias, myself and others about extracting the Fonts packages into their own library. I think this would be a great idea for a project because essentially it only involves a few, well defined specifications (TTF, Type1 etc) and doesn't expose the person to too much complexity. The way I'd suggest this to be done, is by re-writing rather than porting, that way it gives the person much more flexibility and also the current code would give them good tips and tricks on how to deal with parsing fonts. - TTF in AFP. I know we still have the TrueTypeInPostScript branch flying around, and however much I'd like to fob that onto someone else, I don't think it's fair to do so. I have no idea how long this project would take, but I think FOP could really benefit from it. Currently we're forcing users to use AFP fonts for AFP documents, a lot of which are archaic and use EBCDIC, for those of you who haven't been exposed to EBCDIC, count yourself lucky. There may be something to do with PCL?? I'm not at all familiar with the format, but I do remember discussions about upgrading to a newer PCL standard? I'd be happy to acquaint myself with the format if there's interest in the idea. Hopefully we can get a proposal together in time. Mehdi
Re: Google Summer of Code
I don't think that Glenn's idea is that bad. FOP's open bugzilla issues are not only bugs, they also show what are the areas that FOP needs to be improved. If we start from the beginning, then | 1063|New|Nor|2001-03-21|fop does not handle large fo files is a real, very interesting issue and the solution is not to increase the Java heap size. There are workarounds such as caching objects but a good solution might be deeper in FOP's layout engine. What about checking or implementing Donald Knuth's first-fit or best-fit algorithms ? In theory, it would allow to free FO tree and layout manager objects after the end of every page. There was a recent discussion about this, see http://apache.markmail.org/message/3ejv4opwcceipfpl?q=list:org%2Eapache%2Exmlgraphics%2Efop-users+total+best+fit Of course there will be drawbacks, FOP is complex (more complex than it should be in my opinion, cleanup / modularization would help) and this is not a simple task. Alex Giotis On Mar 5, 2012, at 4:49 PM, mehdi houshmand wrote: Haha, if only it were that simple... The projects have to be interesting and fulfilling and at least bordering on fun. They also have to be an opportunity to learn and encourage opensource development. There's little fun to be had fixing bugs hidden in the depths of FOPs fairly difficult to delve-in code base, also - probably more importantly - I can't imagine it would serve as encouragement. Mehdi On 5 March 2012 14:36, Glenn Adams gl...@skynav.com wrote: I would suggest whittling down the fop bug list, starting from the beginning. On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 6:35 AM, mehdi houshmand med1...@gmail.com wrote: Because of the overwhelming popularity of this idea, I've created a link on the Wiki (http://wiki.apache.org/xmlgraphics-fop/GoogleSummerOfCode2012) for the GSoC proposals. On a serious note, this is literally work for free. Google pays the bills and I'm happy to mentor any applicants and do the admin, all you have to do is provide ideas for projects. If you have a wish list or a list of TODOs that you think a newbie could do for a summer project (I do appreciate that's quite a big caveat), now's your opportunity. Mehdi On 1 March 2012 16:26, mehdi houshmand med1...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Glenn, The GSoC doesn't relate directly to the ASF or FOP directly, however, putting a few FOP projects as proposals would be a good way to get some new interest into the project. I think it would be good for us as we benefit from any work done, and it helps whomever does the work learn the various skills that we as a community can impart upon them. I've included a link to the GSoC below, but if you do some research, there's plenty of information out there. http://code.google.com/soc/ Mehdi On 1 March 2012 16:13, Glenn Adams gl...@skynav.com wrote: could you provide a link to the Google Summer of Code Project? how does it relate to ASF and FOP activities? On Thu, Mar 1, 2012 at 3:50 AM, mehdi houshmand med1...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, We're thinking of submitting a proposal or two to the Google Summer of Code project and wanted to get some input from the community on ideas. Once we've got a few proposals I'll create a wiki page and put all the ideas on there, but for now I just wanted to gauge interest. In terms of mentoring, I'm happy to be a mentor and I've registered as one and if any other committers fancy the job, do register, the more the merrier. The deadline is 9th March, so that doesn't give us long to bounce around ideas, but here are a few I was thinking: - There have been recent discussions between Jeremias, myself and others about extracting the Fonts packages into their own library. I think this would be a great idea for a project because essentially it only involves a few, well defined specifications (TTF, Type1 etc) and doesn't expose the person to too much complexity. The way I'd suggest this to be done, is by re-writing rather than porting, that way it gives the person much more flexibility and also the current code would give them good tips and tricks on how to deal with parsing fonts. - TTF in AFP. I know we still have the TrueTypeInPostScript branch flying around, and however much I'd like to fob that onto someone else, I don't think it's fair to do so. I have no idea how long this project would take, but I think FOP could really benefit from it. Currently we're forcing users to use AFP fonts for AFP documents, a lot of which are archaic and use EBCDIC, for those of you who haven't been exposed to EBCDIC, count yourself lucky. There may be something to do with PCL?? I'm not at all familiar with the format, but I do remember discussions about upgrading to a newer PCL standard? I'd be happy to acquaint myself with the format if there's interest in the idea. Hopefully we can get a proposal together in time. Mehdi
Re: Google Summer of Code
Hi Alex/Glenn, Yeah that's a fair point, I think this may be a textbook case of Freudian projection, so my apologies if those weren't your intentions Glenn. The problem is, I don't have a great deal of experience in the Layout Engine and I really have no grounds to put a proposal together. I've put forward the projects that I know about and think are interesting. If you want to put a project proposal forward please do, if no one else steps forward as a mentor and an applicant takes an interest, I'll make the effort to learn the code. Mehdi On 5 March 2012 15:48, Alexios Giotis alex.gio...@gmail.com wrote: I don't think that Glenn's idea is that bad. FOP's open bugzilla issues are not only bugs, they also show what are the areas that FOP needs to be improved. If we start from the beginning, then | 1063|New|Nor|2001-03-21|fop does not handle large fo files is a real, very interesting issue and the solution is not to increase the Java heap size. There are workarounds such as caching objects but a good solution might be deeper in FOP's layout engine. What about checking or implementing Donald Knuth's first-fit or best-fit algorithms ? In theory, it would allow to free FO tree and layout manager objects after the end of every page. There was a recent discussion about this, see http://apache.markmail.org/message/3ejv4opwcceipfpl?q=list:org%2Eapache%2Exmlgraphics%2Efop-users+total+best+fit Of course there will be drawbacks, FOP is complex (more complex than it should be in my opinion, cleanup / modularization would help) and this is not a simple task. Alex Giotis On Mar 5, 2012, at 4:49 PM, mehdi houshmand wrote: Haha, if only it were that simple... The projects have to be interesting and fulfilling and at least bordering on fun. They also have to be an opportunity to learn and encourage opensource development. There's little fun to be had fixing bugs hidden in the depths of FOPs fairly difficult to delve-in code base, also - probably more importantly - I can't imagine it would serve as encouragement. Mehdi On 5 March 2012 14:36, Glenn Adams gl...@skynav.com wrote: I would suggest whittling down the fop bug list, starting from the beginning. On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 6:35 AM, mehdi houshmand med1...@gmail.com wrote: Because of the overwhelming popularity of this idea, I've created a link on the Wiki (http://wiki.apache.org/xmlgraphics-fop/GoogleSummerOfCode2012) for the GSoC proposals. On a serious note, this is literally work for free. Google pays the bills and I'm happy to mentor any applicants and do the admin, all you have to do is provide ideas for projects. If you have a wish list or a list of TODOs that you think a newbie could do for a summer project (I do appreciate that's quite a big caveat), now's your opportunity. Mehdi On 1 March 2012 16:26, mehdi houshmand med1...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Glenn, The GSoC doesn't relate directly to the ASF or FOP directly, however, putting a few FOP projects as proposals would be a good way to get some new interest into the project. I think it would be good for us as we benefit from any work done, and it helps whomever does the work learn the various skills that we as a community can impart upon them. I've included a link to the GSoC below, but if you do some research, there's plenty of information out there. http://code.google.com/soc/ Mehdi On 1 March 2012 16:13, Glenn Adams gl...@skynav.com wrote: could you provide a link to the Google Summer of Code Project? how does it relate to ASF and FOP activities? On Thu, Mar 1, 2012 at 3:50 AM, mehdi houshmand med1...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, We're thinking of submitting a proposal or two to the Google Summer of Code project and wanted to get some input from the community on ideas. Once we've got a few proposals I'll create a wiki page and put all the ideas on there, but for now I just wanted to gauge interest. In terms of mentoring, I'm happy to be a mentor and I've registered as one and if any other committers fancy the job, do register, the more the merrier. The deadline is 9th March, so that doesn't give us long to bounce around ideas, but here are a few I was thinking: - There have been recent discussions between Jeremias, myself and others about extracting the Fonts packages into their own library. I think this would be a great idea for a project because essentially it only involves a few, well defined specifications (TTF, Type1 etc) and doesn't expose the person to too much complexity. The way I'd suggest this to be done, is by re-writing rather than porting, that way it gives the person much more flexibility and also the current code would give them good tips and tricks on how to deal with parsing fonts. - TTF in AFP. I know we still have the TrueTypeInPostScript branch flying around, and however much I'd like to fob that onto someone else, I don't think it's fair to do so. I have no idea how long
