Summer of Code 2008/proposals

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Contents

Proposals

Writer

Improve Equation Editor Math

Intro

Context : this application does concern an important (the single most one ?) usability problem with Math. It was already attempted to solve at least 3 times but always needed to be dropped because of lack of resources.

The equations editor has some issues (including very old one) and they need to be fixed, because all those issues are a strong brake for OpenOffice.org acceptance in Education. The main objective here is to implement a new feature for baseline computation.

Concerns: OpenOffice.org 3.x all versions

Objective: Implement a new feature, allowing to compute the baseline for equations anchored as character (main case) (will cause a file format modification in OpenDocument specification)


Main issues are:

- misalignment

- missing symbols ( |-> , <-| , angle A^B .. etc)

- + some other issues to be fixed in starmath

Skills

Skills with languages C/C++ (tokenization, debugging ) maths symbols and good math knowledge (for equations writing ) is a plus.

Good communication skills are expected too (because several modules are concerned )

Tasks

Familiarize with the starmath editor code. ( see source code documentation online )

Familiarize with links in writer (writer is concerned in some issues)

Expected:

For issue 972 ( see links Education Project effort for starmath and Math_baseline_alignment )


- code to Implement a new parameter for baseline computation without edit equations

- write specs for add a the info in the .odt format

- design a proof of concept

- implement it

The task could be completed with other little tasks, depending on the agenda ( e.g.implement missing |-> and <-| symbols .. etc )

Contact
dev@education.openoffice.org
ericb at openoffice dot org
Proposed by
Eric Bachard, Thomas Lange (to be confirmed)
Mentor
Eric Bachard (to be confirmed)


Page preview for Writer

Similar to OOo Impress' slide sorter pane, provide similar functionality for Writer. Initially, it should be possible to see page thumbnails there, and navigate the document with it.

  • Reguired skills/knowledge: C++, familiarity with Writer and UNO a big plus
Contact
dev@sw.openoffice.org
freuter at novell dot com, fstrba at novell dot com


Style optimizer for Writer

Often, people format their text document in weird ways, using whitespace for formatting, putting in section numbers literally instead of using the numbering feature etc. This proposal is about detecting such suboptimal content and converting it into a properly formatted document (using styles wherever possible).

  • Reguired skills/knowledge: fluent in one of the languages OOo has an UNO bridge for, familiarity with Writer and Writer API a big plus
Contact
dev@sw.openoffice.org
kendy at novell dot com, fstrba at novell dot com

Word macro compatibility

Recently Sun and Novell announced to pool resources to provide VBA macro compatability see [http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/sun_and_novell_work_together here].

Currently work in the project is concentrated on providing Excel support by

  • providing the framework for the compatibiltiy api via a plugable component
  • modifying the basic engine to support more compatibility features
  • porting the Helperapi code (for excel) to c++ (see. VBA & Porting_notes)

Tasks

  • extend the base framework by developing helper objects and implementations to be used by both the excel and writer compatibility object implementations
  • port the existing (word) helper api objects from Java to C++

Required skills/knowledge: C++, Java. Knowledge of UNO, OOo's writer API and some experience with VBA macros and Word VBA api a big plus

Contact
dev@sw.openoffice.org
noel.power at novell dot com

RTF Tokenizer

The new OOXML import filter for Word documents (.dotx) will soon have a better import quality than the existing RTF import filter. The concept of this new filter allows to plug in doc and rtf tokenizers so that these formats can be handled by the same filter. A doc tokenizer is already in the works, an RTF tokenizer would be a very welcomed addition.

Tasks

  • understand how the tokenizer is embedded into the filter
  • tokenize RTF

Required skills/knowledge: C++. Knowledge about Word's document model and/or the RTF format would be advantageous.

Contact
dev@sw.openoffice.org
Henning.Brinkmann at sun dot com

Enhanced usability of working with page attributes and properties

Currently changing page attributes or adding page properties like headers and footers is hard to understand. Users that don't know about hard page breaks, page styles and follow styles will have a hard time to format pages to their likings. A nice UI that hides the technical details and uses terms of the user space would help a lot.

