Google Summer of Code

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Welcome to Inkscape!

For quite a few years Inkscape has been successfully participating in Google Summer of Code.

GSoC is a program where Google funds the development of specific features in open source software by university students. You don't need to be a Computer Science student to apply. Features to be developed are picked by Inkscape administrators from the pool of proposals submitted by students.

We've mentored about half a dozen students a year since GSoC started. Many students enjoyed their work and continue to be involved; perhaps your mentor will be a past GSoC student! We have a high rate of acceptance of student code into the core codebase. Indeed, GSoC projects have been a key source of some of Inkscape's best features in the past several releases.

If you are interested in joining us this summer, it is time to get your proposal ready. You can choose a proposal from our list of suggestions or come up with one of your own. In either either case, you must give us a detailed outline of what you plan to do. It is highly recommended that you discuss your idea as early as possible with Inkscape developers. They not only can give you guidance as you flesh out your proposal but ultimately you must convince them that you can do the work planned in the time allotted.

Student Applications

  • Google program information:
    • Home page.
    • Summer of Code Application form. Applications open at 19:00 UTC on March 10th.

Student Applications for GSoC 2014 must be submitted to the GSoC site by 19:00 UTC on March 21st 2014.

The "two patches" rule

We require two patches from each potential GSoC student, before accepting the student for GSoC participation (it is the same requirement as for obtaining rights to commit changes to the Bazaar code repository). The reason for this requirement is that you can show us that you have succeeded in building Inkscape on your PC, and that you have understood a little piece of Inkscape's code and are able to improve it. Inkscape is a large project, and you really should not try to understand all the code. Many (all?) developers know only parts of the program code! You can join our jabber/IRC channel and ask developers for help.

Suggested "easy" bug fixes or improvements

To get you started on Inkscape development, you can find (probably) easy-to-fix bugs or small improvements that require very little knowledge of the whole program by searching our bug-tracker for bugs tagged with 'easy-fix'.

Performance Evaluation

GSoC has two formal evaluation points, at the mid-term and at the end. These evaluations determine if you receive the stipend from Google. In order to receive a pass for the evaluations you will need to show adequate progress toward your project's goals.

To help you meet your goals and so that your mentor can better evaluate your progress you need to:

  • Have frequent, public discussions of your progress. (Don't rely on just your mentor for advice.)
  • Have a public Inkscape branch for your code to which you commit regularly.
  • Give weekly status reports.

For the final pass, you will normally be required to merge your code into Inkscape trunk.

Remember: we want you to succeed!

Suggested Project Ideas

The following is a list of formal project suggestions, but do not feel limited to only these - some of our best contributions have been unique ideas that students had in mind from other sources!

See also Development Project Ideas and https://blueprints.launchpad.net/inkscape/


Better CSS Style Sheet Support

Enhance Inkscape's support for CSS style sheets.

  • Estimation of difficulty: Moderately hard
  • Potential mentors: Tavmjong Bah
  • Programming skills needed: C++
  • Prerequisites: Experience with CSS style sheets.

Detailed Description

Currently Inkscape support of CSS style sheets is limited to the reading and parsing of one internal style sheet. The styles are immediately stored in the style attribute for each object thus changes to the style sheet (awkwardly possible now through the XML editor) are not recognized. This project will:

  • Add to each object property a means to track the source of the property value.
  • Create a dialog for editing internal style sheets. The dialog needs to:
    • Support selectors based on object type, object id, and object class.
    • Create selection sets based on the above selectors.
    • Create and edit class names.

A dialog similar to (and perhaps merged with) the trunk Selection Set dialog might be a good model to follow.

Stretch goals include:

  • Support external style sheets.
  • Support multiple internal style sheets.
  • Support CSS 3 selectors.
  • Support parsing of 'font-face'.

Use Cases

  • Support externally created SVGs.
  • Producing better SVGs for the Web.
  • Changing style on multiple objects at once (palettes).

Related Material


Development Project Management System

Enhance Inkscape's web tools for managing development projects.

  • Estimation of difficulty: Moderately hard
  • Potential mentors: Bryce Harrington
  • Programming skills needed: Python
  • Prerequisites: Working knowledge of Django web application development

Detailed Description

Design and implement tools to allow submitting and editing ideas for development projects. Create various project listing views that display projects that need further editing, lists of projects meeting various criteria (e.g. janitorial, new features, programming language, etc.), assigned projects, completed projects, and so forth.

This work would be part of a larger, ongoing effort to unify Inkscape's various collections of task ideas into a single system, to make them easier for potential contributors to review and select from. Some of this project has already been implemented, so you would be focusing on enhancing its user interfaces to make it more powerful and more broadly usable.

Use Cases

  • "Janitorial" tasks suitable for new developers looking for easy ways to get involved in Inkscape development
  • Google Summer of Code Project Ideas (this page!!)
  • Funded development work, with funds supplied by various fundraisers
  • User-supplied requests for feature enhancements

Related Material


Improved Eraser tool

  • Estimation of difficulty: Moderately hard
  • Potential mentors: Jabier Arraiza (Spanish, some English)
  • Programming skills needed: C++

Detailed Description

The Eraser tool has some limitations in cut-out from objects mode:

  • There is a minimum width of 1 unit in the line to cut, thus the resulting parts don't fit exactly (1 unit gap minimum).
  • This mode does not work with groups.
  • The cut is not constrained: no straight or parallel modes.

The goal is make an optional to produce a zero width cut that solves the above problems.
There are new Boolean operations, implemented but not used in trunk. We need to switch the division method from Livarot to these new operations.
Another feature interesting is a button to get the guides over the selected item and use it as cut-out.
We can make optional check to convert strokes to path previously to cut to avoid continuing with stroke thought cut-out item fills.

Use Cases

  • Better item slicing.

Successful SOC Projects from Previous Years

  • 2005
  • 2006
    • Support for SVG Filters
    • Filter Effects
    • PDF export
    • Inkboard Protocol Spec / Lib Conversion
  • 2007
    • Text Style Improvements
    • PDF import
    • Live Path Effects
    • 3D Box Tool
    • UI for SVG Filter Effects
    • Raster Functionality
    • Importing from, and Exporting to, a remote ccHost instance
  • 2008
    • SVG Fonts support
    • 2Geom refactoring project - port most geometry code to 2Geom
    • lib2geom: interactive applications showing off the power of lib2geom
    • Tech drawing abilities
    • A test suite
  • 2009
  • 2010
    • Cairo-based rendering
    • C++ification of SP Layer
  • 2011
    • Rendering caching
    • Javascript support improvements
    • CSS support improvements
  • 2012
  • 2013
    • Recolor Tool
    • Improved Units Support
    • Electronics CAD Support
    • New From Templates Dialog
    • New Raster to Vector Algorithm
  • 2014
    • Better Support for SVG Paints
    • Robust Boolean and Stroking Operations for 2Geom