Re: Google Summer of Code
On 05/03/2012 16:18, mehdi houshmand wrote: Hi Alex/Glenn, Hi guys, I agree that there may be some good project ideas in the bug list, but I don't think the one Alex highlighted is a good one. Changing the layout algorithm is a major undertaking, probably several man years :) We need to find something small and well defined for a GSoC project, something that we know can be completed in 2-3 months. Thanks, Chris Yeah that's a fair point, I think this may be a textbook case of Freudian projection, so my apologies if those weren't your intentions Glenn. The problem is, I don't have a great deal of experience in the Layout Engine and I really have no grounds to put a proposal together. I've put forward the projects that I know about and think are interesting. If you want to put a project proposal forward please do, if no one else steps forward as a mentor and an applicant takes an interest, I'll make the effort to learn the code. Mehdi On 5 March 2012 15:48, Alexios Giotisalex.gio...@gmail.com wrote: I don't think that Glenn's idea is that bad. FOP's open bugzilla issues are not only bugs, they also show what are the areas that FOP needs to be improved. If we start from the beginning, then | 1063|New|Nor|2001-03-21|fop does not handle large fo files is a real, very interesting issue and the solution is not to increase the Java heap size. There are workarounds such as caching objects but a good solution might be deeper in FOP's layout engine. What about checking or implementing Donald Knuth's first-fit or best-fit algorithms ? In theory, it would allow to free FO tree and layout manager objects after the end of every page. There was a recent discussion about this, see http://apache.markmail.org/message/3ejv4opwcceipfpl?q=list:org%2Eapache%2Exmlgraphics%2Efop-users+total+best+fit Of course there will be drawbacks, FOP is complex (more complex than it should be in my opinion, cleanup / modularization would help) and this is not a simple task. Alex Giotis On Mar 5, 2012, at 4:49 PM, mehdi houshmand wrote: Haha, if only it were that simple... The projects have to be interesting and fulfilling and at least bordering on fun. They also have to be an opportunity to learn and encourage opensource development. There's little fun to be had fixing bugs hidden in the depths of FOPs fairly difficult to delve-in code base, also - probably more importantly - I can't imagine it would serve as encouragement. Mehdi On 5 March 2012 14:36, Glenn Adamsgl...@skynav.com wrote: I would suggest whittling down the fop bug list, starting from the beginning. On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 6:35 AM, mehdi houshmandmed1...@gmail.com wrote: Because of the overwhelming popularity of this idea, I've created a link on the Wiki (http://wiki.apache.org/xmlgraphics-fop/GoogleSummerOfCode2012) for the GSoC proposals. On a serious note, this is literally work for free. Google pays the bills and I'm happy to mentor any applicants and do the admin, all you have to do is provide ideas for projects. If you have a wish list or a list of TODOs that you think a newbie could do for a summer project (I do appreciate that's quite a big caveat), now's your opportunity. Mehdi On 1 March 2012 16:26, mehdi houshmandmed1...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Glenn, The GSoC doesn't relate directly to the ASF or FOP directly, however, putting a few FOP projects as proposals would be a good way to get some new interest into the project. I think it would be good for us as we benefit from any work done, and it helps whomever does the work learn the various skills that we as a community can impart upon them. I've included a link to the GSoC below, but if you do some research, there's plenty of information out there. http://code.google.com/soc/ Mehdi On 1 March 2012 16:13, Glenn Adamsgl...@skynav.com wrote: could you provide a link to the Google Summer of Code Project? how does it relate to ASF and FOP activities? On Thu, Mar 1, 2012 at 3:50 AM, mehdi houshmandmed1...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, We're thinking of submitting a proposal or two to the Google Summer of Code project and wanted to get some input from the community on ideas. Once we've got a few proposals I'll create a wiki page and put all the ideas on there, but for now I just wanted to gauge interest. In terms of mentoring, I'm happy to be a mentor and I've registered as one and if any other committers fancy the job, do register, the more the merrier. The deadline is 9th March, so that doesn't give us long to bounce around ideas, but here are a few I was thinking: - There have been recent discussions between Jeremias, myself and others about extracting the Fonts packages into their own library. I think this would be a great idea for a project because essentially it only involves a few, well defined specifications (TTF, Type1 etc) and doesn't expose the person to too much complexity. The way I'd suggest this to be done, is by re-writing rather than porting, that way
Re: Google Summer of Code
On 03/05/2012 09:35 PM, mehdi houshmand wrote: Because of the overwhelming popularity of this idea, I've created a link on the Wiki (http://wiki.apache.org/xmlgraphics-fop/GoogleSummerOfCode2012) for the GSoC proposals. Things that come to mind for me: - PDFBox backend (probably ideal for GSoC, nice and self contained, great for someone who knows PDFBox and wants to learn fop's codebase); - CID fonts in PostScript (good for someone who knows PS and fonts, not necessarily XSL-FO so much); - Using automatic +- kerning, +- tracking *and* +- horizontal type scaling adjustment to better auto-fit text, involving support for font-stretch property. This touches on layout so it may not be practical for a 1st fop project, but may not be too bad since fop already adjusts tracking when justifying text. The key interest points would be *negative* tracking, kerning and (if nothing else works) glyph-scaling for tighter type-fitting where it's not desirable to break to a new line due to widow/orphan policy or because it'd create large holes. This is particularly important when long unbreakable words must fit a fixed width space. - PDF/X-1a with CMYK; - Anything in the proposed XSL-FO 2.0 feature list (though most of it won't be realistic for GSoC projects); - Merge fop-pdf-image and implement smart merging of font, profile, and image resources. I'm working on this one at the moment, but slowly and only amid other projects. -- Craig Ringer
Re: Google Summer of Code
On 03/05/2012 09:35 PM, mehdi houshmand wrote: Because of the overwhelming popularity of this idea, I've created a link on the Wiki (http://wiki.apache.org/xmlgraphics-fop/GoogleSummerOfCode2012) for the GSoC proposals. You note font library extraction as a possibility there. I'd like to note another possible motivation for extracting the font library: to then potentially permit it to be merged with or replaced by pdfbox's fontbox, reducing duplicate work. -- Craig Ringer
Re: Google Summer of Code
could you provide a link to the Google Summer of Code Project? how does it relate to ASF and FOP activities? On Thu, Mar 1, 2012 at 3:50 AM, mehdi houshmand med1...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, We're thinking of submitting a proposal or two to the Google Summer of Code project and wanted to get some input from the community on ideas. Once we've got a few proposals I'll create a wiki page and put all the ideas on there, but for now I just wanted to gauge interest. In terms of mentoring, I'm happy to be a mentor and I've registered as one and if any other committers fancy the job, do register, the more the merrier. The deadline is 9th March, so that doesn't give us long to bounce around ideas, but here are a few I was thinking: - There have been recent discussions between Jeremias, myself and others about extracting the Fonts packages into their own library. I think this would be a great idea for a project because essentially it only involves a few, well defined specifications (TTF, Type1 etc) and doesn't expose the person to too much complexity. The way I'd suggest this to be done, is by re-writing rather than porting, that way it gives the person much more flexibility and also the current code would give them good tips and tricks on how to deal with parsing fonts. - TTF in AFP. I know we still have the TrueTypeInPostScript branch flying around, and however much I'd like to fob that onto someone else, I don't think it's fair to do so. I have no idea how long this project would take, but I think FOP could really benefit from it. Currently we're forcing users to use AFP fonts for AFP documents, a lot of which are archaic and use EBCDIC, for those of you who haven't been exposed to EBCDIC, count yourself lucky. There may be something to do with PCL?? I'm not at all familiar with the format, but I do remember discussions about upgrading to a newer PCL standard? I'd be happy to acquaint myself with the format if there's interest in the idea. Hopefully we can get a proposal together in time. Mehdi
Re: Google Summer of Code
Hi Glenn, The GSoC doesn't relate directly to the ASF or FOP directly, however, putting a few FOP projects as proposals would be a good way to get some new interest into the project. I think it would be good for us as we benefit from any work done, and it helps whomever does the work learn the various skills that we as a community can impart upon them. I've included a link to the GSoC below, but if you do some research, there's plenty of information out there. http://code.google.com/soc/ Mehdi On 1 March 2012 16:13, Glenn Adams gl...@skynav.com wrote: could you provide a link to the Google Summer of Code Project? how does it relate to ASF and FOP activities? On Thu, Mar 1, 2012 at 3:50 AM, mehdi houshmand med1...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, We're thinking of submitting a proposal or two to the Google Summer of Code project and wanted to get some input from the community on ideas. Once we've got a few proposals I'll create a wiki page and put all the ideas on there, but for now I just wanted to gauge interest. In terms of mentoring, I'm happy to be a mentor and I've registered as one and if any other committers fancy the job, do register, the more the merrier. The deadline is 9th March, so that doesn't give us long to bounce around ideas, but here are a few I was thinking: - There have been recent discussions between Jeremias, myself and others about extracting the Fonts packages into their own library. I think this would be a great idea for a project because essentially it only involves a few, well defined specifications (TTF, Type1 etc) and doesn't expose the person to too much complexity. The way I'd suggest this to be done, is by re-writing rather than porting, that way it gives the person much more flexibility and also the current code would give them good tips and tricks on how to deal with parsing fonts. - TTF in AFP. I know we still have the TrueTypeInPostScript branch flying around, and however much I'd like to fob that onto someone else, I don't think it's fair to do so. I have no idea how long this project would take, but I think FOP could really benefit from it. Currently we're forcing users to use AFP fonts for AFP documents, a lot of which are archaic and use EBCDIC, for those of you who haven't been exposed to EBCDIC, count yourself lucky. There may be something to do with PCL?? I'm not at all familiar with the format, but I do remember discussions about upgrading to a newer PCL standard? I'd be happy to acquaint myself with the format if there's interest in the idea. Hopefully we can get a proposal together in time. Mehdi
