Google Summer of Code

Welcome to Inkscape!

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

Google has opened up the program to students AND beginners to Open Source who are 18 years are older. Projects can be medium size (~175 hours) or large size (~350 hours). Finish times are flexible, 12 to 22 weeks (with agreement of mentor).

GSoC is a program where Google funds the development of specific features in open source software by university students and other new to open source. 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 applicants.

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. If you have not discussed your proposal with Inkscape developers before you apply, your application will be rejected!

Candidate Applications

• Google program information:
  • Home page.
  • Summer of Code Application form. Applications open at 18:00 UTC on March 18th, 2024. -> https://developers.google.com/open-source/gsoc/timeline

• Inkscape-specific information:
  • SOC Application Template.
  • Inkscape Roadmap - to see our overall objectives.
  • Inkscape Development Project Ideas - broader list of development ideas.
  • SOC Writing Project Proposals - some guidelines for proposals.
  • SOC Selection Criteria - how we rate applications.

Candidate Applications for GSoC 2024 must be submitted to the GSoC site by 18:00 UTC on April 2nd 2024.

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 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 IRC channel or Rocket Chat 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, Refactoring projects, Projects, and https://blueprints.launchpad.net/inkscape/

P5. UI-Free Inkscape

• Estimation of difficulty: Difficult - Long (350h)
• Potential mentors: Marc Jeanmougin, pbs
• Programming skills: C++, CMake
• Prerequisites: Minimal knowledge of build systems. Experience with GTKmm helpful.

Detailed Description Inkscape currently builds with X11 and gtk and a lot of graphical dependencies. But since it is allowed to run in commandline, and there are controlled environments (servers) that use it to convert svg to png and to perform actions, there should be no need to force it to build with those. The main goal of this project is to add a WITH_GUI compilation flag that when OFF, does *not* link Inkscape with any graphical dependency. While much work has been done towards this goal, much remains to be done. DONE As a next step, Inkscape's "verbs" which are mostly GUI dependent (even if there is no reason to be) need to be converted to Gio::Actions. More work needs to be done to separate out hidden GUI dependencies that remain after the Verb to Action transition.

Use cases

• Server installs, scripts

P8. Add Text and Image Support to Live Path Effect System

• Estimation of difficulty: Hard - Short (175h)
• Potential mentors: Jabier Arraiza (Spanish, English(not native))
• Programming skills: C++
• Prerequisites: Experience managing bitmaps

Detailed Description Live Path Effects are non destructive effects applied to paths and shapes standalone or inside a group.
This is done keepeng a reference to the original data to reaply when needed.
But ignore text and image elements.
Things to do:

• Study add image, text, both and maybe others SVG elements to the LPE system.
• Create/adapt minimun one LPE for each new type of element acepted as reference. Suggestion Perspective-Envelope.

Use cases

• Apply live effects to images and text based in C++ code in a non destructive way even in groups with mixed elements types.

P9. Path Library Improvements

• Estimation of difficulty: Hard - Long (350h)
• Potential mentors: Tavmjong Bah, KK
• Programming skills: C++
• Prerequisites: Strong math skills, specifically in geometry.

Detailed Description Inkscape relies on two geometry libraries for path manipulations: lib2geom and livarot. lib2geom is a generic modern library written specifically with Inkscape in mind. lib2geom is missing some functionality that Inkscape requires and that is found in livarot. This project is to move that functionality into lib2geom (or into separate files) using lib2geom path descriptions. A 2020 GSoC student did a significant amount of work understanding and documenting the issues involved [1]. This project would be to build on his work.

Specifically, the functionality needed is

• Path offset/inset functions.
• Path simplify.
• Stroke to path function.
• Line scanning (used for flowing text into a shape).

P11. Improvements to Paint Server Dialog

• Estimation of difficulty: Easy to Medium - Short (175h)
• Potential mentors: Tavmjong
• Programming skills: C++
• Prerequisites: Some knowledge of GTK and CSS.

Detailed Description The Paint Server Dialog allows a user to visually select a pattern or hatch to use in painting the fill or stroke of an object. This project would be to expand the dialog to cover gradients, meshes, and solid colors as well as make other improvements to the dialog. Interaction with the Inkscape's UX team will be required.

Full poposal

P15. Import and Export extensions

• Estimation of difficulty: Flexible, usually easy to medium, Short or Long depending on scope (175h or 350h)
• Potential mentors: Jonathan
• Programming skills: Python, Ability to read technical documents, depending on the format: some reverse engineering
• Prerequisites: minimal knowledge of test-driven development

Detailed Description: Inkscape is alway looking to improve compatibility! Some ideas of relevant file formats - each of them more than enough for one GSoC:*Refactor our DXF input and output extensions, and expand support towards binary DXF

