Summer of Code

[Boudewijn Rempt]

On Sunday 16 March 2008, Fela Winkelmolen wrote:
> Hello!
> I was thinking about doing a proposal for Google Summer of Code and Krita
> seemed like a nice project to work on =)

Krita is a _very_ nice project to work on  :-)

> I would have liked to propose for the sumi-e  brush engine, but as I
> understand it there is already somebody who is interested in that.

Yes, but as you see, there are plenty of ideas for other cool things to do, 
and you're not limited to the ideas on the plot list: you're quite allowed to 
think up other ideas. I just remembered our airbrush engine: it's really, 
really, utterly limited, and doing a good one, that accurately simulates an 
airbrush with a mouse _and_ with a wacom airbrush could be an interesting 
project, too. We've got two wacom tablets to share among developers, but no 
airbrush, but I guess we can find the money to buy one somewhere.

> The sketch-pad also seems interesting. But I would appreciate if somebody
> explained the idea a little more in depth. What should a tracing paper
> interface be like? Is it supposed to be free hand only?? Maybe also
> geometric tools would be usefull.. but I'm not sure what the idea exactly
> is. Should it be used with a tablet? Because than I haven't got any. On the
> other hand if I get accepted for SoC I could maybe buy a cheap one for my
> room-mate, who draws a lot, in exchange for helping me testing the feature.

Basically, my idea about that was as simple as possible an interface for 
quickly sketching ideas. It would be a separate application (which would
help validate our library design) that has just a freehand pencil tool that 
accurately simulates pencils (you need a new paintop here and work on the 
paper texture simulation support). 

The tracing paper thing is pretty simple: load an image in one layer, put a 
semi-transparent white layer on top and draw on the third layer. The idea 
here is to make as simple as possible an application: a digital sketchpad, no 
more, no less.

> Another program that I would love to work on is karbon, it still lacks a
> lot of features compared to, say, inkscape. Only I can't think of any that
> would make a nice SoC project, if anybody has any idea..

Talk to Jan Hambrech, jaham on irc. He may have some ideas. Something that 
would be very nice in karbon would be support for filters, like blurring.

> Now that I think of it, maybe the sketch-pad could be based on vector
> graphics, what do you think, would it be feasible? And would the
> architecture of karbon allow it?

Not sure: I'm not a karbon guru. You really need to approach Jan for that. 
He's on the koffice mailing list.

-- 
Boudewijn Rempt 
http://www.valdyas.org/fading/index.cgi