Re: Google Summer of Code: Bring out your projects
Hi everyone, If I understand correctly, you can register your proposed projects in JIRA, see the above web page. Oops, I missed that sentence; today, while revisiting this thread I noticed that, according to the timeline [1], the proposals will need to be postponed for next year. :-| The deadline was pretty short, though (apparently only a couple of days for JIRA creation + final proposal compilation). Somehow related, in the guide to being a mentor, it's stated in the procedure that one should Add an issue to JIRA (if your project doesn't use JIRA contact d...@community.apache.org) [2]. Could anyone help understanding what is that exactly? I've crawled through the available JIRA projects and saw none related with XML Graphics (Batik, FOP, XML Graphics Commons)... (Also, if this is a lengthy process I'd hint towards maybe triggering the process now so next year we won't have this extra overhead.) Regards, Helder [1] http://socghop.appspot.com/document/show/gsoc_program/google/gsoc2010/timeline [2] http://community.apache.org/guide-to-being-a-mentor.html#guidetobeingamentor-Summary
Re: Google Summer of Code: Bring out your projects
Hi everyone, Could anyone help understanding what is that exactly? I've crawled through the available JIRA projects and saw none related with XML Graphics (Batik, FOP, XML Graphics Commons)... (Also, if this is a lengthy process I'd hint towards maybe triggering the process now so next year we won't have this extra overhead.) JIRA is the ASF's bug tracking system, used by many projects instead of Bugzilla which we use. [...] Humm, I guess my question wasn't properly made (I had an idea of JIRA as a bug tracker and it's use within ASF); I meant to ask what were the implications of using JIRA when the project is using Bugzilla. Sorry for the noise! ;-) See the archives at http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/community-dev/. Registering your project ideas should not take a long time. OK, a little crawling showed that it is straightforward [1], with no implications at all: the procedure for projects using Bugzilla is simply using the Community Development project on JIRA, making sure the title has prefix containing the project name (PROJECT_NAME:). More details available [1]. :-) Regards, Simon Thanks, Helder [1] http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/community-dev/201003.mbox/%3c4ba8d87a.1010...@apache.org%3e
Re: Redesigning the web site [was: Google Summer of Code: Bring out your projects]
Simon Pepping wrote: On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 07:37:12PM +, Vincent Hennebert wrote: Speaking of the release, many parts of the website are largely outdated and need a serious re-work (the Development tab, mainly). Also, any reference to 0.20.5 should IMO be removed before releasing 1.0. 0.20.5 is a thing of the past now. That makes a release even more difficult. I am in favour of an early release, rather than working on the website Finally, the website could really do with a new look. ATM it???s looking so... 1990???s. I started to work on that some time ago (based on the Batik skin), but never got to finishing it. Forrest sometimes gets in the way, I must say. Maybe switching to an alternative framework could be investigated. Especially if it can also provide higher automation. Again, I am in favour of focusing on an early release as our most important requirement. Then someone is going to spend 3 days doing the 1.0 release, and when it’s time to do the next release the exact same issue will show up again. Releasing 1.0 is the perfect opportunity to do some re-branding and refactor the website, IMO. Vincent
Re: Redesigning the web site [was: Google Summer of Code: Bring out your projects]
On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 07:37:12PM +, Vincent Hennebert wrote: Speaking of the release, many parts of the website are largely outdated and need a serious re-work (the Development tab, mainly). Also, any reference to 0.20.5 should IMO be removed before releasing 1.0. 0.20.5 is a thing of the past now. That makes a release even more difficult. I am in favour of an early release, rather than working on the website Finally, the website could really do with a new look. ATM it???s looking so... 1990???s. I started to work on that some time ago (based on the Batik skin), but never got to finishing it. Forrest sometimes gets in the way, I must say. Maybe switching to an alternative framework could be investigated. Especially if it can also provide higher automation. Again, I am in favour of focusing on an early release as our most important requirement. Simon -- Simon Pepping home page: http://www.leverkruid.eu
Re: Google Summer of Code: Bring out your projects
Hi Simon, Simon Pepping wrote: Thanks to Adrian and Vincent who want to be mentor. We also need some ideas for projects. 1. Our releases require too much work, which has resulted in no release for much too long a time. How can the work related to a release be minimized? Can we develop tools to automate much of the work? Certainly. A while ago I mentioned the possibility of using Ant’s variable substitution mechanism: http://markmail.org/message/mgoxf2ptvoffaok7 Putting such variables (latest FOP version, copyright year, etc.) at all appropriate places would already be of great help. Then it’s mainly a matter of streamlining the whole process and removing as much duplication as possible. Just as an example, do we really need to duplicate the release notes in the README file? Speaking of the release, many parts of the website are largely outdated and need a serious re-work (the Development tab, mainly). Also, any reference to 0.20.5 should IMO be removed before releasing 1.0. 0.20.5 is a thing of the past now. Finally, the website could really do with a new look. ATM it’s looking so... 1990’s. I started to work on that some time ago (based on the Batik skin), but never got to finishing it. Forrest sometimes gets in the way, I must say. Maybe switching to an alternative framework could be investigated. Especially if it can also provide higher automation. 2. Implementing features of the XSL-FO 1.1 spec which have remained unimplemented. 3. Implementing proposed features of the XSL-FO 2.0 spec. For XSL-FO 1.0 FOP was the reference implementation. We could host reference implementations of newly proposed features. 4 ... n. Do we have open issues that would make up a GSoC project? On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 01:07:21PM +0100, Simon Pepping wrote: Ross Gardler of ASF announced that it is time for our projects to start preparing for Google Summer of Code (GSoC). Do we have ideas for GSoC projects? Are committers willing to be a mentor? Simon Vincent
Re: Google Summer of Code: Bring out your projects
Thanks to Adrian and Vincent who want to be mentor. We also need some ideas for projects. 1. Our releases require too much work, which has resulted in no release for much too long a time. How can the work related to a release be minimized? Can we develop tools to automate much of the work? 2. Implementing features of the XSL-FO 1.1 spec which have remained unimplemented. 3. Implementing proposed features of the XSL-FO 2.0 spec. For XSL-FO 1.0 FOP was the reference implementation. We could host reference implementations of newly proposed features. 4 ... n. Do we have open issues that would make up a GSoC project? On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 01:07:21PM +0100, Simon Pepping wrote: Ross Gardler of ASF announced that it is time for our projects to start preparing for Google Summer of Code (GSoC). Do we have ideas for GSoC projects? Are committers willing to be a mentor? Simon -- Simon Pepping home page: http://www.leverkruid.eu
Re: Google Summer of Code: Bring out your projects
We have two committers who are willing to be a mentor, and a few project ideas for Batik. The following is the complete message (which was only sent to the PMCs): --- Forwarded message --- It is time for your project to start preparing for GSoC if you have not already done so. Things you need to do if you want to consider being a mentor: - understand what it means to be a mentor [1] - propose your project ideas [2] (the process is different this year) - subscribe to code-awa...@apache.org We need your project ideas now, so please get to work, see [2] You can see the current list of ideas at [3] Ross [1] http://community.apache.org/guide-to-being-a-mentor.html [2] http://community.apache.org/guide-to-being-a-mentor.html [3] https://issues.apache.org/jira/secure/IssueNavigator.jspa?mode=hiderequestId=12314021 --- End forwarded message --- If I understand correctly, you can register your proposed projects in JIRA, see the above web page. Then you must advertise your projects so as to attract students; that part is not clear to me. Simon On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 01:07:21PM +0100, Simon Pepping wrote: Ross Gardler of ASF announced that it is time for our projects to start preparing for Google Summer of Code (GSoC). Do we have ideas for GSoC projects? Are committers willing to be a mentor? Simon -- Simon Pepping home page: http://www.leverkruid.eu - To unsubscribe, e-mail: batik-dev-unsubscr...@xmlgraphics.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: batik-dev-h...@xmlgraphics.apache.org -- Simon Pepping home page: http://www.leverkruid.eu
Re: Google Summer of Code: Bring out your projects
On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 11:58:07AM +0100, Simon Pepping wrote: If I understand correctly, you can register your proposed projects in JIRA, see the above web page. Then you must advertise your projects so as to attract students; that part is not clear to me. After some more reading of the GSoC page, I think that either the ASF or Google will advertise all project ideas, and invite students to apply for them. Simon -- Simon Pepping home page: http://www.leverkruid.eu