Tasks

  • learn about Writer's page styles and their (UNO) API
  • design and code the new user interface based on this API

Required skills/knowledge: C++; UI design

Contact
dev@sw.openoffice.org
Oliver.Specht at sun dot com

Improvements of the HTML filter

The current HTML filter generates (and imports) HTML 3.2 with a few extensions. Possible improvements are:

- support HTML4 - turn formulas into MathML (not GIFs).

Required skills/knowledge: C++. Knowledge HTML.

Contact
dev@sw.openoffice.org
Michael.Brauer at sun dot com

HTML import/export: XForms

Writer supports XForms, so does ODF. But although HTML supports XForms, too, the HTML import and export so far does not.

Required skills/knowledge: C++. Knowledge about XForms and HTML.

Contact
dev@sw.openoffice.org
dev@xml.openoffice.org
Michael.Brauer at sun dot com

HTML import/export: Clean export of HTML4

Writer's HTML filter currently stores HTML with couple of extensions which allow to re-load certain features, like text fields. It should be adapted to save clean HTML4. This includes

  • storing some features as CSS rather than HTML tags
  • removing Writer's HTML extension by turning them into CSS extensions or by entirely removing them
  • export of additional features that are supported by Writer and HTML4/CSS, but currently not by the HTML filter

To be able to re-load the files that Writer saved again, the HTML import needs to be adapted, too.

Required skills/knowledge: C++. Knowledge about HTML/CSS.

Contact
dev@sw.openoffice.org
dev@xml.openoffice.org
Michael.Brauer at sun dot com


Enhance Word Count

The Word Count feature of Writer does not match the requirements of professional writers. Some enhancements and bug fixes are still needed.

Tasks:

  • get familiar with the Break Iterator implementation
  • compile a list of necessary enhancements
  • implement and test with documents provided by the community

Required skills/knowledge: C++.

Contact
dev@sw.openoffice.org
Frank.Meies at sun dot com


Grammar Checking Framework

We like to have a good sample implementation for our recently introduced and still rudimentary Grammar Checking Framework (API and UI). Since there is already a working tool named 'LanguageTool' that is available as extension to do this we like to use that one as basis for the sample implementation. Because

  • it already works with OOo and therefor should be very easy to make use of
  • it supports English and thus allows a lot of people to review the actual results

Tasks:

  • get a good working sample implementation
  • extend the API where needed
  • modify the UI to display and edit the results provided
  • implement missing parts in the framework

Required skills/knowledge: C++, UNO API knowledge would be a plus

Contact
dev@lingucomponent.openoffice.org, dev@sw.openoffice.org
Thomas.Lange at sun dot com

Calc/Chart

Templates for Charts

Into OpenOffice.org integrate the possibility to create and use templates for charts, see issue 33793. It will help users to speed up their workflow and ease the creation of stylish charts. There should be an easy way to create a template from an existing chart. When creating a chart the user should be able to choose between different templates. Some useful default templates should be offered, for example line charts with different dashes or bar charts with different hatchings.

  • Required skills/knowledge: C++, ability to understand and manipulate complex systems, general knowledge about charts
  • Useful skills: ability to build and debug OpenOffice.org, basic UNO API knowledge, ODF or general XML knowledge, knowledge about OpenOffice.org modules chart2 and xmloff
Contact
dev@graphics.openoffice.org
Ingrid.Halama at sun.com

Bubble Chart

Into OpenOffice.org integrate the possibility to create bubble charts, see issue 64689. The new chart type will be offered in the chart wizard and chart type dialog. An additional data range for the bubble sizes needs to be selectable. According bubble shapes must be created for the view.

  • Required skills/knowledge: C++, ability to understand and manipulate complex systems, general knowledge about charts
  • Useful skills: ability to build and debug OpenOffice.org, basic UNO API knowledge, knowledge about the UNO drawing API, knowledge about OpenOffice.org modules chart2
Contact
dev@graphics.openoffice.org
Ingrid.Halama at sun.com

Stacked label support for bar charts

This task is about adding support for stacked, or structured category label support in horizontal and vertical bar charts. The structure of category labels is inferred from the structure of the cell range that provides the category label values, especially from how the merged cells are layed out. See Issue 82971 for more details.

