Google's Summer of Code 2006 Opens with KDE

Google's Summer of Code has opened for student applications, and KDE is again seeking students to mentor over the holidays. Our ideas page lists some of the projects you could work on, or you are encouraged to come up with your own. Last year we had 24 students working on KDE projects, one of the highest numbers of any project and gained important projects like Okular. For more information see the student FAQ and participant signup page. Update: be quick, the deadline is midnight UTC ending next Monday 8th May.

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Comments

by yaac (not verified)

How about doing something that will *really* make a difference?

Rip out the OOO code that imports MS formats, and also code that saves those internal structures to ODF.

Can't trash liwv2 fast enough.

by ac (not verified)

In that case you could as well rename OOo to libwv3 directly. >_>

by me (not verified)

Congratulations, you're the 3456389475639845th guy suggesting this. Its just not feasible.

And with MS "opening" their office formats, I don't see how to motivate someone to reverse-engineer the old binary formats.

by yaac (not verified)

> Its just not feasible.

The reason being...? Is the code spread all over the whole thing? That being Sun creature and all, it's still hard to believe that the design can be *that* awful.

When people say "not feasible", it usually really means "we are too lazy to even try". And then when somebody really takes on the challenge, things turn out to be perfectly feasible. How many times we heard DVD menus are not possible in MPlayer, and heard it from the main devs themselves? Guess what, now the patch is there, and it won't take long for it to go in.

Even if MS does "open" its formats, the old formats will be around for a very long time, and if anybody hopes to just ignore the problem in KOffice, then we'll be stuck with OOO for years to come I'm afraid.

by Boudewijn Rempt (not verified)

I've tried and got nowhere. But since that means that "I'm too lazy", please try yourself. Get onto the koffice-devel mailing list. Checkout the KOffice and OO sources. Start producing code. If you don't you're not only too lazy too try, you're too lazy to discover that "not feasible" is not the same as "too lazy too try".

In other words, "yet another anonymous coward", get coding, or shut up in the presence of people who know more than you.

On the other hand, if you manage to prove me wrong, I will announce the fact of my being wrong from the rooftops.

But I bet you won't prove me wrong.

by yaac (not verified)

No need to take it so personally. Note that I said "usually", so it doesn't apply in all cases.

Still, the fact that you tried and got nowhere doesn't mean "it's just not feasible". You just didn't try hard enough. Again, please don't take this as an offence. I am not blaming you for anything.

The only thing I am saying is that if somebody wants it bad enough, they will do it. That somebody won't be me, because I don't want it bad enough. Last week I finally gave up and installed OOO.

So why not use this as a challenge for anyone who wants to take on it? That's what SoC is for, right?

by blacksheep (not verified)

Could you be the mentor for such proposal?