Re: Google Summer of Code: Bring out your projects
Hi everyone, Do we have ideas for GSoC projects? Actually I have a couple ideas, in the scope of Batik: 1. Online SVG Rasterization Service Create an online service for SVG rasterization, as a valuable way to allow users to benefit from SVG while keeping up with the possibility of using raster images for software not natively supporting SVG (such as Internet Explorer, graphics authoring applications, office applications, etc.). Such service would/should allow: a. One-shot, manual/interactive image creation, possibly through a form with raster preview after applying settings (see related proposal by Ruud [1] [2] a while ago); b. On-demand, volume image creation through preset settings. This was potentially useful, for instance, as fallback for Web browsers without native SVG support (such as the Internet Explorer family of browsers, older mobile terminals or older browser versions), using markup like: object type=image/svg+xml data=myFile.svg !-- oops, no SVG support, fallback to rasterized image -- img type=image/png src=http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/batik/rasterizer?url=http://myserver/myFolder/myFile.svgtargetW=320pxtargetH=240imgFormat=PNG; /object (Of course the above is a simplified example, without accounting with the need to encode the image's source URL and possibly other parameters supplied.) Also, there was a previous proposal on how to do this in an efficient way [3] based in the idea that a JVM for such service had to be reused between requests. As I'd hint towards ASF hosting such service (possibly using the distributed apache.org infrastructure), as a way to spread the word on Batik, SVG and ASF, it would naturally raise security challenges, as the servlet would need to connect to remote, untrusted sites in order to fetch the SVG file for rasterization. This would also be an opportunity to improve the project's security aspects, as well as benchmark ASF infrastructure itself. :-) 2. Batik-based SVG Viewer Create a high-quality (as usual!) Batik-based SVG Viewer applet. Although apparently trivial after taking a look at the project's demo [4], what was being proposed was a much more functional applet, with a context menu holding typical actions (zoom in/out, original view, view source, etc.). Also, possibly a reviewed implementation of browser's JavaScript--Batik's ECMAScript engine though Java--JavaScript communication [5] in order to implement the expected interfaces (GetSVGDocument [6], at the very least). The main goals here would be: a. A cross-(Web)browser SVG implementation which would help leveling look and feel of SVG while native implementations catch up (which is happening at a steady, though somehow slow, rhythm), and bring speed to most of them (Batik is much speedier than most Web browser native implementations I'm aware of); b. Create a (more) fully-featured component than JSVGCanvas already is, for integration in projects where one just wants a complete viewer component without the tailoring effort JSVGCanvas currently still requires. This idea was already proposed [7] (see item 5), though maybe with less detail. ;-) 3. Upgrade Regard [8] for SVG 1.1 Second Edition The Batik's regression test suite does need a bit of love (Cameron). I didn't report a tracking bug for this yet (again, this was also already proposed [7], see item 3) but the idea was to pick up the current state of the SVG 1.1 SE test suite [9] and integrate it into Batik. This would be a great boost in terms of the suite's usefulness because, AFAIK, the updated test suite uses an SVG font for all irrelevant (descriptive, version marking, etc.) text elements: this should help decreasing the number of false positives to a minimum. Currently the test infrastructure, still using the SVG 1.0 test suite, suffers a lot from the small differences in platform font rendering... :-| Hopefully, SVG 1.1 SE will not take very long to get to a recommendation state so I'd say that, by the time the work is ready and properly polished, only minor adjustments should be later required, when the final version of the specification is published. (I'm just guessing on the current status of the 1.1SE specification, I'm not sure if Cameron can provide some insight on that, specially if this project proposal sounds interesting.) I'm sure other interesting projects can be derived (or at least, inspired) by taking a look at the currently open issues for XML Graphics. ;-) Are committers willing to be a mentor? I'd be willing to mentor any of the proposed projects and, depending on other projects' focus, I might be able to volunteer for those as well (that is, after knowing more about them). :-) Cheers, Helder [1] http://steltenpower.com/batik_form.html [2] http://old.nabble.com/on-improving-Batik%27s-usability-td7008728.html [3] http://old.nabble.com/running-batik-efficiently-in-a-web-server-environment-%28linux%29-td15684333.html [4] http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/batik/demo.html [5]
Google Summer of Code: Bring out your projects
Ross Gardler of ASF announced that it is time for our projects to start preparing for Google Summer of Code (GSoC). Do we have ideas for GSoC projects? Are committers willing to be a mentor? Simon -- Simon Pepping home page: http://www.leverkruid.eu
Re: Google Summer of Code: Bring out your projects
Hi Simon, My involvement with FOP these days is a little minimal due to other commitments, but in principle I would be open to the idea of acting as a mentor to a GSoC student. Adrian. On 12 March 2010 12:07, Simon Pepping spepp...@leverkruid.eu wrote: Ross Gardler of ASF announced that it is time for our projects to start preparing for Google Summer of Code (GSoC). Do we have ideas for GSoC projects? Are committers willing to be a mentor? Simon -- Simon Pepping home page: http://www.leverkruid.eu
Re: Google Summer of Code
Hi Simon, Simon Pepping a écrit : I have one small comment on your decomposition of the line breaking algorithm: * defining a somewhat arbitrary formula used to compute the demerit of each break, and which is to be minimized; I find the above second item in this list a bit misplaced. It is part of the definition of the algorithm rather than its actions. You're right. What I wanted to do is extract the three most important aspects which IMO characterize the algorithm. I've rephrased the text to make it clearer. Regarding the last list, I am not sure what you mean by 'a floating sequence of g/b/p items'. A subsequence whose position in the large sequence is floating? Exactly. This subsequence represents before-floats and footnotes. Footnotes are a bit more constrained as they should appear (at least partly) on the same page as the footnote-citation. Thank you, Vincent
Re: Google Summer of Code
Hi Simon, Simon Pepping a écrit : I have winters of code and summers of less code. That diminishes my ability to provide assistance. What kind of work and responsibilities would assistance include? What would be the time constraints, that is, how fast needs a review be done or a question be answered? And in which period is the work done? The work begins right now and ends on August 21. There is a mid-program evaluation on June 26. As far as I'm concerned, I'm planning to put my thoughts about the project on a dedicated Wiki page. I think that just providing high-level comments on them would already be of great help: am I going into the right direction? Am I running into a dead-end? Have I missed something important? In particular, I'll be playing with Knuth's glue/box/penalty model, and as you seem to have good knowledge of it I would be glad to hear from you about that. Anyway, whatever you'll be able to do will be fine. Thank you for your interest! Vincent
Re: Google Summer of Code
On 28.05.2006 20:29:24 Simon Pepping wrote: On Wed, May 24, 2006 at 09:47:03PM +0200, Jeremias Maerki wrote: Congratulations to both of you! Both projects got a score of 10 which is the fourth highest score. The ASF got a total of 27 projects. There were other ASF members who voted for the acceptance of the two FOP proposals. That's very satisfying and motivates me a lot. Congratulations to both of you. I know this will require quite a bit of my attention but I think it's worth doing it for FOP. Of course, I'm thankful for any help I get from the other committers. I have winters of code and summers of less code. That diminishes my ability to provide assistance. What kind of work and responsibilities would assistance include? What would be the time constraints, that is, how fast needs a review be done or a question be answered? And in which period is the work done? No responsibilities anyway. I'm just thankful for any further eye pair I can get. Basically, this is all about normal development work on this mailing list and in the Wiki. The main burden will be on me (answering questions, providing hints, reviewing patches etc.). Time constraints: as quickly as possible, of course, so Patrick and Vincent are not held up unnecessarily. After all, they have a deadline. We usually haven't. Jeremias Maerki
Re: Google Summer of Code
On Mon, May 29, 2006 at 10:19:27AM +0200, Vincent Hennebert wrote: Hi Simon, Simon Pepping a écrit : As far as I'm concerned, I'm planning to put my thoughts about the project on a dedicated Wiki page. I think that just providing high-level comments on them would already be of great help: am I going into the I will try to do that. right direction? Am I running into a dead-end? Have I missed something important? In particular, I'll be playing with Knuth's glue/box/penalty model, and as you seem to have good knowledge of it I would be glad to hear from you about that. Your Wiki page looks good. I have no understanding of TeX's algorithm for placement of floats. Since TeX has a first-fit algorithm for page breaks, I assume it is much simpler than required in a total-fit algorithm. I am awaiting your design. I have one small comment on your decomposition of the line breaking algorithm: * defining a somewhat arbitrary formula used to compute the demerit of each break, and which is to be minimized; I find the above second item in this list a bit misplaced. It is part of the definition of the algorithm rather than its actions. Regarding the last list, I am not sure what you mean by 'a floating sequence of g/b/p items'. A subsequence whose position in the large sequence is floating? Regards, Simon -- Simon Pepping home page: http://www.leverkruid.eu
Re: Google Summer of Code