  • Reguired skills/knowledge: C++, familiarity with UNO a big plus
Contact
dev@sc.openoffice.org
kyoshida at novell dot com

Improve Calc autofilter

In comparison to Calc, Excel 2007 has a much improved cell autofilter implementation. This proposal is about improving the existing filter inside Calc, according to this blog.

  • Reguired skills/knowledge: C++, some familiarity with Calc a big plus
Contact
dev@sc.openoffice.org
kyoshida at novell dot com


Improve numerical stability of spreadsheet functions

Some statistical and financial analysis spreadsheet functions need improvement in numerical stability, for example for very large and/or small values, see issue 18704 and dependencies.

  • Reguired skills/knowledge: C++, knowledge of numerical analysis and algorithms, mathematical background
Contact
dev@sc.openoffice.org
Eike.Rathke at sun dot com

Add new spreadsheet functions and parameters according to ODFF

The OpenDocument Format Formula specification (ODFF aka OpenFormula) defines several new spreadsheet functions and new optional parameters to already existing functions that have to be implemented.

  • Reguired skills/knowledge: C++; for some statistical functions knowledge of numerical algorithms and mathematical background
Contact
dev@sc.openoffice.org
Eike.Rathke at sun dot com

Component to check spreadsheet documents for potential errors

Write an extension that checks a spreadsheet document for potential errors in formulas, presents a list of the findings to the user, and allows to correct them.

Things to look for could include

  • Cells that contain numbers stored as text and are used in formulas,
  • Number cells that are not used in any formulas,
  • Empty cells that are used in single-cell formula references.

The list is not meant to be exhaustive.

  • Required skills/knowledge: Java or C++, spreadsheet usage
Contact
dev@sc.openoffice.org
Niklas.Nebel at sun.com


Watch Window

A Watch Window is a separate, small window that remains "on top" and enables users to monitor a selected set of cells, see issue 28386.

This could be implemented as an add-on component with a modeless dialog containing the list of watched cells as well as the UI to add or remove cells.

  • Required skills/knowledge: Java or C++
Contact
dev@sc.openoffice.org
Niklas.Nebel at sun.com

Impress/Draw

Implement additional 3D slideshow transitions

Building on top of a successful [1] from last year, the goal is to add more 3D transitions to the Impress application. A transition is an animation where one page is visible in the beginning and another in the end. It is used during presentation slideshow to switch pages.

The already existing OpenGL transition engine gets the previous and next page as a prerendered image, and then gets the stage (i.e. the screen) exclusively, for the duration of the transition.

  • Reguired skills/knowledge: C++, OpenGL. familiarity with UNO is welcomed
Contact
dev@graphics.openoffice.org
rodo at novell dot com, tbehrens at novell dot com

Port Impress 3D slideshow transition framework to Windows

Building on top of a successful [2] from last year, the goal is to port the underlying OpenGL framework to Windows.

The already existing OpenGL transition engine gets the previous and next page as a prerendered image, and then gets the stage (i.e. the screen) exclusively, for the duration of the transition.

  • Reguired skills/knowledge: C++, OpenGL, WGL. familiarity with UNO is welcomed
Contact
dev@graphics.openoffice.org
rodo at novell dot com, tbehrens at novell dot com

Standalone presentation viewer

In comparison to PowerPoint, OOo Impress does not have a standalone presentation viewer, although this greatly simplifies handling for inexperienced users. Furthermore, it offers a chance to pursue different routes in terms of UI and functionality, that might not (easily) fit in the main Impress application.

  • Reguired skills/knowledge: some familiarity with UNO a big plus, preferred implementation language is C#
Contact
dev@graphics.openoffice.org
rodo at novell dot com


OpenGL canvas backend

With a DirectX-based Canvas implementation already available for Windows, a natural move is to provide an OpenGL-based on for the unixoid platforms OOo runs on. This proposal is about providing an initial XCanvas-implementation that solely uses OpenGL for rendering.

