[cairo] GSoC Requirements / Expectations

[Daniel Kraft]

Carl Worth wrote:
> That grounded things for me quite nicely so that I could ignore "big,
> scary X server code base", and just code up this one single function
> inside a test program. When I was done, I was a little startled to
> find Keith immediately committing the code to the X server and
> unleashing it on machines all over the world.

Wow, sounds really cool!  Surely a good start into the codebase; I 
remember when I did some fixes for Mozilla some time ago "just for fun", 
it was more a trial-and-error thing until it worked, and then relying on 
the reviewer to check it was "really" correct and did not just work by 
coincidence; I never really had understanding of the big picture.  I was 
just happy everything worked and went through review...

> So with cairo participating in Summer of Code now, that's an
> experience I'd like to provide for as many students as possible. You
> definitely don't have to have worked directly with cairo or even
> computer graphics before at all. More important is that you are a
> capable programmer, you're interested in learning, and one of the
> project idea strikes you as being really compelling.
> 
> You mentioned lookup-table rasterization for example. I like that
> project idea quite a lot since it would be replacing the code that
> Keith used to replace the code I wrote as I described above. :-)

Really?  Well, as I don't know much about graphics for now, I 
unfortunatelly can't really "really" understand what's behind the ideas; 
lookup-table just sounds a bit like algorithm-thing, and I simply like 
the feeling of implementing something and find the execution time go 
down by an order of magnitude ;) This is somewhat satisfying.

Also, the polygon composition point sounds like it would include some 
nice algorithmic work that could be somewhat "interesting"--but it's 
just a feeling, as I don't yet understand deeply what it is about.

Do you have some more detailed information about those two ideas?  Or 
maybe some pointer to a bug-database with quick and easy things I could 
try to get me a bit into the codebase without much need to learn 
offhand?  If possible, I'd like to help you while learning a bit...

BTW, I remember to have read that the cairo community is friendly; I can 
only assure this so far!  Thank you!

Just one more question:  Is there some document or something related 
describing what I need to do to test patched/hacked cairo code?  Can I 
do this easily without interferring with the stable version installed on 
my system?  (I'm sure so)

Thanks and good evening,
Daniel

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