On Wed, May 24, 2006 at 09:47:03PM +0200, Jeremias Maerki wrote: Congratulations to both of you! Both projects got a score of 10 which is the fourth highest score. The ASF got a total of 27 projects. There were other ASF members who voted for the acceptance of the two FOP proposals. That's very satisfying and motivates me a lot. Congratulations to both of you. I know this will require quite a bit of my attention but I think it's worth doing it for FOP. Of course, I'm thankful for any help I get from the other committers. I have winters of code and summers of less code. That diminishes my ability to provide assistance. What kind of work and responsibilities would assistance include? What would be the time constraints, that is, how fast needs a review be done or a question be answered? And in which period is the work done? Simon -- Simon Pepping home page: http://www.leverkruid.eu
Re: Google Summer of Code
Hello everyone, Great news for me today, I got accepted for the Google Summer of Code to work on the auto table layout. Thank you very much Jeremias for taking the time to apply as a mentor and rank our projects. Patrick Jeremias Maerki wrote: Got it and rated it. All green! :-) On 07.05.2006 22:24:26 Vincent Hennebert wrote: Ok, this should have worked this time. Don't know what happened. Vincent Jeremias Maerki a écrit : Vincent, I'm afraid I don't see your application, either. You could simply try again or contact the GSoC support. On 07.05.2006 19:12:26 Vincent Hennebert wrote: Hi Jeremias, Normally my application should have been sent. However I don't see it on my home page so I wonder if it has to be reviewed first or if the submit has failed. The way the webapp works isn't clear to me yet. Do you see my application? Jeremias Maerki Jeremias Maerki
Re: Google Summer of Code
That's great news for you both and for FOP! Congratulations... I'll be monitoring the list and if there's anything I can do, I'll do my best to be responsive. Clay On May 24, 2006, at 10:44 AM, Vincent Hennebert wrote: Same for me! We will perhaps have to clone Jeremias. I'm glad to at last have the possibility to work full-time on Fop. I hope I will perform good work. Vincent Patrick Paul a écrit : Hello everyone, Great news for me today, I got accepted for the Google Summer of Code to work on the auto table layout. Thank you very much Jeremias for taking the time to apply as a mentor and rank our projects. Patrick Jeremias Maerki wrote: Web Maestro Clay [EMAIL PROTECTED] My religion is simple. My religion is kindness. -- HH Dalai Lama of Tibet
Re: Google Summer of Code
Hi Jeremias, Normally my application should have been sent. However I don't see it on my home page so I wonder if it has to be reviewed first or if the submit has failed. The way the webapp works isn't clear to me yet. Do you see my application? Vincent Jeremias Maerki a écrit : Hi Patrick, green lights everywhere. I've already ranked it and applied for the mentor position. It turns out that the Wiki in the ASF this time only was about collecting ideas for projects (unlike last year). The real project proposals are those on the Google site. At this moment, only 7 entries (including yours) have requests for the mentor position und therefore have a score of =4. Now we only need Vincent who should be back on Sunday. If he enters his proposal then, everything should be fine. Vincent, ping me when you entered it so I can go right to the ranking part. On 05.05.2006 18:27:50 Patrick Paul wrote: Hi Jeremias, Any news from GSoC ? Were you able to see my application and rank it ? How are things going within the ASF ? Patrick Jeremias Maerki wrote: It looks like you two need to sign up for the GSoC directly on the website and enter your application there based on the info on the ASF Wiki. This needs to be completed until May 8. After that the applications will be rated by the mentors. To me this was all a bit confusing despite the extensive FAQs. Realized only today that I have to sign up, too, as a mentor. http://code.google.com/ On 28.04.2006 17:24:43 Patrick Paul wrote: Same here, I've added an entry for auto table layout, right after Vincents. Patrick Vincent Hennebert wrote: Ok, I've added an entry for floats implementation. I'll be off-line from tomorrow until the 6th of may. Just hoping no particular problem will occur during my absence. Anyway, if I don't answer mails that's just normal. Vincent Jeremias Maerki a écrit : Yes, please add entries for the two projects. That Wiki page is the first station. I'm not sure, yet, who exactly will transfer the proposals to Google (can't remember from last year, either), but the first step is to identify the projects inside the ASF. I'll need to read through the whole mentoring info and stuff during the weekend. You can list me as a mentor on both projects. If I can get help from another FOP committer mentoring, all the better. On 27.04.2006 16:22:44 Patrick Paul wrote: Jeremias, Do you think we should have our two projects posted on the Apache Wiki ? http://wiki.apache.org/general/SummerOfCode2006 Is it better to go through that page, or will our proposals be forwarded directly to you anyway ? Thanks, Patrick Jeremias Maerki Jeremias Maerki
Re: Google Summer of Code
Vincent, I'm afraid I don't see your application, either. You could simply try again or contact the GSoC support. On 07.05.2006 19:12:26 Vincent Hennebert wrote: Hi Jeremias, Normally my application should have been sent. However I don't see it on my home page so I wonder if it has to be reviewed first or if the submit has failed. The way the webapp works isn't clear to me yet. Do you see my application? Jeremias Maerki
Re: Google Summer of Code
Ok, this should have worked this time. Don't know what happened. Vincent Jeremias Maerki a écrit : Vincent, I'm afraid I don't see your application, either. You could simply try again or contact the GSoC support. On 07.05.2006 19:12:26 Vincent Hennebert wrote: Hi Jeremias, Normally my application should have been sent. However I don't see it on my home page so I wonder if it has to be reviewed first or if the submit has failed. The way the webapp works isn't clear to me yet. Do you see my application? Jeremias Maerki
Re: Google Summer of Code
Got it and rated it. All green! :-) On 07.05.2006 22:24:26 Vincent Hennebert wrote: Ok, this should have worked this time. Don't know what happened. Vincent Jeremias Maerki a écrit : Vincent, I'm afraid I don't see your application, either. You could simply try again or contact the GSoC support. On 07.05.2006 19:12:26 Vincent Hennebert wrote: Hi Jeremias, Normally my application should have been sent. However I don't see it on my home page so I wonder if it has to be reviewed first or if the submit has failed. The way the webapp works isn't clear to me yet. Do you see my application? Jeremias Maerki Jeremias Maerki
Re: Google Summer of Code
This is great news :-) I hope that our score(s) will stay high. Do you have your say in the score that the projects get ? Have a nice week-end, Patrick Jeremias Maerki wrote: Hi Patrick, green lights everywhere. I've already ranked it and applied for the mentor position. It turns out that the Wiki in the ASF this time only was about collecting ideas for projects (unlike last year). The real project proposals are those on the Google site. At this moment, only 7 entries (including yours) have requests for the mentor position und therefore have a score of =4. Now we only need Vincent who should be back on Sunday. If he enters his proposal then, everything should be fine. Vincent, ping me when you entered it so I can go right to the ranking part. On 05.05.2006 18:27:50 Patrick Paul wrote: Hi Jeremias, Any news from GSoC ? Were you able to see my application and rank it ? How are things going within the ASF ? Patrick
Re: Google Summer of Code
On 05.05.2006 22:44:36 Patrick Paul wrote: This is great news :-) I hope that our score(s) will stay high. Do you have your say in the score that the projects get ? Yes, every registered mentor for the ASF can rate every ASF-related proposal. Have a nice week-end, You, too. Patrick Jeremias Maerki wrote: Hi Patrick, green lights everywhere. I've already ranked it and applied for the mentor position. It turns out that the Wiki in the ASF this time only was about collecting ideas for projects (unlike last year). The real project proposals are those on the Google site. At this moment, only 7 entries (including yours) have requests for the mentor position und therefore have a score of =4. Now we only need Vincent who should be back on Sunday. If he enters his proposal then, everything should be fine. Vincent, ping me when you entered it so I can go right to the ranking part. On 05.05.2006 18:27:50 Patrick Paul wrote: Hi Jeremias, Any news from GSoC ? Were you able to see my application and rank it ? How are things going within the ASF ? Patrick Jeremias Maerki
Re: Google Summer of Code
It looks like you two need to sign up for the GSoC directly on the website and enter your application there based on the info on the ASF Wiki. This needs to be completed until May 8. After that the applications will be rated by the mentors. To me this was all a bit confusing despite the extensive FAQs. Realized only today that I have to sign up, too, as a mentor. http://code.google.com/ On 28.04.2006 17:24:43 Patrick Paul wrote: Same here, I've added an entry for auto table layout, right after Vincents. Patrick Vincent Hennebert wrote: Ok, I've added an entry for floats implementation. I'll be off-line from tomorrow until the 6th of may. Just hoping no particular problem will occur during my absence. Anyway, if I don't answer mails that's just normal. Vincent Jeremias Maerki a écrit : Yes, please add entries for the two projects. That Wiki page is the first station. I'm not sure, yet, who exactly will transfer the proposals to Google (can't remember from last year, either), but the first step is to identify the projects inside the ASF. I'll need to read through the whole mentoring info and stuff during the weekend. You can list me as a mentor on both projects. If I can get help from another FOP committer mentoring, all the better. On 27.04.2006 16:22:44 Patrick Paul wrote: Jeremias, Do you think we should have our two projects posted on the Apache Wiki ? http://wiki.apache.org/general/SummerOfCode2006 Is it better to go through that page, or will our proposals be forwarded directly to you anyway ? Thanks, Patrick Jeremias Maerki
Re: Google Summer of Code
