[GSoC2012] Introduction / Impress smartphone remote control

[Tor Lillqvist]

> I'm also very excited about being accepted for taking part in GSoC this
> year.

Welcome!

> To make up for the fact that I can't devote all my time to the project (due
> to exams) until the middle of June, I'll be starting on the coding quite
> soon.

In your proposal you said from "middle of April", so let's hope this
doesn't slip too much.

Have you already managed to get a build of LibreOffice? Please hang
around on the developer IRC channel, #libreoffice-dev on freenode, and
don't be afraid to ask even what seems like silly questions publicly.

> One point I'm not yet too certain about is how the Libreoffice component
> will be written, I think it would be most elegant to write a GPL'd python
> plugin, mainly since the only cross platform bluetooth library is for
> python,

Which library is that? http://lightblue.sourceforge.net/ ? That says
"This project is no longer maintained" and the latest update is from
2009, which doesn't seem too encouraging. Also, its cross-platformness
seems to have a glaring omission: Windows.

Personally I am not really Python-knowledgeable, so if I am to be a
co-mentor for this project, I wouldn't really be able to help much in
Python-related issues. And trust me, there will be, in a
cross-platform environment like LO, which uses a bundled Python 2.6 on
some platforms/configurations vs. the system ones on others (which can
(presumably) be quite varying versions).

I wonder, if using Bluetooth has cross-platform issues, if it would be
easier to initially use just plain old IP (over WiFi)? Are Bluetooth
APIs really platform-specific?

> and released under the GPL (but then having a GPL'd plugin would
> probably mean it would have to be distributed separately).

Hmm, I am not sure about this, I think we would much prefer to have
the code as C++ code inside LO itself, and thus licensed as LGPL/MPL
(the combination which we use for all newly written code).

--tml