I like the nikitakit’s version of proposal very much. Thank you!
eldruin:
About list of ideas:
Maybe we should concentrate on the main, high-demanded features rather than utility ones
This is not likely to implement considering that svg-sif support is now prerogative of Inkscape rather than Synfig
Don’t know if that really demanded feature for animators at the moment.
I agree on sound integration - this is a reasonable task for both directions (JACK or gstreamer’s sound layer)
Also as high-demanded features I can see:
Animated sketch / raster frame-by-frame animation support
Unresolved links - Interface to for fixing broken links to exported values in current and external files (we have discussed this problem with Genete when worked on this bug - pivotaltracker.com/story/show/23342471 . Though this problem may be hard to understand. )
Bones gui - looks too hard for GSoC project as well.
We don’t just need big new features - although they are nice! - small things are much more important. e.g.
i) Inclined Guides
ii) Snapping Guides to Ducks
iii) Importing GPL (GIMP) palettes
iv) Multiple palettes open at once
v) Creating palettes from the colours used in a SIF file
vi) Render progress and Stop Render button
vii) Font dialog box for font selection
viii) Missing font dialog box to allow font substitution
ix) Layer conversion (Text -> Outline, Text -> Advanced Outline, Outline -> Advanced Outline, Region -> Outline etc)
x) Reverse vertices
xi) SVG export (FAR more important than ICC management, as Synfig is not a tool for print artwork)
x) Alignment panel for aligning ducks
Hi guys!
I’ve been a little busy on the past two days so I’ve not commented your great posts.
Here go my comments:
I’ve seen that there are two questions on the submission form that hasn’t been replied and also there aren’t on nikitakit’s proposal. I think that both should be replied as ‘No’.
Ideas to propose to GSoc has to be in pair with the number of mentors. I’m the only one mentor and if Cairo render or Bones GUI or other (only one) is selected I have more than enough to work on. If the list of ideas you’re listed (all great) are to show to Google’s people that we have a repository of ideas, for me is OK.
Many thanks for your enthusiasm and contribution!
-G
Let’s make a mix with nikitakit replies and your replies. Here I go:
Organization ID: synfig
Organization name: Synfig Project
Organization description: We are a community of developers and animators focused on developing Synfig Studio, a 2D vector animation program aiming to improve artistic workflow by focusing on tweening and interpolation. We work together to refine and add new features to the Synfig software, and create tutorials and run challenges to help and inspire our artists.
Why is your organization applying to participate in Google Summer of Code 2012? What do you hope to gain by participating?: We hope to attract new and enthusiastic developers to the project.
Did your organization participate in past Google Summer of Codes? If so, please summarize your involvement and the successes and challenges of your participation. Our organization have not participated in the past GSoCs.
If your organization has not previously participated in Google Summer of Code, have you applied in the past? If so, for what year(s)?: We applied to GSoC in 2008 and 2010.
Does your organization have an application template you would like to see students use? If so, please provide it now. No, we do not.
What criteria did you use to select your mentors for this year’s program? Please be as specific as possible. For our mentors, we have selected the most motivated and consistent contributors to the project who extensive knowledge of specific areas of the Synfig Studio source code. Mentor: Carlos López González, Lead Developer
What is your plan for dealing with disappearing students?: We ask students to provide their email and phone number to the project administrator. If a student dissapears without notice, the mentor will contact him/her via email to clarify the situation. If there is no reply within 3 days, the administrator will phone him/her personally. If the student cannot be reached, the administrator will contact Google and fail the student if communications cannot be reestablished.
What is your plan for dealing with disappearing mentors? Our backup mentor will be available throughout the summer to provide additional support for students, and will be able to fill in for the primary mentor if he is unavailable. In the case of an emeregency, or if the mentor is in unresponsive and the project administrator cannot contact him by phone, the backup mentor will fully take over his responsibilities.
What steps will you take to encourage students to interact with your project’s community before, during and after the program?: We want students who are active with the project before the application process begins. We ask potential students to indroduce themselves on the project mailing list and forums and get to talk with some of our developers and animators. We will treat them as any new member of our community and help them learn the project and answer any questions they may have.
As part of our application process, we require that students are able to compile and run Synfig and ask them to submit several patches or pull requests, and any artwork made in Synfig that they want to share. Those that have shown active envolvement and eagerness to participated will be favored for acceptance into the program, and we believe that the enthusiastic students will stay after the summer is over.
Once a student’s code is reviewed and critiqued, we will strive to integrate it into a new release of Synfig. If students see the tangible impact of their work over the summer, they will be more motivated to remain a part of our community after GSoC is over.
Are you a new organization who has a Googler or other organization to vouch for you? If so, please list their name(s) here. No, we’re not.
Are you an established or larger organization who would like to vouch for a new organization applying this year? If so, please list their name(s) here. No we’re not.
In red there are my comments or modifications to your proposals and the list basically uses the proposal of nikitakit.