Hi Jeremias, I have submitted an application. Indeed all this is unclear, I never realized mentors also had to signup. But I'm sure that with your reputation there won't be any problems ;-) In my application I mainly copied the content of the Wiki page. Should you have any comments or suggestions to improve my proposal please don't hesitate. I'm very excited about participating in the GSoC. I hope Apache Fop is considered an mportant enough project within the ASF because it seems that many other ASF projects are making proposals. Thank you, Patrick Jeremias Maerki wrote: It looks like you two need to sign up for the GSoC directly on the website and enter your application there based on the info on the ASF Wiki. This needs to be completed until May 8. After that the applications will be rated by the mentors. To me this was all a bit confusing despite the extensive FAQs. Realized only today that I have to sign up, too, as a mentor. http://code.google.com/ On 28.04.2006 17:24:43 Patrick Paul wrote: Same here, I've added an entry for auto table layout, right after Vincents. Patrick Vincent Hennebert wrote: Ok, I've added an entry for floats implementation. I'll be off-line from tomorrow until the 6th of may. Just hoping no particular problem will occur during my absence. Anyway, if I don't answer mails that's just normal. Vincent Jeremias Maerki a écrit : Yes, please add entries for the two projects. That Wiki page is the first station. I'm not sure, yet, who exactly will transfer the proposals to Google (can't remember from last year, either), but the first step is to identify the projects inside the ASF. I'll need to read through the whole mentoring info and stuff during the weekend. You can list me as a mentor on both projects. If I can get help from another FOP committer mentoring, all the better. On 27.04.2006 16:22:44 Patrick Paul wrote: Jeremias, Do you think we should have our two projects posted on the Apache Wiki ? http://wiki.apache.org/general/SummerOfCode2006 Is it better to go through that page, or will our proposals be forwarded directly to you anyway ? Thanks, Patrick Jeremias Maerki
Re: Google Summer of Code
Same here, I've added an entry for auto table layout, right after Vincents. Patrick Vincent Hennebert wrote: Ok, I've added an entry for floats implementation. I'll be off-line from tomorrow until the 6th of may. Just hoping no particular problem will occur during my absence. Anyway, if I don't answer mails that's just normal. Vincent Jeremias Maerki a écrit : Yes, please add entries for the two projects. That Wiki page is the first station. I'm not sure, yet, who exactly will transfer the proposals to Google (can't remember from last year, either), but the first step is to identify the projects inside the ASF. I'll need to read through the whole mentoring info and stuff during the weekend. You can list me as a mentor on both projects. If I can get help from another FOP committer mentoring, all the better. On 27.04.2006 16:22:44 Patrick Paul wrote: Jeremias, Do you think we should have our two projects posted on the Apache Wiki ? http://wiki.apache.org/general/SummerOfCode2006 Is it better to go through that page, or will our proposals be forwarded directly to you anyway ? Thanks, Patrick
Re: Google Summer of Code
Jeremias, Do you think we should have our two projects posted on the Apache Wiki ? http://wiki.apache.org/general/SummerOfCode2006 Is it better to go through that page, or will our proposals be forwarded directly to you anyway ? Thanks, Patrick Jeremias Maerki wrote: I don't see why you couldn't also apply for a slot. Having floats would be cool (but not simple). I'm not sure about your work on FOrayFont. I think the projects have to be tied to one of the organizations listed by Google. Only the client part in FOP would be part of that. So floats would be the better option I guess. I'm sure I can count on other FOP committers to help me with the mentoring job if we take on two projects. BTW, both of you should make sure you're eligible for participating in the SoC. See the Students FAQ on the Google SoC site. Someone who applied last year wasn't a student. Jeremias Maerki
Re: Google Summer of Code
Yes, please add entries for the two projects. That Wiki page is the first station. I'm not sure, yet, who exactly will transfer the proposals to Google (can't remember from last year, either), but the first step is to identify the projects inside the ASF. I'll need to read through the whole mentoring info and stuff during the weekend. You can list me as a mentor on both projects. If I can get help from another FOP committer mentoring, all the better. On 27.04.2006 16:22:44 Patrick Paul wrote: Jeremias, Do you think we should have our two projects posted on the Apache Wiki ? http://wiki.apache.org/general/SummerOfCode2006 Is it better to go through that page, or will our proposals be forwarded directly to you anyway ? Thanks, Patrick Jeremias Maerki wrote: I don't see why you couldn't also apply for a slot. Having floats would be cool (but not simple). I'm not sure about your work on FOrayFont. I think the projects have to be tied to one of the organizations listed by Google. Only the client part in FOP would be part of that. So floats would be the better option I guess. I'm sure I can count on other FOP committers to help me with the mentoring job if we take on two projects. BTW, both of you should make sure you're eligible for participating in the SoC. See the Students FAQ on the Google SoC site. Someone who applied last year wasn't a student. Jeremias Maerki Jeremias Maerki
Re: Google Summer of Code
Thanks, Vincent and Patrick, for writing down your proposals. Patrick's is pretty clear. I've only amended it a little. I hope it won't be a problem that the task cannot be well estimated, yet. Vincent, a comment on yours: For before-floats, you refer to best-fit and first-fit approaches. I'm not sure if it's really relevant here. If I'm not mistaken before-floats are pretty similar to footnotes which means you can probably take a lot from there. I think that first-fit only really helps when you get to side-floats. I think that user-configuration for best/first-fit doesn't help much. I rather think that FOP will have to find out itself whether it has to abandon best-fit so it can handle more complex features, i.e. switching to first-fit if it finds one of the following conditions: - side-float in the flow - page-masters with different available IPD in the flow - tables with auto table layout (when individual column widths are requested for each page) Note that I'm not completely sure about the above. Maybe Luca Furini has some helpful insight here. On 24.04.2006 01:07:38 Vincent Hennebert wrote: Hi, I'm thinking about setting up a page on the FOP-wiki where I would put up the goals for my proposal. That way I could give the link when submitting my application. Nice idea, indeed. I've taken the liberty of implementing it and created a new Wiki page for the SoC, linked from the DeveloperPages [1]. The idea is to have a main page listing the various proposals, with a link to each proposal's dedicated page. You'll just have to add yours. I've put a first draft regarding float implementation. Any comment is welcome, especially regarding scheduling (I've no idea of the time each task may need - never done project estimations!), and typos. Thanks. Vincent [1] http://wiki.apache.org/xmlgraphics-fop/GoogleSummerOfCode2006 Jeremias Maerki
Re: Google Summer of Code
Hi Jeremias, Thanks for your review! Vincent, a comment on yours: For before-floats, you refer to best-fit and first-fit approaches. I'm not sure if it's really relevant here. If I'm not mistaken before-floats are pretty similar to footnotes which means you can probably take a lot from there. I think that first-fit only really helps when you get to side-floats. Well, my understanding of before-floats makes me think that they may benefit from a total-fit algorithm. WRT footnotes, the difference is that a footnote must appear on the same page as its reference; this is a constraint that doesn't exist for before-floats, although it is best to place them as near their reference as possible, of course. When refering to first-fit/total-fit algorithms I had the paper Pagination Reconsidered referenced on the Wiki [1] in mind. To summarize quickly it is stated that placement of floats benefits from a better algorithm than first-fit, quite like for the computation of page breaks. In fact LaTeX uses a first-fit algorithm, which often leads to floats placed pages far from their reference. So I had the feeling that a total-fit algorithm could be applied to floats as well as to page breaks. I think that user-configuration for best/first-fit doesn't help much. I rather think that FOP will have to find out itself whether it has to abandon best-fit so it can handle more complex features, i.e. switching to first-fit if it finds one of the following conditions: - side-float in the flow - page-masters with different available IPD in the flow - tables with auto table layout (when individual column widths are requested for each page) That may be discussed. I remember of discussions on this list about the cost of a total-fit algorithm regarding time and memory consumption. IIRC there was stated that such an algorithm should be optional for rendering documents that don't need it, like invoices. That's why I was thinking of a config option. Regarding Fop automatically switching to the most appropriate algorithm, depending on the situation, I'm afraid of the complexity of such a behavior. That may be difficult to estimate which strategy is to be adopted, and when it should be decided that a given strategy has failed and that it should be switched to another one. But I may be wrong. Vincent [1] http://wiki.apache.org/xmlgraphics-fop/LiteratureLinks
Re: Google Summer of Code
On 24.04.2006 20:49:54 Vincent Hennebert wrote: Hi Jeremias, Thanks for your review! Vincent, a comment on yours: For before-floats, you refer to best-fit and first-fit approaches. I'm not sure if it's really relevant here. If I'm not mistaken before-floats are pretty similar to footnotes which means you can probably take a lot from there. I think that first-fit only really helps when you get to side-floats. Well, my understanding of before-floats makes me think that they may benefit from a total-fit algorithm. WRT footnotes, the difference is that a footnote must appear on the same page as its reference; this is a constraint that doesn't exist for before-floats, although it is best to place them as near their reference as possible, of course. When refering to first-fit/total-fit algorithms I had the paper Pagination Reconsidered referenced on the Wiki [1] in mind. To summarize quickly it is stated that placement of floats benefits from a better algorithm than first-fit, quite like for the computation of page breaks. In fact LaTeX uses a first-fit algorithm, which often leads to floats placed pages far from their reference. So I had the feeling that a total-fit algorithm could be applied to floats as well as to page breaks. Yeah, now I remember that part. before-floats can be pretty big (big images) and that's why it is sometimes difficult to place them near the anchor, especially if there are several before-floats gathering together. I think that user-configuration for best/first-fit doesn't help much. I rather think that FOP will have to find out itself whether it has to abandon best-fit so it can handle more complex features, i.e. switching