GSoC 2011!

[todd rme]

On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 1:28 AM, Thorsten Zachmann <t.zachmann at zagge.de> wrote:
> On Thursday, February 10, 2011 21:33:21 todd rme wrote:
>> On Thu, Feb 10, 2011 at 3:20 PM, C. Boemann <cbo at boemann.dk> wrote:
>> > On Thursday 10 February 2011 21:15:06 todd rme wrote:
>> >> On Thu, Feb 10, 2011 at 1:26 PM, todd rme <toddrme2178 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> > On Thu, Feb 10, 2011 at 3:42 AM, Cyrille Berger Skott
>> >> >
>> >> > <cberger at cberger.net> wrote:
>> >> >> On Wednesday 09 February 2011, todd rme wrote:
>> >> >>> On Wed, Feb 9, 2011 at 3:39 AM, Boudewijn Rempt <boud at valdyas.org>
>> >
>> > wrote:
>> >> >>> > On Wednesday 09 February 2011, todd rme wrote:
>> >> >>> >> I have a couple suggestions about possible projects:
>> >> >>> > ...
>> >> >>> >
>> >> >>> > I think these are pretty cool ideas! Have you added them to
>> >> >>> > http://community.kde.org/GSoC/2011/Ideas?
>> >> >>>
>> >> >>> I could do so, but according to the instructions only mentors are
>> >> >>> supposed to do this.  I have no problem adding them if I have
>> >> >>> approval from developers, though.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> The instructions also say "If you are not a developer but have a good
>> >> >> idea for a proposal, get in contact with relevant developers first."
>> >> >> since the developers have validated your ideas, please go ahead :)
>> >> >>
>> >> >> --
>> >> >> Cyrille Berger Skott
>> >> >
>> >> > Sounds good, I just wanted to make sure I actually had the okay to do
>> >> > so.
>> >> >
>> >> > Who would be the mentor?
>> >> >
>> >> > -Todd
>> >>
>> >> I put them up.  Please look to see if they are written how you would
>> >> like.  I didn't know who to put as a mentor, so I just referred them
>> >> to the mailing list.  Please add a mentors if there is one.
>> >
>> > Don't worry. We usually assign mentors when we decide on the project
>> > applications.
>>
>> That's fine then.  I saw that the other Calligra ones had mentors so I
>> assumed these did as well.
>
> Sorry for not replying earlier. I was quite busy the last days. Very nice
> ideas for stage. I would like to update the plama one a bit to make it a
> remote presenter tool using plasma and maybe other things. The idea here is to
> have an application that can remote control(via dbus) a differenent computer
> running stage.  This could for example run on a n900. When doing it right a
> lib for the remote stuff can be created and on top of the it should be possible
> to easily create new UI where plasma would be one.

I would keep the focus on making a conventional sort of presenter tool
based on plasma.  However, since plasma already has a built-in method
for sharing widgets over the network, I think taking advantage of that
would be a good idea.  However, unlike plasma as a whole sharing
individual presenter view widgets on an individual basis doesn't make
sense.  There would probably need to be a single option to enable and
disable sharing of all widgets, and probably a tool to add, remove,
and temporarily disable paired computers.

However, if you are talking about a more generic method of controlling
stage over the network that does not rely on plasma, I think that is
an entirely different project, although probably also a good idea.
However, it might be easiest to create an MPRIS interface for Stage so
it can be controlled by existing media player controls.  This is
probably not enough for an entire GSOC project, though.

> I really  like the prezi stuff but I'm not sure how compatible that would be
> with odf (saving/loading). I think most work in this regard is using svg for
> the data and a webbrowser to show it. Maybe a way to create such a
> presentation and save it the svg the same as some other tools use would be
> perfect.

I was not proposing this being browser-based, it would be used inside
Stage in the same way as existing presentations.

However, I did realize that odp formats were not designed for this.
It would really just be one very large slide at its core, so that part
is okay.

I am not that familiar with the ODF format so this may be totally
wrong, but as far as I can tell, three things would need to be added:

1. There would need to be some way to demarcate parts of the slide as
"frames".  My pretty rough guess would be that these could be any
arbitrary vector shape with a special property that identifies it as a
frame.  Stage would set the camera so that the entire frame is
visible.

2. There would need to be a way to keep track of the connections
between nodes.  I came up with two possible solutions, but I don't
know if either is plausible or feasible:
    A. it could just be additional special data in the frame object I
mentioned in 1.
    B. there could be a set of hidden slides that contain data tying
them to particular frames, using a series of custom slide shows to
keep track of different branches.  The user would never see them, and
if someone opened them in an incompatible program they would see one
slide with all the content and a bunch of other slides with gibberish.

3. There would need to be a way to add data to objects that would
allow you to move to an arbitrary frame by clicking on that object.
This is an advantage of 2.B. above.  Impress at least already has a
way to let you jump to an arbitrary slide by clicking on an object, so
combining this with B would give you this capability for free without
needing to add anything.  I do not know if odp presentations let you
change to a different custom slide show by clicking on an object,
though.

> I can be added as mentor for the tasks.

That would help a lot, thanks.

-Todd