[ANN] Ideas for this year GSoC wanted

Hi,

Good one, Nick. I can offer to be second mentor on this one as well.

Cheers,
Doru

On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 2:32 PM, Nick Ager <[hidden email]> wrote:
> Hi Janko,
>
> Here you go: 'ePUB Output for Pier Books'
>
> --------------
>
> Name: ePUB Output for Pier Books
> Level: Intermediate
> Possible mentor: Nick Ager
> Possible second mentor: Lukas Rengli
>
> Description
> Pier [1,2] is an extensible object-oriented content management system that
> includes a book authoring engine. The book authoring engine has been used to
> document a number of Smalltalk based projects, most notable Seaside [3] as
> well as Moose [4] and Pharo [5].
>
> The goal of this project is add ePUB [6] as an output format to Pier
> enabling existing and future Pier books and other Pier content to be output
> in a format readable by popular eReaders.
>
> [1] http://www.piercms.com/
> [2] http://code.google.com/p/pier/
> [3] http://book.seaside.st/
> [4] http://www.themoosebook.org/
> [5] http://book.pharo-project.org/
> [6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPUB
>
> Technical Details
>
> Content in Pier is parsed into a document tree that supports the visitor
> pattern [7] for traversing the internal representation. Pier currently
> supports a number of output formats such as HTML, plain text, RSS, wiki
> text. These formats are generated by visitors. The existing visitors would
> act as a template for creation of an ePUB visitor which would generate ePUB
> compatible output.
>
> [7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visitor_pattern
>
> Benefits to the Student
> The project is well defined with a clear deliverable. The student will gain
> an understanding of the internals of a powerful, well structured content
> management system as well as the satisfaction of having a set of artefacts
> in the format of the existing Pier book content translated into ePUB
> format.
>
> Benefits to the Community
> The Smalltalk community and others using the Pier book authoring engine will
> gain ePUB as an output format. With an ebook output format authors have a
> potential new revenue source, encouraging a virtuous cycle of increasing
> documentation within and outside the community.
>

--
www.tudorgirba.com

"Every thing has its own flow"

Great!

That reminds me... would it be too hard to be able to export Excel files from Pharo? Or at least Open Office Spreadsheets?

That could be a project idea too.

On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 10:38 AM, Tudor Girba <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi,

Good one, Nick. I can offer to be second mentor on this one as well.

Cheers,
Doru

On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 2:32 PM, Nick Ager <[hidden email]> wrote:
> Hi Janko,
>
> Here you go: 'ePUB Output for Pier Books'
>
> --------------
>
> Name: ePUB Output for Pier Books
> Level: Intermediate
> Possible mentor: Nick Ager
> Possible second mentor: Lukas Rengli
>
> Description
> Pier [1,2] is an extensible object-oriented content management system that
> includes a book authoring engine. The book authoring engine has been used to
> document a number of Smalltalk based projects, most notable Seaside [3] as
> well as Moose [4] and Pharo [5].
>
> The goal of this project is add ePUB [6] as an output format to Pier
> enabling existing and future Pier books and other Pier content to be output
> in a format readable by popular eReaders.
>
> [1] http://www.piercms.com/
> [2] http://code.google.com/p/pier/
> [3] http://book.seaside.st/
> [4] http://www.themoosebook.org/
> [5] http://book.pharo-project.org/
> [6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPUB
>
> Technical Details
>
> Content in Pier is parsed into a document tree that supports the visitor
> pattern [7] for traversing the internal representation. Pier currently
> supports a number of output formats such as HTML, plain text, RSS, wiki
> text. These formats are generated by visitors. The existing visitors would
> act as a template for creation of an ePUB visitor which would generate ePUB
> compatible output.
>
> [7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visitor_pattern
>
> Benefits to the Student
> The project is well defined with a clear deliverable. The student will gain
> an understanding of the internals of a powerful, well structured content
> management system as well as the satisfaction of having a set of artefacts
> in the format of the existing Pier book content translated into ePUB
> format.
>
> Benefits to the Community
> The Smalltalk community and others using the Pier book authoring engine will
> gain ePUB as an output format. With an ebook output format authors have a
> potential new revenue source, encouraging a virtuous cycle of increasing
> documentation within and outside the community.
>

--
www.tudorgirba.com

"Every thing has its own flow"

The old (97) Excel file format is a weird file system acting as a database. It is also used for doc, msi and cab files. The new format (xslx, docx, etc) is just a zipped bunch of xml files, so it's quite easy to parse :)

On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 3:05 PM, Carla F. Griggio <[hidden email]> wrote:

Great!

That reminds me... would it be too hard to be able to export Excel files from Pharo? Or at least Open Office Spreadsheets?

That could be a project idea too.

On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 10:38 AM, Tudor Girba <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi,

Good one, Nick. I can offer to be second mentor on this one as well.