to first-fit if it finds one of the following conditions: - side-float in the flow - page-masters with different available IPD in the flow - tables with auto table layout (when individual column widths are requested for each page) That may be discussed. I remember of discussions on this list about the cost of a total-fit algorithm regarding time and memory consumption. IIRC there was stated that such an algorithm should be optional for rendering documents that don't need it, like invoices. That's why I was thinking of a config option. Right. I guess it's less the time consumption than the memory consumption. First-fit would allow to release memory much earlier. On the other side, less memory means more speed. :-) Regarding Fop automatically switching to the most appropriate algorithm, depending on the situation, I'm afraid of the complexity of such a behavior. That may be difficult to estimate which strategy is to be adopted, and when it should be decided that a given strategy has failed and that it should be switched to another one. But I may be wrong. No, thinking about this some more, especially after your input here, I think you're on the right track. I guess it wouldn't be a tragic thing if we threw an exception if total-fit is active but the requested features cannot be solved in that mode. I don't think it's so much complexity that works against automatically switching the algorithm but it's probably speed in this case, because we'd have to iterate over the whole FO tree to see what features are encountered. For invoice-style documents, that's not really an option because speed is everything. Vincent [1] http://wiki.apache.org/xmlgraphics-fop/LiteratureLinks Jeremias Maerki
Re: Google Summer of Code
Thank you Jeremias for your amendements. Patrick Jeremias Maerki wrote: Thanks, Vincent and Patrick, for writing down your proposals. Patrick's is pretty clear. I've only amended it a little. I hope it won't be a problem that the task cannot be well estimated, yet. Vincent, a comment on yours: For before-floats, you refer to best-fit and first-fit approaches. I'm not sure if it's really relevant here. If I'm not mistaken before-floats are pretty similar to footnotes which means you can probably take a lot from there. I think that first-fit only really helps when you get to side-floats. I think that user-configuration for best/first-fit doesn't help much. I rather think that FOP will have to find out itself whether it has to abandon best-fit so it can handle more complex features, i.e. switching to first-fit if it finds one of the following conditions: - side-float in the flow - page-masters with different available IPD in the flow - tables with auto table layout (when individual column widths are requested for each page) Note that I'm not completely sure about the above. Maybe Luca Furini has some helpful insight here. On 24.04.2006 01:07:38 Vincent Hennebert wrote: Hi, I'm thinking about setting up a page on the FOP-wiki where I would put up the goals for my proposal. That way I could give the link when submitting my application. Nice idea, indeed. I've taken the liberty of implementing it and created a new Wiki page for the SoC, linked from the DeveloperPages [1]. The idea is to have a main page listing the various proposals, with a link to each proposal's dedicated page. You'll just have to add yours. I've put a first draft regarding float implementation. Any comment is welcome, especially regarding scheduling (I've no idea of the time each task may need - never done project estimations!), and typos. Thanks. Vincent [1] http://wiki.apache.org/xmlgraphics-fop/GoogleSummerOfCode2006 Jeremias Maerki
Re: Google Summer of Code
Hi, I'm thinking about setting up a page on the FOP-wiki where I would put up the goals for my proposal. That way I could give the link when submitting my application. Nice idea, indeed. I've taken the liberty of implementing it and created a new Wiki page for the SoC, linked from the DeveloperPages [1]. The idea is to have a main page listing the various proposals, with a link to each proposal's dedicated page. You'll just have to add yours. I've put a first draft regarding float implementation. Any comment is welcome, especially regarding scheduling (I've no idea of the time each task may need - never done project estimations!), and typos. Thanks. Vincent [1] http://wiki.apache.org/xmlgraphics-fop/GoogleSummerOfCode2006
Re: Google Summer of Code
That's great thank you. I added my own page. It's only a start for now. I took some presentation ideas from you, I hope you don't mind too much. I won't mind if you do the same in the future. Cheers, Patrick Vincent Hennebert wrote: Hi, I'm thinking about setting up a page on the FOP-wiki where I would put up the goals for my proposal. That way I could give the link when submitting my application. Nice idea, indeed. I've taken the liberty of implementing it and created a new Wiki page for the SoC, linked from the DeveloperPages [1]. The idea is to have a main page listing the various proposals, with a link to each proposal's dedicated page. You'll just have to add yours. I've put a first draft regarding float implementation. Any comment is welcome, especially regarding scheduling (I've no idea of the time each task may need - never done project estimations!), and typos. Thanks. Vincent [1] http://wiki.apache.org/xmlgraphics-fop/GoogleSummerOfCode2006
Re: Google Summer of Code
Hi Jeremias, I am happy to know you have a good impression of me. I do have good Java skills, from personal experience as well as from 4 university courses that involved Java. Implementing the auto table layout sounds like the kind of contribution I would really enjoy bringing to the FOP project. As I do not know the specifics yet, would you consider this to be a project of its own, or would other things have to be added to the proposal ? Google will start taking proposals on may 1st so there is still time to prepare, but I think it is best to have a well thought-out application with a good timetable and realistic goals that fit into the bigger picture of FOP. I look forward to work with you again. Patrick Jeremias Maerki wrote: Hi Patrick, yes, I've seen that something's going on in that corner. After my experience last year, I was a bit hesitant to take another stab, but since we've already worked together, I'd be fine mentoring a little project. There are a lot of things that could be approached: http://wiki.apache.org/xmlgraphics-fop/FOPProjectTasks The thing that would make the most people happy would be implementing auto table layout. That's something that is not on any of my clients' wishlists so it goes on my private task list on which I have other higher priority items. :-o You'd be the hero implementing that! I'm sure there are other things you could do. You've got good Java skills, haven't you? On 18.04.2006 20:53:30 Patrick Paul wrote: Hello everyone, As you may know Google is doing their Summer of Code program again this summer. http://code.google.com/soc/ I would be interested in applying to do some work on FOP this summer. Would you have suggestions about specific developments that would greatly help improve FOP ? I'm looking forward to hear from you all. FOP is so great. Thank you, Patrick Jeremias Maerki
Re: Google Summer of Code
Jeremias Maerki wrote: Hi Jeremias, Hi Patrick, yes, I've seen that something's going on in that corner. After my experience last year, I was a bit hesitant to take another stab, but since we've already worked together, I'd be fine mentoring a little project. There are a lot of things that could be approached: http://wiki.apache.org/xmlgraphics-fop/FOPProjectTasks That Wiki is quite old now and a lot has changed since it was written. The thing that would make the most people happy would be implementing auto table layout. That's something that is not on any of my clients' wishlists so it goes on my private task list on which I have other higher priority items. :-o You'd be the hero implementing that! table-layout=auto is a often requested feature and as Jeremias said I'm sure a lot of folks would be grateful for it. My only concern is the amount of work involved, it might be too big a chunk of work for Google's summer of code project. Another broken table feature that often causes confusion is the border-collapse algorithm. I know Jeremias had some ideas about how to implement most of it and just leave out the hardest bits. snip/ Chris
Re: Google Summer of Code
Patrick, I have the suspicion that the auto table layout won't fill you up. With the new design, basic support for auto table layout shouldn't be a very big deal. There are some details, however, that could make this a much bigger fish: Determining ideal column widths based on the inline elment lists for the whole table should be relatively easy. You would probably have that within two or three weeks after a, say, four-week get-to-know-FOP-better phase. It gets more difficult if the column widths are to be redetermined for each page (if that's requested). FOP cannot currently do that because it determines page breaks on a number of pages at the same time (total fit algorithm instead of first fit (Knuth terminology)). This would cause extensive changes to the whole layout engine but enable other features that are currently not possible, for example changing available IPD between pages. Another thing that just crossed my mind would be a total refactoring of the images package. I'm itching to do that for a long time now but probably won't have time for it in the near furture. I've written down some thoughts about that [1] and can elaborate if necessary. [1] http://wiki.apache.org/xmlgraphics-fop/ImageSupport On 19.04.2006 08:42:48 Patrick Paul wrote: Hi Jeremias, I am happy to know you have a good impression of me. I do have good Java skills, from personal experience as well as from 4 university courses that involved Java. Implementing the auto table layout sounds like the kind of contribution I would really enjoy bringing to the FOP project. As I do not know the specifics yet, would you consider this to be a project of its own, or would other things have to be added to the proposal ? Google will start taking proposals on may 1st so there is still time to prepare, but I think it is best to have a well thought-out application with a good timetable and realistic goals that fit into the bigger picture of FOP. I look forward to work with you again. Patrick Jeremias Maerki wrote: Hi Patrick, yes, I've seen that something's going on in that corner. After my experience last year, I was a bit hesitant to take another stab, but since we've already worked together, I'd be fine mentoring a little project. There are a lot of things that could be approached: http://wiki.apache.org/xmlgraphics-fop/FOPProjectTasks The thing that would make the most people happy would be implementing auto table layout. That's something that is not on any of my clients' wishlists so it goes on my private task list on which I have other higher priority items. :-o You'd be the hero implementing that! I'm sure there are other things you could do. You've got good Java skills, haven't you? On 18.04.2006 20:53:30 Patrick Paul wrote: Hello everyone, As you may know Google is doing their Summer of Code program again this summer. http://code.google.com/soc/ I would be interested in applying to do some work on FOP this summer. Would you have suggestions about specific developments that would greatly help improve FOP ? I'm looking forward to hear from you all. FOP is so great. Thank you, Patrick Jeremias Maerki Jeremias Maerki
