GSoC proposal: Workspaces capabilities for Krita

[Daniel Gómez Ferro]

Hello,

I have already submited the application, but I didn't think of posting it
for review before. As it is possible to change it even after submission, I'm
asking now for your thoughts. Well, have a look.

###################################################

Title: Workspaces capabilities for Krita

Abstract:

Krita is a painting and image editing application with a broad audience and
multiple capabilities. This make Krita usable in many different ways and for
different purposes, each of these requiring a specialized interface and a
different set of tools and resources.

This project aims to provide Krita with workspaces capabilities. A workspace
is a loadable package of settings and plugins that finetune Krita for a
particular purpose. Example workspaces could be batch-editing of images,
editing of animation sequences, painting or sketching. Additional plugins
would be provided for areas lacking them, like batch-editing of images.

Detailed description:

My name is Daniel Gómez Ferro and I am a 20 year old student from northern
Spain. I am currently at my third year at University of Coruña studying
Computer Science/Engineering. I have been using Linux for 5 years and KDE
for almost 3 years. I have been following KDE and KOffice development for
some time and always wanted to join the project, but never found my way into
it until some weeks ago, when I started playing with KOffice sources and
even submitted a little patch. I think I was frightened by the size of the
project, being used to the little applications we had to do for my studies.

I think this is a great opportunity for starting collaborating with the FOSS
community and I will gain an invaluable academic and work experience. This
semester I am coursing an User Interface Design subject at university, so I
think my proposal will benefit from what I have learnt and I will
consolidate my knowledge in the matter with this real world project.

My proposal is to provide Krita with workspaces capabilities, that is, make
the user capable of easily choose and change a package of settings, tools,
resources and plugins that would focus the interface of Krita on a specific
purpose, making it easier for the user to work with just what he needs and
avoiding unnecessary clutter.

Firstly, I will have to study whether it is possible to implement the
workspaces extending Krita templates, as Boudewijn Rempt proposed.
Boudewijn's idea is to allow templates to modify the interface and choose
the plugins that will be loaded. This would be done modifying KisView2 and
constructing the interface based on the selected template. If there is an
use case for changing the workspace once you have already started working,
the templates should be complemented with some menu to allow this.

If finally somebody is chosen for the Sketch-pad idea, I will try to
communicate with him to be able to provide everything he would need to
implement his work as a workspace.

Once the framework is laid I will need the input from artists and users,
like Valerie and other developers, as I am not a skilled artist. This would
define which use cases should be covered by a workspace, for example
sketching and batch-editing of images. I would also need to know whether it
makes sense to let the user define it's own workspaces or not.

If time permits, I could port some parts of the UI to plugins, like the
layer box, which would not make sense in a sketching workspace. Before doing
this I would have to make sure if the work is worth it and if it is possible
at all.

Finally, I will have to implement plugins for the workspaces lacking them,
like a frames viewer for animations. I think I will have time to finish the
implementation of the framework, create the needed workspaces and implement
some plugins. I will try to implement the plugins needed to make every
workspace at least usable, and if time permits I will improve these or code
supplementary plugins.

I have never worked with this mentor/student style before, but I think I
will not have any problem at all. I do not mind if my mentor is several
timezones away or not, I am comfortable using IRC, emails, ICQ or whatever
other channel of communication. I cannot be sure of how many hours I will be
able to work per week on the project, but I think it will be between 15 and
30.

As I said, I am not a graphics artist, but I am interested in Krita because
I am a KDE user, I am studying User Interfaces Design and I am very
interested in low level graphic programming. I hope I am chosen, but even if
I am not I will try to collaborate with Krita, KOffice and KDE in the
future.

Thank you for your time.
###################################################
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kimageshop/attachments/20080327/f4957581/attachment.html