• Write an as-complete-as-possible EPS export, circumventing the internal information loss in ghostscript (EPS is still relevant for scientific papers, but more and more tools are dropping support, so this is a chance to grab market share - the results of Adobe Distiller are much better than ghostscript's...)
• Rewrite the XAML importer in Python (currenly XSLT) to match the capabilities of the new XAML exporter (i.e. support for different target frameworks, better text support...) - would have to select carefully what to support (drawing primitives) and what not (control elements) - the boundary is not as clear-cut as it seems.
• Update the Synfig export to support the latest Synfig developments
• Import or export of TikZ. There are a few abandoned extensions out there (from which we can borrow), but it's very widely used in science - both import and export could serve an important function in the scientific workflow.
• Import of the proprietary fileformats of Affinity Design, Vectornator, Vectorstyler (especially the last two seem in their infancy and users at some point will sit on a bunch of files that they can't open anymore because their SAAS model wasn't profitable) .
• Import of CGM - old, but ISO standardized. Was supported once and dropped when the uniconvertor extension was removed for 1.0.
• Python based EMF / WMF importer - the current (core Inkscape) C extension is unmaintained and Python would probably be the right way to get more collaboration on it. A lot of public archives sit on mountains of EMF files. Note that the Document Foundation recently did a lot of work properly importing those files, so we can learn from them / maybe even join forces...
• your favorite file format? - also have a look here: https://office.inkscape.org/nextcloud/index.php/s/Tq6cdDDGay6taCw

P16. Gcodetools refactoring and documentation

• Estimation of difficulty: Easy- Short or Long depending on scope (175h or 350h)
• Potential mentors: Jonathan
• Programming skills: Python
• Prerequisites: Maker background / familiarity with the Maker community

Detailed Description: Gcodetools is a set of Inkscape extensions that deal with reading and creating Gcode files, mostly for use in laser cutters or plotters. For this project, ideally someone with a Makerspace background will

1. query maker spaces on their needs regarding gcodetools,
2. implement those needs together with unit tests,
3. improve the test coverage of Gcodetools,
4. write proper documentation for it. (doesn't really exist at the moment).

P17. Packing / Nesting as an Inkscape extension

• Estimation of difficulty: Medium, Short or Long depending on scope (175h or 350h)
• Potential mentors: Jonathan
• Programming skills: Python
• Prerequisites: Computational geometry

Detailed Description: In this project, a set of packing / nesting algorithms will be implemented:

• Linear nesting is not too useful in SVG, but might be a good place to get acquainted with the problem. 2D cutting stock problem would be very interesting to have and would work great with the new multipage functionality.
• For efficient packing of free form objects, we might just re-implement SVGNest in Python. There are probably some more recent research papers which would be interesting to implement as a comparison.

P19. Improving UI of Live path effects

• Estimation of difficulty: Medium- Hard, Short or Long depending on scope (175h or 350h)
• Potential mentors: Mike, jabier ,??
• Programming skills: GTK 4, C++
• Prerequisites: Front end UI , familiarity with Live path effects

Detailed Description: This project Should implement Proposed UI clean up of Controls . LPE controls shoulbe be more user freindly and predictive,

Full Proposed designs

P20. Recolor Artwork

• Estimation of difficulty: Variable - Short (90h or 175h)
• Potential mentors: Adam Belis ?
• Programming skills: usually C++
• Prerequisites:

Detailed Description An easy and convenient way how to change any color from the selection. Useful for experimenting and tweaking colors.

Full proposal Here

Use cases

• fast Editing color in whole project without of need for swatches
• easier work for color harmonies in a project
• Easier iteration and visioning of designs

Pxx. Your project

• Estimation of difficulty: Variable - Short or Long (175h or 350h)
• Potential mentors: Marc Jeanmougin
• Programming skills: usually C++
• Prerequisites: good ideas

Detailed Description The most successful GSoC we had in the past were students coming with their own past, use cases and ideas for Inkscape. Many basic tools like 3d cubes or connectors you can see in Inkscape now have been brought by brilliant people (like you) with ideas. If we think that your project fits with Inkscape (ie: has its place with a vector graphic editor), we can help you refining your ideas and help bring shiny new stuff to life!

Use cases

• Amaze us!

Successful SOC Projects from Previous Years

• 2005
  • Connectors
  • Inkboard
  • Open Clip Art Library (OCAL) Interface
  • DXF Import / Export
• 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
  • Node tool rewrite
  • D-Bus scripting API
  • Connector tool improvements
  • ICC/CMYK workflow
• 2010
  • Cairo-based rendering
  • C++ification of SP Layer
• 2011
  • Rendering caching
  • Javascript support improvements
  • CSS support improvements
• 2012
  • Usibility Improvements for Guides
  • On-canvas support for Tessellations
  • Creating python bindings for lib2geom
• 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
• 2016
  • Better data structure for selections
  • CSS Style Sheet Editor
• 2017
  • SVG 2 Text Support
  • Better CSS Style Sheet Support
• 2019
  • Mesh gradient and hatches polyfills. Paint server dialog.
• 2020
  • New dialog system.
  • Command palette dialog.
  • Documenting livarot
• 2021
  • On canvas marker editing.
  • Verbs to Gio::Actions.
  • On canvas alignment snapping.
• 2022
  • Tab Structure.
  • Font Collections.
  • Modernizing Memory Management.
  • OCR Support.
• 2023
  • GTK4 toolbar port preparation
  • Customizable Appearance of Canvas Controls
• 2024
  • Node-based filter editor
  • Improving UX of Node tool and Bezier tool