Re: Google Summer of Code
On 19.04.2006 10:02:19 Chris Bowditch wrote: Jeremias Maerki wrote: Hi Jeremias, Hi Patrick, yes, I've seen that something's going on in that corner. After my experience last year, I was a bit hesitant to take another stab, but since we've already worked together, I'd be fine mentoring a little project. There are a lot of things that could be approached: http://wiki.apache.org/xmlgraphics-fop/FOPProjectTasks That Wiki is quite old now and a lot has changed since it was written. The thing that would make the most people happy would be implementing auto table layout. That's something that is not on any of my clients' wishlists so it goes on my private task list on which I have other higher priority items. :-o You'd be the hero implementing that! table-layout=auto is a often requested feature and as Jeremias said I'm sure a lot of folks would be grateful for it. My only concern is the amount of work involved, it might be too big a chunk of work for Google's summer of code project. Not if we're only talking about the basics. See my other reply. I estimate that I could probably do the basics in about 4 or 5 days, but obviously I already know my way around. The most complex task here would be to split up the generation of the inline element lists from the line-breaking process which is currently one combined task in LineLayoutManager.getKnuthElements(). This is because you need the inline element list to determine the column widths. After you defined the columns widths you can do the line breaking. No witchcraft here. Another broken table feature that often causes confusion is the border-collapse algorithm. I know Jeremias had some ideas about how to implement most of it and just leave out the hardest bits. Yes, that would also be an option. We simply need to be clear that with the layout-related tasks work-in time will be longer since you have to build up some knowledge about the Knuth element model and the XSL-FO specification (applies to auto table layout, too, but not to the image package redesign). The table border model is particularly complex because of the possible interactions of which, as Chris says, some can be ignored for simplicity for now. snip/ Chris Jeremias Maerki
Re: Google Summer of Code
Jeremias Maerki wrote: Patrick, I have the suspicion that the auto table layout won't fill you up. With the new design, basic support for auto table layout shouldn't be a very big deal. That's good news, but I'd *really* like to have it :-) Unfortunately, I have no time to implement it myself... -- Jess Holle
Re: Google Summer of Code
I did make sure I am eligible for the Google SoC, and I will gladly give you all the details you want or need if you request them. As far as I know there are no restrictions to the number of slots a project can get, although this year it seams much more people are interested in the Google Summer of Code. Also, FOP is a project of the ASF which is just one of the many mentoring organizations... Anyway, I sure hope we can both get accepted to work on FOP this summer. Patrick Jeremias Maerki wrote: I don't see why you couldn't also apply for a slot. Having floats would be cool (but not simple). I'm not sure about your work on FOrayFont. I think the projects have to be tied to one of the organizations listed by Google. Only the client part in FOP would be part of that. So floats would be the better option I guess. I'm sure I can count on other FOP committers to help me with the mentoring job if we take on two projects. BTW, both of you should make sure you're eligible for participating in the SoC. See the Students FAQ on the Google SoC site. Someone who applied last year wasn't a student. On 19.04.2006 21:17:10 Vincent Hennebert wrote: Patrick, you were faster than me ;-) I would also be interesting in applying to the Summer of Code. It would at last give me the opportunity to work full-time on Fop. Is it conceivable that I also apply, along with Patrick? Although I'm a bit doubtful that my work on FOrayFont could be eligible as a project for Fop, we may investigate. Otherwise, one thing I'm dreaming of for long but that I'll never have time to do is float implementation, both before-floats and side-floats. I think there is a number of Docbook users using Fop for PDF output who would benefit from that. What's your opinion? Vincent Patrick Paul a écrit : Hello everyone, As you may know Google is doing their Summer of Code program again this summer. http://code.google.com/soc/ I would be interested in applying to do some work on FOP this summer. Would you have suggestions about specific developments that would greatly help improve FOP ? I'm looking forward to hear from you all. FOP is so great. Thank you, Patrick Jeremias Maerki
Re: Google Summer of Code
Jeremias, I think this is most reasonable. In any case I whish to contribute as mush as possible. I'm thinking about setting up a page on the FOP-wiki where I would put up the goals for my proposal. That way I could give the link when submitting my application. Also, I will be in Europe in June, so I'm seriously considering coming to Dublin for the ApacheCon Europe. Patrick P.S. When I see all the people showing interest in the SoC, I'm starting to think I shouldn't get my hopes to high. Jeremias Maerki wrote: We can set it up so the basic auto table layout is the main goal and then we add some optional additional goals. That should help making sure we don't set the bar unrealistically high if we can't do a good estimate. I'm glad to hear you want to contribute beyond the SoC boundaries. It's good to get new blood into the project. On 19.04.2006 18:38:35 Patrick Paul wrote: Jeremias Maerki wrote: Patrick, I have the suspicion that the auto table layout won't fill you up. With the new design, basic support for auto table layout shouldn't be a very big deal. There are some details, however, that could make this a much bigger fish: I did suspect it would not be enough. Determining ideal column widths based on the inline elment lists for the whole table should be relatively easy. You would probably have that within two or three weeks after a, say, four-week get-to-know-FOP-better phase. It gets more difficult if the column widths are to be redetermined for each page (if that's requested). FOP cannot currently do that because it determines page breaks on a number of pages at the same time (total fit algorithm instead of first fit (Knuth terminology)). This would cause extensive changes to the whole layout engine but enable other features that are currently not possible, for example changing available IPD between pages. Sounds interesting, and it would be a good challenge for me to tackle. The four-week get-to-know-FOP-better period you suggest sounds very reasonable to me. Another thing that just crossed my mind would be a total refactoring of the images package. I'm itching to do that for a long time now but probably won't have time for it in the near furture. I've written down some thoughts about that [1] and can elaborate if necessary. [1] http://wiki.apache.org/xmlgraphics-fop/ImageSupport Sounds good too. I'll have to trust you about what kind of workload this would all add up too. I'd like to be as realistic as possible since it is important to meet the initial objectives of the proposal. In any case I am motivated to actively contribute beyond the Google SoC. Patrick Jeremias Maerki
Re: Google Summer of Code
Jeremias Maerki a écrit : I don't see why you couldn't also apply for a slot. Having floats would be cool (but not simple). I'm not sure about your work on FOrayFont. I think the projects have to be tied to one of the organizations listed by Google. Only the client part in FOP would be part of that. So floats would be the better option I guess. By re-reading the FAQ I noticed that the work we do for a project to which we are already contributing must be new. So it's best that I apply for floats. I can't really estimate the amount of work needed to implement floats, besides the documentation phase. My feeling is that it shouldn't be too difficult to implement before-floats, as there already is a number of papers dealing with this quite well-known issue. Side-floats should be much trickier, as they would interfere with line-breaking, and the CSS model for them looks rather complicated. We could propose before-floats as a main goal, plus basic side-float implementation and optional refinements. BTW, both of you should make sure you're eligible for participating in the SoC. See the Students FAQ on the Google SoC site. Someone who applied last year wasn't a student. As a PhD student I'm eligible, no problem. Vincent
Google Summer of Code
Hello everyone, As you may know Google is doing their Summer of Code program again this summer. http://code.google.com/soc/ I would be interested in applying to do some work on FOP this summer. Would you have suggestions about specific developments that would greatly help improve FOP ? I'm looking forward to hear from you all. FOP is so great. Thank you, Patrick
Re: Google Summer of Code
Hi Patrick, yes, I've seen that something's going on in that corner. After my experience last year, I was a bit hesitant to take another stab, but since we've already worked together, I'd be fine mentoring a little project. There are a lot of things that could be approached: http://wiki.apache.org/xmlgraphics-fop/FOPProjectTasks The thing that would make the most people happy would be implementing auto table layout. That's something that is not on any of my clients' wishlists so it goes on my private task list on which I have other higher priority items. :-o You'd be the hero implementing that! I'm sure there are other things you could do. You've got good Java skills, haven't you? On 18.04.2006 20:53:30 Patrick Paul wrote: Hello everyone, As you may know Google is doing their Summer of Code program again this summer. http://code.google.com/soc/ I would be interested in applying to do some work on FOP this summer. Would you have suggestions about specific developments that would greatly help improve FOP ? I'm looking forward to hear from you all. FOP is so great. Thank you, Patrick Jeremias Maerki
