SoK/Ideas/2014

Ideas

Information for students

These ideas were contributed by our developers and users. They are sometimes vague or incomplete. If you wish to submit a proposal based on these ideas, you may wish to contact the developers and find out more about the particular suggestion you're looking at.

When writing your proposal or asking for help from the general KDE community don't assume people are familiar with the ideas here. KDE is really big!

If there is no specific contact given you can ask questions on the general KDE development list [email protected]. See the KDE mailing lists page for information on available mailing lists and how to subscribe.

Project: Sample project

Brief explanation:

Expected results:

Knowledge Prerequisite:

Mentor:

When adding an idea to this section, please try to include the following data:

• if the application is not widely known, a description of what it does and where its code lives
• a brief explanation
• the expected results
• pre-requisites for working on your project
• if applicable, links to more information or discussions
• mailing list or IRC channel for your application/library/module
• your name and email address for contact (if you're willing to be a mentor)

If you are not a developer but have a good idea for a proposal, get in contact with relevant developers first.

Project: Live demo for KWin Effects

Brief explanation: The idea is to offer a live demo for the available KWin effects. This would consists of starting a nested KWin instance as a sub-session and completely control it from the outside. E.g. for the Present Windows Effect it would be needed to have several windows open, control the mouse cursor to demonstrate the screen edge activation, support faking keyboard input for the filtering, etc.

The demo mode would have to use the Wayland backend in KWin as that's the only way to get OpenGL in a nested session (Xephyr doesn't reliable support it). This means part of the project would involve implementing missing features in the Wayland backend like for example a windowed mode and the interfaces to fake keyboard input (needed for e.g. on-screen displays). It also requires to complement the work on running nested KWin instances and better separate it. At the moment it's possible to control the DBus service name, similarly it would be needed to change the config file and kglobalaccel module name, etc.

Expected results: Infrastructure in place and at least one Effect which can be run in a live demo.

Knowledge Prerequisite: C++/Qt, Wayland would be preferable

Mentor: Martin Gräßlin

Project: Test framework for KWin Effects

Brief explanation: So far KWin Effects are not under test coverage. But there are quite some effects and bugs which would need a unit test. In the scope of this project a test framework for the effects should be created. It needs to implement a specific EffectsHandler which allows full control over the effect stack and needs to implement a mock EffectWindow which can also be created and tested by the tests. An additional challenge is the OpenGL dependency of several effects. Because of that the framework has to also setup an OpenGL context (might use Qt for it).

Expected results: Infrastructure in place and at least one Effect which is tested.

Knowledge Prerequisite: C++/Qt

Mentor: Martin Gräßlin

Project: Theme designing for Pairs

Brief explanation: Pairs is a relatively new educational aplication of KDE Edu family. Pairs stimulates your memory and logic skills. It aims to help the learning for pre-school kids. The student should download, install this application and use it and also improve documentation describing the main elements of the interface, such as how to open a theme, create a new one and add all the needed information to have it ready for usage, apart from developing new creative themes that could be available as add-ons.

Expected results: New creative and witty themes for Pairs, improved documentation and proper white space indentation of the code

Knowledge Prerequisite: Qt, QML, XML would work

Expected mentors: Marco Calignano | Aleix Pol| Heena Mahour

Project: Porting Pairs to Qt 5 framework

Brief explanation: Pairs is the result of the KDE-Education project. Pairs provides a platform for a platter of daily brain exercise and logic stimulating games for not just children but any age group of users. With the release of the Qt 5 framework, a lot of applications have started migrating/adopting to the new Qt framework. In this project we aim to port the Pairs game to Qt 5. Along-with which, the focus would to complete the previous version's [4.9] TODO list (by Aleix Pol and Marco Calignano). Any further interesting idea regarding addition of a feature is welcome during this project. The student is expected to get familiar with Pairs, contributing to the over-all development of the game. We plan to make the ported application compatible with any other new themes developed in the "Theme designing for pairs" project. Pending TODO list: a) Adding scroll bar in-case of more than one player is involved to eliminate the over-lapping on the display b) Getting rid of window border c) In the game Logic and SoundLogic there is a need to highlight the first selected card of each turn

Expected results: Successful porting of Pairs to the new Qt5 framework along with the completion of Application's 4.9 version TODO list.

Knowledge Prerequisite: Qt, Basic C++, QML.

Expected mentors: Harsh Thakkar | Heena Mahour

Project: Finish test.kubuntu.co.uk

Brief explanation: we want a new website for Kubuntu, it is half completed, finish it off

Expected results: a shiny new kubuntu.org

Knowledge Prerequisite: PHP, Wordpress, web server sysadmin including benchmarking, databases, website design

Mentor: Jonathan Riddell

Kubuntu wants a new website and we have a setup half done at test.kubuntu.co.uk. The final thing should complete the import of data from the current website, pick a theme which looks good on desktop and mobile, integrate with social media and contain content which helps people quickly get into using Kubuntu. It should be benchmarked to ensure it works under load.

You should be familiar with Wordpress and PHP coding and with the needs of a user of the website.

We are at #kubuntu-devel IRC on Freenode.