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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    GSoC question: an improvement over a library I'm developing, would it
From:       Daniel_Calviño_Sánchez <danxuliu () gmail ! com>
Date:       2009-03-30 17:37:48
Message-ID: 2c1daefb0903301037q4b0d4ee8g1122482b98aec308 () mail ! gmail ! com
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Hi,

I'm developing a library for KDE and I wondered whether an improvement
over it could serve as a project for Google Summer of Code or not.

A little background first. The library is called KTutorial. It is a
library for interactive tutorials in KDE applications. Tutorials are
embedded in the application itself, and reacts to user actions: waits
for some task to be accomplished, warns if something wasn't done as it
should, etcetera. It is like a mix between the Real Time Strategy
games in-game tutorials and Eclipse cheat sheets.

Right now, the library is just a prototype and tutorials must be
written in C++ and shipped with the application itself. I'm going to
enable Kross on KTutorial, so tutorials can be scripted. I have been
planning this since a year ago, but sadly due to university duties it
was impossible for me. However, I'm going to work on KTutorial as my
final year project in Computer Engineering, so my student duties won't
be an obstacle again.

The webpage can be seen at http://csl2-ktutorial.forja.rediris.es,
although I'm planning on moving it to SourceForge.net (it resides in a
Spanish forge due to "historical reasons").

Enough background, now to the GSoC proposal.

I expect that, when the GSoC coding phase begins, KTutorial will
support scripted tutorials and it will have a more mature set of
features. However, even if this state is reached, KTutorial will still
have a problem: writing tutorials will be mostly limited to coders.

The GSoC project would be to develop a visual editor for tutorials, so
they could be easily created by non-coders.

The flow of a tutorial is implemented using conditions (like "wait for
button ok to be pressed") that, when satisfied, make the tutorial
advance to a new step. The editor would manage a reasonably wide range
of conditions, those more likely to be needed in a tutorial (for
example, waiting a KAction to be triggered, but not waiting for a
tooltip to be shown), but it will also be extensible, so new
conditions could be easily plugged into it.

That would be the (very) summarized GSoC proposal. And now, do you
feel this idea is worth applying for? Does it seem like a feature
interesting enough for GSoC? Should I address someone specific to talk
about it? Also note that, although it is designed for KDE, it has
nothing to do with KDE yet (I mean, I'm sure this is the first time
you read that KTutorial even existed ;) ).

Also, although not related to SoC, if you are an application
developer, please take into account that at this moment it is only a
prototype. It lacks a lot of features, so don't feel disappointed if
you take a look to it and see that it isn't what you expected :)

Thanks for your attention.

Regards,
Daniel
 
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