GSOC ideas

[todd rme]

On Mon, Feb 25, 2013 at 7:26 PM, Shaun Reich <sreich at kde.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 25, 2013 at 9:04 AM, todd rme <toddrme2178 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I have some suggestions about possible GSOC projects that fit with
>> this year's theme of "polishing existing things".  These may not all
>> be good project suggestions, they are just ideas:
>>
>> 1. Make dolphin laptop-friendly.  Many laptops lack middle mouse
>> buttons, and middle mouse button emulation is somewhat finicky.  The
>> purpose of this project would be to go through dolphin and make sure
>> everything that currently requires a middle mouse click can be used in
>> an alternative way, such as putting it in the right-click menu.  For
>> example, you can't open places in tabs without a middle mouse button.
>> If this is too small, it could be part of a more general project to
>> make the various parts of dolphin have consistent menus, mouse button
>> interaction, and drag-and-drop interaction.
>
>
> sounds more like code-in material or junior job than gsoc..
>
>>
>>
>> 2. Improve the grouped view.  After the switch to dolphin 2, dolphin
>> still does not have the ability to select entire groups in group view.
>>  It also has never had the ability to collapse groups, which was
>> planned.  There also may be some room for graphical improvements in
>> the grouped view.
>
>
> sounds too small to be a thing in and of itself.
>
>>
>>
>> 3. Places panel revamp.  This was recently discussed on the mailing
>> list, and may be the right size for a GSOC project.  This project may
>> involve first figuring out how exactly the places panel should be
>> revamped, or it could be that devs figure that out first and include
>> that in the suggestion.
>
>
> depends on what needs to be changed, but the gsoc should then entail
> changing kdelibs and everything that uses that to do so.


Fair enough.  Another possibility:

I understand there are some performance problems with the current
thumbnails system (.thumbnails directory).  I recall there was some
talk a while back of implementing a thumbnail database similar to what
digikam has in order to improve thumbnail loading performance.
Perhaps this could be a GSOC project.  Perhaps even as a more general
thumbnail database library that could be used by dolphin, digikam,
amarok, plasma, anything that needs thumbnails (this may not be
feasible, their needs may be too different).