[Kde-hardware-devel] GSoC, we can't miss it this time!

[todd rme]

2012/2/8 Alex Fiestas <afiestas at kde.org>:
> GSoC preparations are starting now and we should not miss them this year!
> Being part from the begining in the project is important to ensure that our
> needs are fairly attend :)
>
> For those who don't know, GSoC consist basically in Studends doing a project
> during the summer vacations with the help of a Mentor, if the Student succeed
> on the project he will receive some money from Google.
>
> So, who is available for mentoring? do you have any idea?
>
> My ideas:
> -Continue one of the Printing projects we have, and make it awesome!
> -UDisk base utility to format manipulate disks
> -Porting the NetworkManagement plasmoid to QML
>
> The project should be long enough for 3 months.
>
> Cheers!

I can't mentor but I do have some ideas for possible projects (they
may or may not be good, feasible, or even desirable):

1. Multiple input devices for shortcuts.  Currently only keyboards can
provide shortcut events.  Other input devices like mice, remotes, and
voice cannot integrate as deeply with KDE, and it is hard to use
shortcuts that combine devices (like mouse+keyboard).  However, there
is an opportunity with frameworks to rework the global accelerator
classes.  The goal of this project would be to rework the classes into
a device-agnostic system where plugins provide generic events which
the global accelerator then maps to actions.  The project would also
require making at least one plugin (the keyboard plugin).

2. iPod/iPhone kio slave.  Work is already underway for an mtp kio
slave to make it easy to seamlessly browse mtp devices in the file
manager and provide consistent access to apps like amarok and digikam
(which currently use their own implementations).  The purpose of this
project would be to do the same for apple devices using the
ipod/iphone protocol.  This would provide considerably better ipod and
iphone support than even apple offers.

3. Generic remote device (smartphone) notification framework.  Lots of
people use smartphones these days.  The idea of this project would be
to create a generic framework for sending and recieving notifications
over a network, bluetooth, and USB.  This would then be paired with an
application on a smartphone (or perhaps another computer) to allow
sending notifications between the devices.  The project would probably
involve making the desktop side and at least one smartphone app for
the student's smartphone os of choice.

4. Print job kio slave.  The purpose of this project would be to
create a kio slave for printing and print job management.  Users would
be able to view the list of print jobs, see their status, delete them,
and drop files into the file view to print them.  Being able to drag
fils out to get a pdf or ps version of the printout would also be
nice.

5 Scanner kio slave.  An easy scanner interface using file managers
(like the current CD ripper kio slave).  There would be a folder for
each scanner.  When the folder is opened it will pull in a preview
from that scanner.  There would then be folders for supported
resolutions, with individual files for common paper sizes, the whole
scanner area, auto-detected pictures (i.e. if you can multiple
pictures at the same time) and, if available, text files for OCR.
Dragging one of these to the filesystem will trigger a full scan with
those settings.

-Todd