  • Reguired skills/knowledge: C++, OpenGL, some familiarity with UNO a big plus
Contact
dev@gsl.openoffice.org
rodo at novell dot com


Create a native CoreGraphics canvas for Mac OSX

The current Aqua port for OOo uses vcl as the Canvas rendering backend. This proposal is about writing a native Core Graphics implementation, bringing anti-aliasing and lightning-fast alpha blending to the components that already use the canvas. Although a 100% feature-complete implementation seems to be unrealistic given the short timeframe, simple Impress documents should already render correctly.

  • Reguired skills/knowledge: C++, familiarity with OSX, and optimally Core Graphics, some UNO know-how a plus.
Contact
mac@porting.openoffice.org, dev@gsl.openoffice.org
ericb at openoffice dot org, tbehrens at novell dot com


Use PDF import's layout recognition for other vector formats

OOo's newly implemented PDF import employs some sophisticated layout recognition techniques, to generate a layout-compatible document. Leveraging this framework for other vector formats will make OOo an editor not only for PDF, but also for PostScript, EMF, XPS - whatever the successful applicant for this task chooses to import.

  • Reguired skills/knowledge: C++, some knowledge about the vector format to be imported. familiarity with UNO is welcomed
Contact
dev@graphics.openoffice.org
tbehrens at novell dot com


Implement an AutoCAD vector import for OOo

To complete OOo's already impressive list of import filters, this proposal is about adding an AutoCAD import for Draw. There's a spec at [3] to start from.

  • Reguired skills/knowledge: C++, some familiarity with AutoCAD and UNO is a plus.
Contact
dev@graphics.openoffice.org
fstrba at novell dot com


Add animation support to Impress Flash export

Since OOo2.0, the Impress flash export lacks support for animation effects. This task is about adding at least initial support for a selected set of animations (5 common ones of the entry, emphasis, and exit groups, plus a set of slide transitions) to the Flash export filter.

  • Reguired skills/knowledge: C++, familiarity with Flash and swf file format and Actionscript, UNO know-how is a plus.
Contact
dev@graphics.openoffice.org
cl at openoffice dot org, tbehrens at novell dot com

Create a Visio import filter for Draw

OOo currently lacks support for a Visio import filter. This proposal is about writing one, using the ODF format as input format to be loaded by the OOo application. Although a full blown filter seems to be unrealistic to be written within the short timeframe, large parts of Visio documents should be able to be filtered correctly.

  • Reguired skills/knowledge: C++, familiarity with Visio, and a fearless attitude towards poking into binary files.
Contact
dev@graphics.openoffice.org
sj at openoffice dot org, fstrba at novell dot com


Create a Freelance Graphics filter for OOo Draw

OOo currently lacks support for a Lotus freelance import filter. This proposal is about writing one, using the ODF format as input format to be loaded by the OOo application. Although a full blown filter seems to be unrealistic to be written within the short timeframe, large parts of Freelance documents should be able to be filtered correctly.

  • Reguired skills/knowledge: C++, familiarity with Freelance graphics, and a fearless attitude towards poking into binary files.
Contact
dev@graphics.openoffice.org
sj at openoffice dot org, fstrba at novell dot com

Create a diagramming sidebar extension for OOo Draw/Impress

OOo's gallery is currently a bit lacking when compared to e.g. Visio's way of easy diagramming selection. This proposal is about providing a diagramming extension for the Draw/Impress panes, presenting diagram topics, most-recently-used list, meta-grouping or topics (referring to one clipart item from more than one topic), smaller thumbnails etc. Or maybe extend the gallery towards these goals.

  • Reguired skills/knowledge: C++, some OOo core coding experience a big plus.
Contact
dev@graphics.openoffice.org
tbehrens at novell dot com, kami_ at openoffice dot org

Base

Joins in dBase queries

Queries to dBase files can currently contain one table only. Scope of the project is to enhance Base' built-in simple query engine to be capable of executing statements line SELECT table1.field1, table2.field2 FROM table1, table2. The dBase driver, the text/csv driver, and the Spreadsheet driver would all benefit from this extension.

