Hoping to be part of GSoC 2024

[Jonah Janzen]

Hi there! My name is Jonah, and I'm a Canadian engineering student. I
recently found out about Google Summer of Code, and after doing some more
reading about it, it seems like a wonderful opportunity that I would love
to be a part of. As a longtime user of LibreOffice, it's high on my list of
organizations I want to give back to, and hence I'm reaching out to you
today to start a conversation about doing so.
I've been programming since I was 8 doing everything from amateur gamedev
to competitive programming. This past year, I worked as a web developer
building a full-stack application with C#/Blazor, and I've also made
occasional contributions to FOSS like Godot and LMMS.

There are a couple of ideas that I would be most interested in working on,
which I'll list below:

*UNO Rust Bindings*
I have vague familiarity with the Rust language and the ideas behind it,
but I have little hands-on experience with it.
My initial thoughts about this idea are that it would almost certainly
involve the use of the CXX.RS utility, and that I would hope to be able to
auto-generate as much of the code as possible, by using the public API
specification.
I have a strong desire to get more familiar with Rust, and I love working
on low-level backend stuff so this would probably be my top choice.

*Forgejo Migration (my own idea)*
>From the perspective of a newcomer to the project, between Gitiles, Gerrit,
Bugzilla, Jenkins, etc., the different parts of LibreOffice development
feel disjointed and initially challenging to grasp. I sincerely don't mean
to cause offense, and I don't come across as abrasive rather than
reflective.
What I would propose is to move the LibreOffice repository, issue tracker,
code review process, and CI all onto the Forgejo platform. This would offer
a more centralized experience for all aspects of project management that I
think would make core developers' lives much easier, and provide another,
more superficial benefit: young (and occasionally foolish) individuals like
myself are used to the GitHub style of Git server, and things like Gitiles
tend to feel outdated and unapproachable. Forgejo would provide a more
familiar UX that would ease the process of onboarding new contributors.
Gitea is another possibility, because it seems to be more active and it's
used by high-profile projects like Blender, although it's owned by a
for-profit now. I've also heard about OneDev, but don't know as much about
it.

Since this is my own idea, there are a couple potential challenges I'm not
sure about that I'd appreciate input on:
- This would require transferring account data, and I understand that you
might not be willing to entrust me with the power to access that.
- I would like for my GSoC project to be 350 hours, and I don't have an
estimate for how long this would take. I guess we could tack on other stuff
under the migration umbrella as well, like a shift from IRC to Matrix, for
example.

*LibreOffice Theme*
Although I'm personally not as interested in this idea, it seems like it
would offer a significant leap forward in LibreOffice's UI capabilities,
and might make the software more appealing to a lot of people. If you think
this would do the most good for the project overall, then I'd be glad to
take it on for that reason. I would want to consider what the best way to
store custom styles is (CSS? XML? and so on), and how this can be
integrated as tightly as possible with the way Mozilla themes are used, so
that the new setup can do all the same things.

---------------------------------
I would really appreciate feedback on what you think the best of those
ideas (or any others) might be for me to work on. I would also be curious
to know how much interest from other GSoC applicants you have had thus far,
and whether I would have a significant chance of being accepted if I
actually were to work on a proposal. If the answer to that is yes, then I
will start working on an easy hack as soon as possible, and collaborating
with potential mentors to shape my proposal.

Thank you so much, and I hope to work with you soon!

Jonah
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