Cheers,
Doru

On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 2:32 PM, Nick Ager <[hidden email]> wrote:
> Hi Janko,
>
> Here you go: 'ePUB Output for Pier Books'
>
> --------------
>
> Name: ePUB Output for Pier Books
> Level: Intermediate
> Possible mentor: Nick Ager
> Possible second mentor: Lukas Rengli
>
> Description
> Pier [1,2] is an extensible object-oriented content management system that
> includes a book authoring engine. The book authoring engine has been used to
> document a number of Smalltalk based projects, most notable Seaside [3] as
> well as Moose [4] and Pharo [5].
>
> The goal of this project is add ePUB [6] as an output format to Pier
> enabling existing and future Pier books and other Pier content to be output
> in a format readable by popular eReaders.
>
> [1] http://www.piercms.com/
> [2] http://code.google.com/p/pier/
> [3] http://book.seaside.st/
> [4] http://www.themoosebook.org/
> [5] http://book.pharo-project.org/
> [6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPUB
>
> Technical Details
>
> Content in Pier is parsed into a document tree that supports the visitor
> pattern [7] for traversing the internal representation. Pier currently
> supports a number of output formats such as HTML, plain text, RSS, wiki
> text. These formats are generated by visitors. The existing visitors would
> act as a template for creation of an ePUB visitor which would generate ePUB
> compatible output.
>
> [7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visitor_pattern
>
> Benefits to the Student
> The project is well defined with a clear deliverable. The student will gain
> an understanding of the internals of a powerful, well structured content
> management system as well as the satisfaction of having a set of artefacts
> in the format of the existing Pier book content translated into ePUB
> format.
>
> Benefits to the Community
> The Smalltalk community and others using the Pier book authoring engine will
> gain ePUB as an output format. With an ebook output format authors have a
> potential new revenue source, encouraging a virtuous cycle of increasing
> documentation within and outside the community.
>

--
www.tudorgirba.com

"Every thing has its own flow"

On 07/03/12 8:32 AM, Nick Ager wrote:

Here you go: 'ePUB Output for Pier Books'

I did this recently. There's lots more "features" that could be added, but the EPUB view opens in the Firefox plugin. I'll clean it up and put it in Pier addons.

On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 12:28 PM, Yanni Chiu <[hidden email]> wrote:

On 07/03/12 8:32 AM, Nick Ager wrote:

Here you go: 'ePUB Output for Pier Books'

I did this recently. There's lots more "features" that could be added, but the EPUB view opens in the Firefox plugin. I'll clean it up and put it in Pier addons.

Hernán,
With CSS template system you mean, for example, describing the style of morphic objects with CSS syntax?

Cheers,
Carla.

On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 1:26 PM, Janko Mivšek <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hernán and Karl, can you or someone else develop your ideas a bit
furher, by answering the questions:

 description
 technical details
 benefif for student
 benefit for community

while potential mentor can be choosen later

Thanks!
Janko

Dne 02. 03. 2012 21:38, piše karl ramberg:

> Make web browser plugin of Squeak work better on all platforms.
> Get Etoys image to run on CogVM.
>

> Karl
>
>
> On Fri, Mar 2, 2012 at 9:36 PM, karl ramberg <[hidden email]> wrote:
>> Port OpenQwaq video to Etoys
>>
>> Karl
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Mar 2, 2012 at 9:17 PM, Hernán Morales Durand
>> <[hidden email]> wrote:

>>> To dream is easy:
>>>
>>> -HDF5 (http://www.hdfgroup.org/HDF5/) support like PyTables or h5py for
>>> Python
>>> -Information Retrieval/Full Text Search package like Lucene
>>> (http://lucene.apache.org/)
>>> -A binding to R or SAS or SPSS
>>> -Better or more semantic web support (see
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Services_Resource_Framework#Implementations)
>>> -An omnibrowser for OWL ontologies
>>> -CSS template system
>>> -Support of a Distributed Hash Table protocol like Pastry
>>> (http://www.freepastry.org/)
>>> -Workflow system with designer and plug-in architecture (see
>>> http://www.taverna.org.uk/)
>>> -Big data CSV parser plugin
>>> -Plugin for fast approximate search in strings
>>>
>>> cheers,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> 2012/3/2 Janko Mivšek <[hidden email]>
>>>>
>>>> Hi everyone,
>>>>
>>>> 7 days to deadline for ideas of this year GSoC! Please think about what
>>>> would be a nice project for students to work and that way join our
>>>> community. And yes, students are welcome to propose projects too!
>>>>
>>>> Let we "recycle" past project ideas too! Please review them and propose
>>>> those still valuable. Or change the proposal to suit better. Here they
>>>> are: http://gsoc2010.esug.org/ideas .
>>>>
>>>> Let me and Carla post GSoC related stuff only on Pharo, Squeak and VWNC
>>>> mailing lists while for other let someone forward those mails there
>>>> please. It is just too hard to post on 10+ mailing lists, you know...
>>>>
>>>> Past GSoC mentors please join the debate on special Smalltalk GSoC
>>>> mentors list: http://groups.google.com/group/smalltalk-gsoc-mentors. If
>>>> you want to be mentor this year you are welcome to join that list too.
>>>>
>>>> Best regards
>>>> Janko
>>>>
>>>> S, Janko Mivšek piše:
>>>>> Dear Smalltalkers,
>>>>>
>>>>> Let we apply this year again for the Google Summer of Code, which as you
>>>>> know is a Google's stipendium program for students to encourage them
>>>>> working on open-source projects [1].
>>>>>
>>>>> Ok, our first step as community is to collect ideas for possible
>>>>> projects and to apply to the GSoC as an organization. Deadline is next
>>>>> Friday, so please hurry on with ideas. Just put them as reply to this
>>>>> email or to admins directly and we will put them on our website [2].
>>>>>
>>>>> Your project idea should be written as answers to these questions:
>>>>>
>>>>>   Name
>>>>>   Level (Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced)
>>>>>   Possible mentor
>>>>>   Possible second mentor
>>>>>
>>>>>   Description
>>>>>   Technical Details
>>>>>   Benefits to the Student
>>>>>   Benefits to the Community
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> See how such ideas look like in past: http://gsoc2010.esug.org/ideas.
>>>>>
>>>>> Waiting for your ideas
>>>>> Carla and Janko, your GSoC Admin team
>>>>>
>>>>> [1] http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/homepage/google/gsoc2012
>>>>> [2] http://gsoc2012.esug.org
>>>>>
>>> --

