Call for Projects: University Collaboration in Toulouse

[Torsten Rahn]

Hello,

On Donnerstag, 16. August 2012 12:12:12 Kevin Ottens wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> As a reminder: I need to close the list of projects real soon now. If you
> did send me your proposal yet please do so NOW!

On behalf of the Marble Team I'd like to express our highest interest in 
participation! 

The two mentors we'd provide are Dennis and me.

We have a very interesting topic going on that has a lot to offer for students 
with different aspects of interest and varying capabilities:

"OpenStreetMap Vector Rendering"

We had Ander successfully working on a prototype and first implementation 
related to this topic during GSoC 2012: 

You can read all about it in his blog:

http://blogs.deusto.es/gsoc-deustotech/

But there's still a lot of work left with different aspects/features that 
could be done either isolated on a per-student basis or by the full team.

Our OpenStreetMap Vector Rendering Feature Topics include:

- Street Label placement for Marble OpenStreetMap vector rendering (very 
important aspect and has lots of render-, algorithm-, optimization- and 
usability-issues involved that one could work on): Currently Marble doesn't 
render street names in .OSM vector rendering. Of course street names should 
always be rendered in a visible place along the streets and shouldn't overlap 
- oh and they should always render quickly. 

- Development of a dedicated file format for storing OpenStreetMap vector 
tiles. Right now we are using some JS-based file format. See e.g. 
http://blogs.deusto.es/gsoc-deustotech/first-vector-tiles-rendering/ 

- Related to the former topic: Setting up a vector tile server and setting up 
/ developing the software for it for Marble 

- PBF File Format support for Marble. This would be the efficient binary 
incarnation of the .OSM file format .

- Improvements to our vector rendering pipeline ("GeoGraphicsView"). This is 
more an architecture-refactoring and optimization topic
  
- Vector Map Styling support: Improvement of the current styling mechanism for 
streets and points of interests + possible evaluation of usage of mapcss + its 
implementation in Marble


Of course other topics for Marble work are welcome as well. Possible 
alternatives could cover Space + Astronomy, Historic Maps, Routing, 
GeoCaching, Natural Earth vector tile rendering (topographic map), Time & 
Animation KML enhancements, etc.
But we are also interested in other subjects students could come up with.


You can get in touch with us here:

http://edu.kde.org/marble/support.php

Compiling Marble is easy: 

http://edu.kde.org/marble/obtain.php

and the same applies for getting started with Marble development:

http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Marble/MarbleCPlusPlus


Best Regards,
Torsten
 



 
> I'm especially looking at the ones who told me in private they wanted to
> participate but sent nothing. You know who you are. ;-)
> Of course if you didn't contact me yet, you still can send me a proposal,
> I'll gladly add it to the list.
> 
> Regards.
> 
> On Tuesday 07 August 2012 19:08:18 Kevin Ottens wrote:
> > Hello all,
> > 
> > I have very good news, if everything goes well, I will have the
> > opportunity to setup student projects at the University in collaboration
> > with KDE again! We had a one year hiatus, and I have to admit I miss
> > those projects dearly, so it'd be nice to resume the effort... I'd quite
> > some work ahead as its a reboot and not much of my previous efforts is
> > left.
> > 
> > Anyway, if you are part of a KDE team, and you'd like to get some help
> > from a small team of students (not more than four or five) for a few
> > months, here is your chance! The requirements on your side if you
> > volunteer are the following: * Two mentors from your team (one will kind
> > of play the customer to the students, the other one more on the
> > technical mentoring side);
> > 
> >  * A list of features the students would have to work on (not more than a
> > 
> > dozen, not less than five).
> > 
> > If you are interested, please contact me in private with the info
> > mentionned above (mentors + feature list with some details). Don't wait!
> > I'll finalize the list of chosen projects end of next week (and then
> > push it to the university), and I might have a few questions for you
> > before picking your proposal or not.
> > 
> > Regards.