[ghns] about SoC proposal at Blender Foundation on GHNS + questions

[Josef Spillner]

Salut,

Am Sonntag 06 April 2008 19:13:19 schrieb Jonathan-David SCHRODER:
> Hi,
> I made a SoC 2008 proposal at the Blender Foundation to be able to fetch
> about anything from withing a running Blender app.
> About anything meaning : models, materials, new blender binary updates,
> scripts, nodes...
> The proposal in its current state is here (a publish google docs with which
> I will update my google SoC some time before the deadline) :
> http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dcsrtj3t_92g33hrcgx<http://docs.google.com/Do
>c?docid=dcsrtj3t_92g33hrcgx&hl=en>

This looks like a very cool idea. Some months back somebody approached us for 
a GHNS implementation for OpenClipart in OOo and other applications, and I 
think it's really important to have good application support for GHNS beyond 
the desktop-integrated stuff.

> The proposal will see changes today or tomorrow as far as phrasing is
> concerned (someone looked it over and told me what did not sound
> very english or was difficult to understand).

It's not hard to understand. I've seen proposals from native English speakers 
which were really hard to understand compared to yours.

> In that application, I propose amongst other things, to integrate a GHNS
> client into Blender, and to develop a template PHP code Blender content
> repositories implementing the GHS server call API (a
> data.kstuff.org-adapted back-end+front-end version for Blender data, whose
> frontend people could customize).

Currently data.kstuff.org runs the Cocodrilo web frontend which is already 
customisable. And it can be embedded into other web pages, optionally. As you 
can see data.kde.org comes in the design of kde.org, because it uses the KDE 
WWW framework:
	http://svn.kstuff.org/browser/trunk/data.kde.org
But the individual repository contents are rendered through Cocodrilo:
	http://ghns.berlios.de/cocodrilo/
	(sorry, outdated version, but there's a SVN somewhere)

> A part of the GHNS client would have to be coded in Python (although all
> the GHNS scripts are in Perl), because Python is simply what Blender is
> extended with.

GGZ-Python already has an old and somewhat outdated, but still working version 
of a GHNS downloader. You could take this as a start. This is independent of 
what language the server-side Hotstuff scripts are written in, although in 
all honesty I wouldn't choose Perl again if I had the time to rewrite 
them :-)

> Could you let me know your thoughts of my proposal ?
> What I propose for Blender, could actually be generalized for Inkscape...
> Does the GHNS project mentor anything for the 2008 SoC ?

GHNS is a fraction of freedesktop.org, and even the mighty freedesktop.org 
doesn't menter. Instead, the desktop projects (KDE and GNOME) have agreed to 
accept a few students for freedesktop.org. I can imagine that the Blender 
foundation would do just the same.

Note that I'm currently not very familiar with Blender. I've used it a lot 
between 2000 and 2002, but not at all since then because I've moved out of 3D 
games on Linux into gaming infrastructures and networking.

> Apparently, there are more than 20 proposals at the Blender foundation and
> I am not sure if mine would be retained....

Well I think it's a good proposal. And I could volunteer as a mentor, but it's 
up to them if they accept me. Even if they do, it'd be better for you to find 
advocates within the Blender project, right now.

> I'd be OK to work on a SoC for the KDE group or other organisation, and
> work to integrate GHNS into more pieces of software such as Inkscape, Gimp,
> Scribus... so I would be so grateful if you knew where I could apply as
> well elsewhere than for the Blender Foundation to have more chances to work
> a Summer of Code this year... .

The chances in KDE would be very slim, there are already ~250 proposals and 
only those from which the project really benefits will be chosen. Nothing 
prevents you from submitting an application to KDE, too, but I can already 
see the comments - why Blender if there's Krita filters and KWord templates 
and ...
Therefore I think you should focus on the Blender foundation.

> I think that I should complement my proposal with links to graphics. Would
> you have any diagrams describing the way GHNS works that I could use and
> adapt for my Blender proposal ?

You can find some in:
	http://svn.kstuff.org/browser/trunk/kstuff/ghns

Embarassingly there are not more.

> I know that I'm posting this lately.

Pas de problème pour moi :)

Josef