Be prepared to dig around here before starting the project, the project touches low-level core implementations, including some heavy-to-read STL stuff, so be prepared to invest some time before writing the first line of code.

  • required skills: C++, SQL knowledge
  • useful skills: Lexx and Yacc
  • Mentor: Ocke.Jansen at sun.com
  • Contact: dev@dba.openoffice.org
  • effort: 6 weeks for an experienced developer
  • more information on the project page

SDBC driver for LDAP directories

OpenOffice.org already features accessing LDAP data, by shipping Mozilla components which enable access to LDAP servers. However, this solution has some disadvantages, the most prominent being that the broad variety of LDAP schemes (i.e. which LDAP classes and attributes are actually used to reflect the data being of interest) is not captured currently - we use a fixed mapping from LDAP to an OOo table, which seriously limits the use of this feature for some people/organizations. Also, including Mozilla binaries is a constant source of hassles for builds done for the various Linux distributions, to the grade that they effectively disabled the complete functionality.

To enable everybody to access the LDAP data of her choice in OOo, we would need to write a dedicated SDBC driver, which "flattens" an LDAP directory to a database table (i.e. provides the data of an LDAP directory as set of rows), but would be fully customizable. This means the user can herself decide which LDAP attribute should be mapped to which "table column" in the "databases table" provided by the SDBC driver.

  • required skills: C++, familarity with UNO
  • useful skills: familarity with LDAP, familarity with OOo's database access API
  • Mentor: Ocke.Jansen at sun.com
  • Contact: dev@dba.openoffice.org
  • effort: 4 weeks for the driver, 2 week for the customizability, 3 weeks for a possible user interface
  • more information on the project page

Dialogs with Form Functionality

When creating a form, the user always needs to bother with a Writer document. Very often, this is much too oversized. It would be sufficient to have a simple dialog which contains all the data access controls.

The project is to (in different steps) - extend the dialog runtime engine to (optionally) include data-aware form controls - create a form designer for dialog-based forms (similar to the existing Basic Dialog IDE) - implement persistence of dialog-based forms - embed dialog-based forms into database documents (.odb)

Depending on more fine-grained planning, it might become apparent that not all of this can be done in the scope of a Google Summer of Code project, and reasonable milestones need to be defined.

  • required skills C++, UNO
  • useful skills: familiarity with OOo's database access and form API, as well as OOo's toolkit API
  • Mentor: Frank.Schoenheit at sun.com
  • Contact: dev@dba.openoffice.org
  • estimated effort: 3 months

New+Enhanced Form Controls

Currently, we lack some more sophisticated controls for entering data into forms. This includes controls for

  • Hyperlinks: This could be specialized text fields, which interpret their content as URL, means they display it in a special way, their text should be clickable, and they allow to browse for an URL.
  • Multimedia Content: Currently, we only have image controls, which allow to interpret binary content found in a database as image. But additionally, we should have at least a “sound control” which allows to store sounds, and play them on request.
  • Unspecified Binary Content: In addition to controls dedicated to special kinds of binary data (such as images and sounds), we should have a generic binary field, which allows to store/load BLOBs (binary large objects) from any source. This would allow the user to store any files in a database, without OOo interfering with this.
  • References to Binary Content: Image as well as sound controls (if we have them) should be able to work with URLs, instead of direct binary content. At the moment, an image control can be bound to a binary field, and tries to interpret any data found in this field as image stream.
    We should allow for databases where only references (aka URLs) to images are stored, and adjust the existing image control (as well as the possibly upcoming sound control) in a way that it can be bound to a text field, interpreting the content as URL to the real data.

Except the Hyperlink control, probably all other types imply the extension of existing implementations, instead of creating new ones. This means that this project is not really self-contained, but requires some knowledge in the existing implementations, or at least the will to wade to them before doing any real work.

