Dev:GoogleSoC/ApplicationForm

We missed the SoC so far. Before 2007 we didn't have an application ready in time. We signed up for the 2008 Google SoC, but didn't get accepted.

Administrators and Mentors

Please read the Summer of Code Mentoring HOWTO.

• Konstantin Dmitriev aka Zelgadis (project administrator) google account: ksee.zelgadis
• Chris Moore aka dooglus (chief project mentor) google account: dooglus
• Gerald Young aka Yoyobuae (project mentor) google account: supersayoyin
• Paul Wise aka pabs3 (backup administrator and backup mentor) google account: paul.wise.soc

Draft application

Questions from http://code.google.com/soc/org_signup.html

About Your Organization

• What is your Organization's Name?
  • Synfig Studio project team

• What is your Organization's Homepage?
  • http://synfig.org/

• Describe your organization.
  • Our team developing a powerful, industrial-strength vector-based 2D animation software package, called Synfig Studio. It designed from the ground-up for producing feature-film quality animation with fewer people and resources. While there are many other programs currently on the market to aid with the efficient production of 2D animation, we are currently unaware of any other software that can do what our software can.

• Why is your organization applying to participate in GSoC 2008? What do you hope to gain by participating?
  • There are lot of features what needs to be developed to make our software more powerful, stable and user-friendly. We also hope to involve more people into project development.

• Did your organization participate in past GSoCs? If so, please summarize your involvement and the successes and challenges of your participation.
  • Unfortunately, no.

• If your organization has not previously participated in GSoC, have you applied in the past? If so, for what year(s)? (optional)
  • No, however we have had lots of people suggest that we participate.

• What license does your project use?
  • GNU GPL v2 or later.

• URL for your ideas page
  • http://synfig.org/GoogleSoC#Ideas

• What is the main development mailing list for your organization?
  • http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/synfig-devl

• Where is the main IRC channel for your organization?
  • #synfig on irc.freenode.net

• Does your organization have an application template you would like to see students use? If so, please provide it now. (optional)
  • No

• Who will be your backup organization administrator? Please enter their Google Account address. We will email them to confirm, your organization will not become active until they respond. (optional)
  • Paul Wise aka pabs3 (paul.wise.soc AT gmail.com)

About Your Mentors

• What criteria did you use to select these individuals as mentors? Please be as specific as possible.
  • Individual selected as mentor in project must have a knowledge of C/C++ and Synfig Studio program code (or its specific area). It could be easily determined from the SVN commit history (http://kibi.dyndns.org:8083/~dooglus/gitweb.pl?p=synfig;a=log). He also must be a regular on IRC and wiki (see http://dooglus.rincevent.net/synfig/logs/ and http://synfig.org/Special:Recentchanges). Synfig Studio is an animation program, so the selected mentor should know its common animation concepts: keyframes, waypoints, layers, blend methods. Selected individuals are highly-motivated, long-standing contributors of the project.
• Who will your mentors be? Please enter their Google Account address separated by commas. If your organization is accepted we will email each mentor to invite them to take part. (optional)
  • Chris Moore aka dooglus (dooglus AT gmail.com)
  • Gerald Young aka Yoyobuae (supersayoyin AT gmail.com)
  • Paul Wise aka pabs3 (paul.wise.soc AT gmail.com) - backup mentor

About The Program

• What is your plan for dealing with disappearing students?
  • First of all our mentors will try to clearly define the final target of the project and motivate the student to make the project valuable for him as much as possible. At the beginning of work we must get from student as much alternative contact information as possible (i.e. e-mail, ICQ, Jabber, home and mobile phone, home address, website, etc.). This must minimize the likelyhood of disappearing students. If student disappears from regular contact we'll try to establish contact with him via phone or IM to find out the reason of his absence and also notify Google about disappeared student. If a student actually decides to leave, the project will likely be taken on by somebody from the community in the future (depending on the priority) or be saved for the next season.

• What is your plan for dealing with disappearing mentors?
  • During the SoC we are planning to have one backup mentor. If existing mentors become unavailable or unresponsive during the project period backup mentor takes place of absence mentor. Most communications are take place on IRC which logs stored on http://dooglus.rincevent.net/synfig/logs/, so the backup mentor always could receive all information about status of student's work.

• What steps will you take to encourage students to interact with your project's community before, during and after the program?
  • We are require participation on public IRC channels where community discussing the directions of future development, shares their works and examples, motivates each other. There are not only developers there, but also translators and artists who uses Synfig Studio so the bar is low enough for newbie. Our community always open for any contributions, not only matter whether they're funded by SoC or not. For particular guidance, students are welcome to contact any of the IRC members, no matter whether they're funded or not.
  • To involve students to process at early stages the general steps are:
    • preparing a brief plan of project implementation
    • defining milestones
    • defining "need to study" things for each milestone
  • The steps taken during the program depend on the individual projects
  • At the end of program project results must be summarized to provide complete view of done work and encourage students to participate in further development.

• What will you do to ensure that your accepted students stick with the project after GSoC concludes?
  • The community is inspired by the art produced by Synfig Studio artists. We hope what during the SoC much more animations will be produced and students will be able to see results of their work not only as a piece of code or software package, but also as funny cartoons done with all great new features implemented during the study process. Our developers are always in touch with the people who uses Synfig Studio, paying much attention to their needs and feedback.

Ideas

General

• UI revamp - see Wish_List#Single_window, #1687557, #1687726
• Wish_List#Collect_for_Publication
• Sound_Layer
• SWF, SVG, etc import and or export
• Implement the Palette Browser, which is a stub in the current code
• Implement icon theming, usage of the Tango and ArtLibreSet naming schemes and draw icons for all the missing actions
• Implement a parameter system for output targets and the command-line and GUI interfaces for them.

Construction

• Easy way to link ducks to blines with mouse - see Linking_to_Blines and Wish_List#Riding_ducks
• Wish_List#Layer_Convert
• Redraw tool suggested by snapsilverlight

Animation

• Keyframe manipulation tool - see #1904463

Misc

• Most any common bug in bugzilla (if its a large implementation, or several smaller bugs)