Also I would like to mention that we are not proposing the OpenGL implementation but the Cairo render implementation, so it must be changed on the Ideas link.
Here is a summary of the proposed plan to achieve that written by eldruin based on nikitakit’s notes: wiki.synfig.org/wiki/Dev:Cairo_render_migration
Right now we have two questions which we’re answering “no” to: student application templates, and Google employees/other organizations to vouch for us. The way those questions are worded means that while not required, answering “yes” and providing more information significantly improves our chances of being accepted.
Therefore, we should create a student application form that requires filling in some basic information, and providing forum/mailing list/IRC names, and links to patches/commits. It isn’t supposed to be a long and tedious form, it just needs to list all of our requirements for students (see my answer to “What steps will you take to encourage students to interact with your project’s community before, during and after the program?”). I am willing to make a first draft of that form.
Not having people/organizations to vouch for us is not something that we have any control over. However, I feel that if we stay active in the open source graphics community, attend LGM, and work with Inkscape/Gimp/Blender on cross-compatibility, another project might offer to vouch for us in the future.
Great! I will post that in the wiki this evening and try to formulate the proposed ideas list. I will need you to look them through and accept the ones you want to appear in ideas list.
I have some questions regarding to application form:
My vote will be for just “Synfig” - it looks more familiar and everyone refer us as “Synfig”. I am aware about http://wiki.synfig.org/wiki/Meta:Synfig_Naming_Conventions, just want to point that we are more recognizable as “Synfig”.
The COPYING file in source tree says:
???
I haven’t understood the “fail the student” sentence. Is it correct?
Only the Cairo Render Engine is “Selected”. I rather prefer to call it just “Ideas” rather than “Approved Ideas”.
The GSoc Ideas Page should have only the ideas that are going to be submitted to GSoc, isn’t it?
I’m very confused. Currently we have:
wiki.synfig.org/wiki/Dev:Wish_list: One unsorted list of wishes with a little explanation form each user evaluated based on the impact of the wish on the application.
Pivotal tracker: A tracker system to control the development of implementation of large features.
I think that the ideal thing to have is:
One only one system to:
Collect users feature requests/ideas/wishes
The system should allow to have several categories depending on the maturity of the idea. Only ideas that are mature should pass to higher category and be potential candidates to propose to Google Summer of Code.
For this time we can update the new Ideas page but we shouldn’t forget that we have may ideas scattered on several tracker systems that should be collected somehow in a unique system that allow the current developers and the potential ones to have a better idea on where concentrate the efforts.
I’ll modify the Ideas page considering that it should hold the ideas that are more or less “mature” or that would deserve the proposal for a student recruitment.
Also I would like to mention that the suggested easy bug fixes is out of place on that page. If they are really bugs they should be in the bug tracker and not in a Ideas page. I think that “Keyframes widget is not updated when adding/removing keyframes” is the only one bug in that list and that the other are “easy” feature requests.
Yes. I have put other ideas “to show Google’s people that we have a repository of ideas”.
Sure. After you reviewed the list I’m now going to remove “Suggested ideas” и “Suggested easy bugfixes”.
I totally agree on that. But there is one problem. Even if we will have one system for ideas people won’t stop to use forums for suggesting features. And eve if we have forums for centralized system then still some people will want to polish their ideas on the wiki. Though, I agree that we still need to move towards the eliminating of services with duplicated functionality (like sf tracker and pivotaltracker and wiki wishlist are duplicating each other).
I agree that we need centralized place to store all ideas. One ide can link to forum or wiki or whatever, but there should be possible to view all list.
The source code tarballs effectively have the COPYING file that reproduces the GNU GPL version 3.
But when the source code is retrieved directly it says version 2 in all places: synfig-core README synfig-studio README
Copy of header of any file:
/* === S Y N F I G ========================================================= */
/*! \file blinepoint.cpp
** \brief Template File
**
** $Id$
**
** \legal
** Copyright (c) 2002-2005 Robert B. Quattlebaum Jr., Adrian Bentley
**
** This package is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
** modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
** published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of
** the License, or (at your option) any later version.
**
** This package is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
** but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
** MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
** General Public License for more details.
** \endlegal
*/
/* ========================================================================= */
Distribute with version 3 is not a problem at all but I wasn’t aware that we are distributing the tarballs with v3 because I don’t do anything special when creating the tarball. How can we check what’s the COPYING file that would be distributed when doing the tarballs?
Regarding to Organization name it is ok for me.
And finally, effectively the “…the administrator will contact Google and fail the student if communications cannot be reestablished.” phrase looks weird.
OK, I have made the edits.
About the phrase I end up with that: "If the student cannot be reached, the administrator will contact Google and reports the situation. "
It’s definitely poor wording on my part. Some of the other responses I posted aren’t phrased very well either, I’ll need to proofread/revise them as well.
I’ve tried to look at what are projects are doing. Hopefully it didn’t end up being too long or irrelevant. It will probably need a little bit of revision too.