  • required skills: C++, good knowledge of UNO, OOo's component model
  • useful skills: knowledge in existing control implementation
  • Mentor: frank.schoenheit at sun.com
  • Contact: dev@dba.openoffice.org
  • estimated effort: 3 weeks for the hyperlink control, 4 weeks for the multimedia control, 2 week for the "unspecified binary content" control

Misc

Support of Universal Business Language (UBL)

The Universal Business Language (UBL), a royalty-free library of standard XML electronic business documents, is successfully being adapted by governments and companies (PDF - 3 MB) all over the world. A great chance for OpenOffice.org to become even more popular in this sector, when being used in the XML electronic business flow to view, edit and sent such UBL documents.

This functionality might be created as standalone UNO component, using existing XML technologies of OpenOffice.org such as XSLT and XForms in conjunction with Office templates containing macros.

  • Required skills/knowledge: XSLT, Java and a OOo Macro language as StarBasic, JavaScript or BeanShell (Java). Familiarity with UNO is welcomed
Contact
dev@xml.openoffice.org
sus at openoffice.org, Svante.Schubert at sun.com

Enhanced SVG export filter

OOo has very limited SVG export functionality. This proposal is about improving the SVG export substantially, e.g. creating SVG that contains multiple slides and can be navigated trough with mouse or key events. It's also conceivable to add animation support for Impress documents, comparable to what the Flash export filter provided in OOo 1.x

  • Reguired skills/knowledge: C++, familiarity with SVG, some UNO know-how.
Contact
dev@graphics.openoffice.org
ka at openoffice dot org, kendy at novell dot com

GUI builder for OOo

Editing OOo's dialogs with a GUI is currently only possible with the OOo Basic dialog editor, which is lacking in several ways. This proposal is about providing support for OOo's new xml resource format in a GUI editor, by e.g. providing a plugin for Glade.

  • Reguired skills/knowledge: familiarity with the chosen dialog editor & its implementation language
Contact
dev@gsl.openoffice.org
jcn at openoffice dot org, pl at openoffice dot org

Crosscompile Win32 OOo on Linux using MSVC in Wine

Compiling OOo for Windows is a major pain and comparatively slow, but often required for the OOo hacker to have her CWS approved. Using the free Microsoft compiler editions combined with fully FLOSS tooling would permit virtually everybody to provide OOo Windows builds. This proposal is about researching this issue, provide the necessary changes to the build system (and maybe Wine) to make that possible. There's been a proof of concept that "wine cl.exe" actually works.

  • Reguired skills/knowledge: familiarity with Wine, the command line and the OOo build system are a big plus
Contact
dev@tools.openoffice.org
tlillqvist at novell dot com, kendy at novell dot com

Template preview

Currently, OOo's template dialogs has provide hard-coded previews, that do not take the document at hand into consideration. This proposal is about providing true preview functionality in the template dialog, such that a user can judge appearance of individual templates before actually applying it.

  • Reguired skills/knowledge: C++, familiarity with UNO a big plus
Contact
dev@framework.openoffice.org
kendy at novell dot com

Performance Improvement

There are several known performance in OpenOffice, and clearly more that can be found with improved profiling. The exciting part of this task is clearly, finding and understanding sillies in the code - mis-uses of otherwise sensible APIs, problematic code structures and so on; and then with the minimum of code tweaking them to make them fly. As part of this, a small improvement to KCachegrind's visualisation will also be required (basic C++). We will also look at reducing memory use as an extensions. Not really a single task, but a collection of incremental wins over some weeks.

  • Required skills/knowledge: C/C++, familiarity with Linux, profiling
Contact
dev@lists.go-oo.org (please CC me)
michael meeks at novell dot com, kendy at novell dot com

ODT/PDF export from OpenOffice.org Wiki

OpenOffice.org documentation is being moved to the OpenOffice.org Wiki. This makes it easier for people to contribute to the content of the documentation, but producing a PDF of ODT of the entire Wiki document or book is not yet possible. The OpenOffice.org Wiki needs a MediaWiki extension developed that will provide a way to convert an aggregation of wiki pages (a "book") to ODT and/or PDF.

