Ideas for GCI 2017

Community
#1

Hi everyone,

I’ll just re-post what I wrote last year: :slight_smile:

Soon Google will unleash its Google Code-In again where students age 13-17 swarm to mentoring open source projects and work on various small to medium sized tasks. Haiku will probably once again be part of it, as it was the past 7 years.

Tasks can range from documentation and artwork to PR, giving talks, writing guides or workshops, porting software and creating haikuports recipes, improving existing ports or native applications or creating new ones.

If you have ideas for tasks that may be suitable for students, please post them in a comment.

Also, if you have specific bugs to report, or feature enhancements, or requests for icons or documentation for existing apps, please file those directly at their bugtracker (e.g. at HaikuArchives).

There’s a wiki page with GCI ideas, which is currently more or less a copy of last years, but will be edited with the comments of this thread.

Thanks!

2 Likes
#2
#3

Extending functionality of filetypes sniffing rules:
a large number of modern document formats based on ZIP-archives - xlsx, docx, pptx, fb2, epub and so on. The current implementation of the sniffer cannot correctly determine the filetype. We need to add the ability to analyze the files inside the archive (file exists, check signature etc.)

2 Likes
#4

Ideas:

Continue work on the Maps application

  • Route planning (car/bike/walking/public transports)
  • Isochrones (car/bike/walking/public transports)
    For each, 1st research available APIs, 2nd implement request, 3rd implement display of instructions and of route on the map (may be 3 or 4 tasks)

Work on GCITool (the tool to edit GCI tasks - let’s get meta!)

  • Fix the UI, it looks ugly
  • Support for deleting and creating tasks and exporting the JSON file
  • Support for editing tasks (adding/removing mentors, changing description, etc)
  • Support for bulk upload to GCI website (but we would need a test instance the students can play with)

Recipes

Games

  • Continue the work on Spider Solitaire / FreeCell to make a generic card game application framework, and then add more sets of rules to it
  • Write a game of Ishido
  • Integrate Mah Jong tileset designed last year into SDLLopan, BShisen, and other games
  • Make Dynamate use HVIF graphics so it can be resized (currently uses 16x16 icons but that’s too small on most systems)

Documentation

  • User guides for HaikuArchive apps?
  • Adding screenshots and READMEs to HaikuArchive apps
1 Like
#5

This may be the summer of code, but I believe we are getting to the point where we need to attract a wider talent pool, people who are good at writing documentation, who can do publicity work, who can help with getting attractive graphics into Haiku. That is not instead of coding, but in addition to it.

  • Create sets of original HVIF icons
  • write documentation on bundled and third-party apps at https://github.com/deavmi/HaikuDocs
  • write reviews of Haiku and post them on non-Haiku sites
  • Design wallpapers for Haiku that can either be seamlessly tiled or that will look good at any aspect ratio.
2 Likes
#6

Ok

  • fix the bug haikudepot flickering around if the user browse through the apps list before the app is complete loaded or disable function during loading the apps list
  • documentation how to program using the haiku api
  • documentation for game developers
  • porting egsl development language, to bring it back to haiku sience alpha 4.1
  • add support to run 32bit apps on haiku 64bit so we cam change to 64bit, the future (like windows)
  • i would be happy to have a little desktop tool to switch my desktop picture everty * minute like on mac os
  • tracker add ons to manipulate images, like rotate, set as background, convert to format xy. Same for audio and video.
  • more usb support for joysticks, headsets…
    • add a list of supported hardware on haiku documentation
  • concept works like “what to do make haiku more useable” or “ideas to make multiuser support in the future”
  • create a list of all ideas collected for events like gsoc and put it on the haiku site so people can see that the users wants and give inspiration to solve this problems for developers
    • here could be a app in haiku to collect ideas of the users, so they get the feeling to take a part
#8

Should probably HaikuArchive it.

3 Likes
#9

Would be fine if people do questions out of the main post, so we does get a list of ideas and not another overblending discussion?

#11

Just as a reminder, the GCI students are 13-17 years old, GSoC level tasks like having 32bit software run in a 64bit system are extremely unlikely to be picked or successfully completed.

Also, it’d be nice to specifically name the apps having bugs, needing specific features, icons, docs and file those as issues at their bug trackers.

#12

Every “Add recipe for …” issue at Haikuports should be OK for a task.
I can also set up an Haiku task for LZ4 support in the hpkg format (based on the ZSTD one, with a split up of maybe two GCI tasks).

#13

Have been out for a few weeks, hope to catch up soon, but as korli mentioned already, look at some of the open issues to fix, some Icons could be added also, and maybe as one of the points from Lelldorin, create some common document explaining some of the issues running into when trying to create a recipe (build from source) …

1 Like
#14

I would say quality check should be the Top prio.
We cannot expect deep programming knowledge from joung folks, but testing and bugreporting would be great before Beta.
For that the trac mailing Problem should be fixed.

#15

Hi everybody

I’m glad to see Haiku has many talented and dedicated followers of non-fashion. I don’t visit here often, yet I do receive your digest regularly.

I believe that Haiku is the future of the Desktop. Right now it is not my owndevelopment environment, yet, from year to year, I come back and have a look, and then I keep going, preparing for the day when I can move from Linux, and all that old outdated code, to this wonderful new clean environment you “Dedicated -non-followers of fashion” are creating, together with the fruits of my creative effors for all of you.

As a fellow dedicated follower of non-fashion, I am also creating a new fashion, at a higher level than modern tools like Python, wxPython and Glade. And just as a higher level tool like Python is dependent upon it’s lower level components, like C, my creation is dependent upon these most important technologies, which I regard as “Must Haves” for any future desktop Os:

Python
wxPython
wxGlade

It should be of great significance, the moment when these tools add “Haiku” to their list of supported operating systems, in addition to Windows and Mac. Only then can my tools be added to the growing list of Haiku tools for content creators. And Haiku is the Content Creator OS, as Apple is the Content Consumer OS. As these tools already are built to support multiple oss, it is a small and painless job to add Haiku. And all the examples of the Apple, Linux and Windows code-variations are staring you in the face to copy from. So it’s a good learning environment also. In particular wxGlade and wxPython are perfect examples of code “done to perfection” in an object-oriented environment.

Any movement in this direction would be most important and time well spent at Google Code. And one day, perhaps Haiku will complete it’s poem out of time and return all of the Bees to the HiveOS, and we all can de-camp out of LInux gracefully, bringing with us all of our “Honey”.

Best wishes for this year.
Adam of Bremen