Note : Take a look at the WinLibre Google Summer Of Code 2006 Home Page

Student applications will open on May 1st and close on May 8th.

The ideas listed on this page are just that - ideas. They are deliberately somewhat vague, because you are meant to fill in the details. Last year there were too many proposals that were simply cut-n-pasted from our ideas page. Don’t do that! If you do, you will be tossed out very early in the application sorting process.

If you (as a student) find an idea you like, we ask that you create a list of deliverables, quantifiable results for the WinLibre project, a detailed description / design document, an approach, an approximate schedule and some kind of background text. In other words - sell yourselves in this Wiki - and link your proposals with the project idea.

Here are a few documents (written by the Drupal team, but applicable to Winlibre) that could help you in writing your application :

• Drupal's HOWTO: Write a Summer of Code application
• Drupal's Student requirements

Definitely not! These are here to get you started, and because some folks think it’d be great to see them done. If you have your own idea, run with it. We’ll judge applications on their strengths, not on who wants the project done or who thought of it.

• Meet WinLibre team (PJ_Coudert, Jumar, Beber) on IRC → irc://irc.freenode.net/winlibre
• You can also use the winlibre forum to ask your questions. This is a dedicated “Google Summer of Code” section.

• http://code.google.com/soc/student_step1.html

This section presents ideas related to the “core” of winlibre. That is the “engine” of the distribution : a tool that download, install and manage the application packages chosen by the user.

During last year’s summer of code some great work has been done on the winlibre core and internal tools. All these project (winlibre python rewrite, winlibre updater, winlibre control center) have been written in Python/wxPython. You can have a look on last year’s winlibre summer of code pages : WinLibre's 2005 initial proposals]], winlibre SoC 2005 main page to have more information on what have been done. It would be great if the next main winlibre release could be based on all this work. But there still is a lot of job to do, so one of our 2006 summer of code proposal is :

• Factorize SoC2005 Python projects

Winlibre is currently based on Inno setup (http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php) a powerful setup builder with Pascal scripting capabilities, and on a set of .ini files. We’ve started last year to re-implement winlibre and some helper tools in python but we would like to try also a XUL/XULRunner based implementation of it.

XUL From Wikipedia (abstract) :

XUL (XML User Interface Language) is a user interface markup language developed to support Mozilla applications like Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird. Like UIML and XIML it is an application of XML that describes user interfaces. The acronym is pronounced zool (it’s a Ghostbusters film reference, see below).

While XUL is not a public standard, it reuses many existing standards and technologies, including CSS, JavaScript, DTD and RDF, which makes it relatively easy to learn for people with a background in web programming and design.

The main benefit of XUL is that it provides a simple and portable definition of common widgets. This reduces the software development effort in a way analogous to the savings offered by 4GL tools. Hence our proposal :

• Write a XUL/XULRunner based implementation of winlibre

• Helper and Distribution Builder
• Online or OffLine tool (OnLine preferred)

If you’re a Mac enthusiast, this proposition is for you!

During last year’s summer of code, François Perche created the MacLibre project. Its objectives are the same as winlibre but the target platform is Mac OS in state of windows. This year we would like that someone continue and improve the work done on MacLibre, this will include the following tasks (to be continued):

• Stand alone version + internet version (choose what you want install)

Some applications in the winlibre distribution needs the Sun’s JRE (java runtime environment) to be installed. Some open-source implementations of java runtime/virtual machine have reached a fairly usable status. One of them is IKVM but its lacks an installer. We would like you to build an installer containing :

• Mono+IKVM+ClassPath

• Backup tool for Thunderbird, FireFox emails and profile
• Enable Cryptography on emails sent via ThunderBird
• Install plugins in FireFox easily
• Install new Filters easily into Gimp
• Automatic configuration of proxy & firewalls

These proposals are not directly linked to the winlibre core. It’s proposals for open-source applications that are lacking in the windows environment and would be included in winlibre distribution if they existed.

Note : Winlibre’s taget OS is MS Windows but we strongly encourage cross-platform development when applicable.

Write a new, innovative, multiplatform, windows compatible, easy to use desktop application.

If you want to create a brand new, innovative application, write and submit a proposal.

Note : Before submitting your idea(s) please be sure that no other Windows open-source alternative already exist (in terms of functionality, quality, ease of use...). Intensive Google searching will help you at this point.

During last year’s summer of code Noemi Tojzan developed Final Touch, an MS Windows image manipulation program (written in Delphi) with innovative and hi quality algorithms. We would like someone to continue this effort and, using what has already been done by Noemi, build a :

• Image&Photo managing/processing app
• Multi-OS
• Easy to Use GUI
• Image Browser
• Raw file conversion (idea)
• suggested programming language/framework : GTK# / Mono

Write a graphical application using the “panotools” library to create a free and easy to use panorama creation software for windows users.

• Simple User interface
• Guided steps to build panorama
• Default presets for average user
• More options accessible to the advanced user
• ... feel free to add your own ideas

panotools is an open-source (sourceforge project page) set of tool to build panoramas from a set of panoramic images (and do some related treatment). A few open-source software using this library already exist (such as hugin) but are far from being user friendly. This point makes it impossible to add them in the winlibre package. We would like you to design a modern, user-friendly/easy to use software that aims to be part of the winlibre distribution. Once the application is validated, it may be integrated in “final touch 2”, so the developer who works on this project must keep in mind the idea of this future integration.

Winlibre (and the Windows open-source community) is lacking a gread application : a graphical burning tool. Burning applications are one of the most used kind of desktop software and as you know, there is a lot of freeware/not so freeware/proprietary CD burning applications on the net. The fact that there already exists so much proprietary burning software on the MS Windows platform has discouraged open-source developer from building one; and that is a real pain. The cdrtools library provides all the needed primitives related to CD burning, so what we need you to do is :

Write a GUI to cdrtools to provide a free cd burning solution to Windows users.

• Easy and Straightforward to use
• Based on cdrtools : http://cdrecord.berlios.de/old/private/cdrecord.html
  1. Drag’n Drop File Explorer GUI
  2. Easy Hardware Config
  3. Burning GUI
  4. ISO handling
• cdrtools should come prepackaged with the GUI

Write a RPM or DEB package management system for Windows

• a console command like rpm (or dpkg)
• a console command like urpmi (or apt-get)
• a GUI like synaptic

Most of free software on Windows should use this.

http://www.winlibre.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?id=256 https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=373088&aid=1122361&group_id=22049

Jé: may I recommend looking at http://www.wpkg.org as well as next version of http://ocsinventory.sourceforge.net