>>> Hernán Morales
>>> Information Technology Manager,
>>> Institute of Veterinary Genetics.
>>> National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET).
>>> La Plata (1900), Buenos Aires, Argentina.
>>> Telephone: +54 (0221) 421-1799.
>>> Internal: 422
>>> Fax: 425-7980 or 421-1799.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>
>

--
Janko Mivšek
Smalltalk GSoC Admin Team
http://gsoc2012.esug.org

Yay! :D
Tonight I'll write a nice project description then. And even if it's not elected for the GSoC program I'll do it at work sometime during this year :P

On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 11:17 AM, Geoffroy Couprie <[hidden email]> wrote:

The old (97) Excel file format is a weird file system acting as a database. It is also used for doc, msi and cab files. The new format (xslx, docx, etc) is just a zipped bunch of xml files, so it's quite easy to parse :)

On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 3:05 PM, Carla F. Griggio <[hidden email]> wrote:

Great!

That reminds me... would it be too hard to be able to export Excel files from Pharo? Or at least Open Office Spreadsheets?

That could be a project idea too.

On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 10:38 AM, Tudor Girba <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi,

Good one, Nick. I can offer to be second mentor on this one as well.

Cheers,
Doru

On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 2:32 PM, Nick Ager <[hidden email]> wrote:
> Hi Janko,
>
> Here you go: 'ePUB Output for Pier Books'
>
> --------------
>
> Name: ePUB Output for Pier Books
> Level: Intermediate
> Possible mentor: Nick Ager
> Possible second mentor: Lukas Rengli
>
> Description
> Pier [1,2] is an extensible object-oriented content management system that
> includes a book authoring engine. The book authoring engine has been used to
> document a number of Smalltalk based projects, most notable Seaside [3] as
> well as Moose [4] and Pharo [5].
>
> The goal of this project is add ePUB [6] as an output format to Pier
> enabling existing and future Pier books and other Pier content to be output
> in a format readable by popular eReaders.
>
> [1] http://www.piercms.com/
> [2] http://code.google.com/p/pier/
> [3] http://book.seaside.st/
> [4] http://www.themoosebook.org/
> [5] http://book.pharo-project.org/
> [6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPUB
>
> Technical Details
>
> Content in Pier is parsed into a document tree that supports the visitor
> pattern [7] for traversing the internal representation. Pier currently
> supports a number of output formats such as HTML, plain text, RSS, wiki
> text. These formats are generated by visitors. The existing visitors would
> act as a template for creation of an ePUB visitor which would generate ePUB
> compatible output.
>
> [7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visitor_pattern
>
> Benefits to the Student
> The project is well defined with a clear deliverable. The student will gain
> an understanding of the internals of a powerful, well structured content
> management system as well as the satisfaction of having a set of artefacts
> in the format of the existing Pier book content translated into ePUB
> format.
>
> Benefits to the Community
> The Smalltalk community and others using the Pier book authoring engine will
> gain ePUB as an output format. With an ebook output format authors have a
> potential new revenue source, encouraging a virtuous cycle of increasing
> documentation within and outside the community.
>

--
www.tudorgirba.com

"Every thing has its own flow"

On 08/03/12 2:58 AM, Nick Ager wrote:

Have you had any luck viewing the output ePUB file with iBooks on iOS? I
tried with my iPhone but it wouldn't open. I also noticed that the
section link wasn't numbered - any thoughts?

I don't have iBooks, iOS, iPhone to try, but I'll try the dev simulator on MacOSX.

I'm not sure what is meant by section link number. The EPUB standard appeared to be a maze of other standards and some now deprecated specs. So rather than decipher the spec, I unzipped a few example EPUB books, and gleaned a small subset to implement.

Here's my plan:

1. Add my test Pier book as a TestCase
2. Add a way to include a .css stylesheet
3. Fix bugs reported on different platforms