  • Required skills/knowledge: PHP and XML, familiarity with ODF a plus
Contact
dev@documentation.openoffice.org
ccornell at openoffice.org, juergen.schmidt at sun.com

WebDAV Versioning (with the DeltaV protocol extension)

To support office collaboration scenarios (e.g. remote collaboration document authoring) OOo needs a tool to provide remote versioning. With the already implemented WebDAV feature we've got the basis for such a tool and the DeltaV protocol extension of WebDAV could add the versioning functionality.

The goal is to provide at least the basic feature "core-versioning" of the protocol.

  • Required skills/knowledge: C++
Contact
dev@ucb.openoffice.org
tobias.krause at sun.com

OXT Extension wizard for templates and XSLT based filter

OXT extensions provide a nice way to bundle a group of templates and share them with other users. Templates are normally created with the office and the idea is to provide a wizard that helps on a higher abstraction level to collect templates and all necessary oxt specific information and build an oxt extension package. The second part is to extend the XSLT filter dialog to export new created XSLT based filters as an oxt extension as well. Currently it is only possible to create a jar file. The new feature should collect some more oxt related info and should create a well formed oxt extension package. The goal is to simplify these tasks and make it as easy as possible to create oxt extension packages that can be easy deployed and can be uploaded in the extensions repository to share them with many other users.


  • Required skills/knowledge: Java or C++
Contact
juergen.schmidt at sun.com

UNO Web Service Proxy - Add Support for Anonymous Complex Types

Web services are more and more emerging. Some examples are Google and Amazon which are providing a SOAP Web service interface for their traditional services, like searching the Web or querying the online bookstore. These interfaces can be reached using UNO and StarBasic using the UNO Web service proxy.

http://udk.openoffice.org/java/examples/wsproxy/component_description.html

The current implementation of the UNO Web Service Proxy lacks support for a very important WSDL feature, that is widely used by existing Web Services - anonymous complex types.

The goal for this project is to add support for anonymous complex types to the existing UNO Web Service Proxy implementation.

  • Required skills/knowledge: Java, UNO, JAX-RPC, WSDL, SOAP, Netbeans
Contact
dev@udk.openoffice.org
kai.sommerfeld at sun.com

Extended Basic/Dialog Library OXT Export

The OOo Basic Macro Organizer already allows to export a Basic/Dialog Library as extension, but without support for the description.xml file described in:

http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/DevGuide/Extensions/description.xml

The goal of this project is to add support for this by creating a corresponding dialog allowing the user to edit all supported elements and by saving the description.xml file into the oxt file afterwards.

  • Required skills/knowledge: C++, Extensions
Contact
dev@api.openoffice.org
andreas.bregas at sun.com

Dialog Editor: Single dialog import

The Dialog Editor allows to export a single dialog as xdl file and - in case of localized dialogs - additional properties files containing the resource strings. This is very useful for adding dialogs / option pages to extensions. But there is no corresponding import functionality which makes it difficult to reimport and change dialogs exported before.

The goal of this project is to add this functionality. It has to be evaluated first how this can be done in a reasonable way as the dialogs are not handled like documents supporting Load/Save/Save as... but stored implicitely in the Library Container system. So there are several options how importing a dialog could work, e.g. replacing the current dialog after warning the user, adding it as new dialog after solving potential name conflicts. Also potential conflicts concerning the languages supported by the imported dialog respectively the target library have to be handled.

  • Required skills/knowledge: C++
Contact
dev@api.openoffice.org
andreas.bregas at sun.com

New Tasks

If you have a task that is challenging enough, and there is an OpenOffice.org Project Member willing to mentor the task, feel free to coordinate with the appropriate project lead. If the appropriate project has been found and it supports the task, add it below and make sure the mentor applies with the web app.

Each entry should contain the task description, required skills, project mailing list for discussion and personal contact. Links to the To-Dos are appreciated provided that the task is well described there ;-)

===Example entry===

This is just an example - the real entry must not start with a space at the beginning
of the line.
A full description of the task should be here; one that will help to see that this task
is important,  and interesting to hack on.  Alternatively it could be an exact link to
the description that is already in To-Dos.

* Required skills/knowledge: Language, technology1, technology2, ...

; Contact
: dev@project.openoffice.org
: The.Mentor at organization com
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