Google's SoC program hasn't officially started yet, and already my two students are busy hacking.
Rob Staudinger has been busy refactoring AbiWord's build system so that parts of AbiWord might be turned into a proper library. In the process, he's managed to get AbiWord to cross-compile to Win32.
Due to its relatively light footprint, AbiWord has seen an upwelling of adoption on "embedded" platforms, like the Nokia Maemo or OLPC runtimes. These devices have wildly differing constraints, but at the core, all see a need for a rich-text widget. Rob's work is critical for us to fully exploit these emerging markets.
Meanwhile, Gabriel Bakiewicz has been hacking away at improving AbiWord's grammar checking. He's managed to hook up AbiWord to CoGroo. Initial screenshot here. Gabriel's plans for the summer are pretty ambitious. In the end, we may have an Enchant-like interface for grammar checking. I'm lucky to have help mentoring this project from one of Gabriel's professors, Carlos Menezes.
This is impressive, considering that SoC hasn't officially started yet. Great job, guys! Keep up the good work.