5 Jun 2005 AlanHorkan   » (Master)

Small patches, small devices, small thoughts
I've made some small patches to Gnumeric this week. I was interested to see the announcement of a Maemo port of Gnumeric from the same people who did the Maemo port of Abiword. The increased interst in handhelds creates a new challenges for developers and the user interface streamlining required to fit on smaller screens should result in improvements and a greater clarity from which all users can benefit. I hope I will have the chance to help developers with the user interface streamlinging work.
There have been quiet threats and rumblings of a conspiracy to kill off Gnome CD Player in favour of some kind of all in one media player so I have been taking a closer look and experimenting with a few things and will hopefully be able to provide some small patches soon. Having used the CD Player heavily for a few days I find myself wanting features like Repeat Track and Repeat Album but I want to let these ideas simmer for a while until I am more certain I really want these changes before filing a rash of bug reports (especially if I do not have patches to go with them).

The Scorpion and the Fox
I was going to try and write something long and insightful about Microsoft Office XML but it really doesn't feel like news. It looks Microsoft is attempting to create more Fear Uncertainty and Doubt and undermine the progress being made by OpenOffice.org. From the point developers of Abiword I think it only servers to create more work.
Developers are always welcome to contribute patches to help improve OpenOffice.org or Open Document support and users can help out too by providing complex sample documents to test against. Every little helps.

Summer of Code
I almost didn't notice the announcement of the Google Summer of Code as I was trying to pay attention to exams. Getting the chance to work on Open Source software and get paid for it would be a perfect summer job. There is a lot of reading I will need to do to make sure I fully understand the rules of the competition and how to write up a proper formal proposal. I want to find a project I can realistically achieve in the timeframe and that makes good use of my existing skills. Up until now I have been a developer in the broader sense and done a little of everything except burying myself deep into code so the programming aspects of the projects will be definately be challenging.
At first I thought the Summmer of Code was another round of Gnome Bounties sponsored by Google but it it seems to be something quite different. The previous bounties set specific rewards for particular tasks that needed to be done. Google are working in cooperation with the various open source projects to suggest task but they will cherry pick a limited selection of the best proposals and require them to be finished within the time frame. The task of picking a project and writing a proposal will be a lot more complicated than it looked at first, and I've got a little over a week to get it done while still looking for other summer work at the same time.

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