[Gsoc] Reg. reviews on GSOC proposal.

[Puneet Girdhar]

Hi all,
    I recently updated my GSOC proposal. Please give any suggestion /
feedback you have on this proposal. I  need mentor's comments and GSOC
applicant comments to complete my proposal . Please visit my student project
page and do drop some comments.

http://socghop.appspot.com/student_proposal/show/google/gsoc2009/chasedspeed/t123869987180

Here is my GSOC proposal :

Abstract:   Marbles project aims to improve develop activity in more
attractive and fun oriented way. Children are full of
ideas,imagination,dreams and love to develop things on their own, whether
there are small towns, homes, toys, kitchens. This project will provide an
outlet for their imagination so that they can create small programs, create
graphical animations and enjoy programming. For developers, It would also
have a sugar bot integration for facilitating unit-tests and debugging
facilities.   Content:

About Me
------------------------------


 Q1. What is your name?
 Ans. Puneet Girdhar

Q2. What is your email address?
Ans. puneetgirdhar.iiit at gmail.com

Q3. What is your Sugar Labs wiki username?
Ans. puneet

Q4. What is your IRC nickname?
Ans. chasedspeed

Q5. What is your primary language? (We have mentors who speak multiple
languages and can match you with one of them if you'd prefer.)
Ans. english and hindi

Q6. Where are you located, and what hours do you tend to work? (We also try
to match mentors by general time zone if possible.)
Ans.Hyderabad, India-500032. In summer, I can devote full time on open
source activity. Any time suits me fine.

Q7. Have you participated in an open-source project before? If so, please
send us URLs to your profile pages for those projects, or some other
demonstration of the work that you have done in open-source. If not, why do
you want to work on an open-source project this summer?

Ans.This would be my first experience in open source development. I have
worked on variety of projects ranging from web services, mobile development
in j2me, python web server managment. I guess, I knew about GSOC before but
was busy in learning open source technologies so could not apply before, but
now after gaining enough experience about project development and technical
skills I didn't want to lose the opportunity to contribute back to open
source community.I want to get started here and wish to continue even after
GSOC.


About My project
------------------------------



Q8. What is the name of your project?

Ans.Marbles : Shape the imagination

Q9. Describe your project in 10-20 sentences. What are you making? Who are
you making it for, and why do they need it? What technologies (programming
languages, etc.) will you be using?

Ans.We are supporting children imagination and trying to realize them in
digtal world. Students often love to indulge themselves in various acivities
ranging from playing to building stuff, to management . These are nothing
but their imaginative reach trying to make it real. These creativity are the
most important one and the most beneficial in child development. Computers
on other hand are meant for catching imagination and creating artificial
reality, then why shouldn't we attach them both. We would be using computers
digital approach to support child creativity. Children can play games, learn
programming , build application, learn graphics and many other activities.

Use case scenarios :

Students can use this project for
a) create a simple UI application with simple drag and drop widgets.

b) they would be able to resize the widget, reorder them and associate some
event handlers to the widgets.

c) Programming support would be given for advanced students where they can
test and improve their programming skills for beginners, a step-by-step
instruction sets for introducing them in programming.

d) We can go for sound support with pygame library, where we can interact
the program with simple sounds, since children get attracted to sound more
easily than text

e) Help Manual to get started for students. Special care will be taken for
information supplied, they would be concise and expressive.


This project also targets the developers, they can use our application to

a) add / remove activity

b) modify activity, Activity modules would be independent of architecture
and easily modifiable to suit current needs.

c) sugar bot support for unit-testing

d) debugger integration with gui to facilitate debugging the activity.

We can associate various group activities among students to encourage them
in developing environment.

Technologies I will be using are pygtk, XML parsers ( if sharing of
information is required ) . Pygtk, gives a gtk libraries support which we
can code them to interact with the enviornment and develop UI applications.
XML communication would be required if there is need to transfer the
information from one end to another. Some of key points would be :

a) Primary aim would be to provide basic learning experience in UI
application with minimal programming efforts.

b) Secondary aim would be to increase Scope for development for future
developers.

c) Application would be built as simple as possible with highlighting and
attractive features.

d) Sharing of code over network, integrating of code in program directly.

e) Exception handlers, should be interactive for users and should take minor
decisions automatically.




Technical Approach
--------------------------------
Below is the rough draft, it talks about the implementation in abstract way
just to share the idea of implementation.





         [image: Marbles: Flow data diagram]

Here visual UI representations gives an option to select widgets, authoring
tool will assist the users to place the widgets on frame and also do some
prechecks on UI widget compatibility.Program generator then generates the
optimized code based on UI types, positions and associates event handlers to
the widgets. Views should be handled independently and it includes final
checks on widgets too. History generation is being done side by side to
facilitate recoveries if error occurs and finally, output generation ( both
UI and code output ) . Code output from the software will be stored in
specific directories or in database.



Q10.  What is the timeline for development of your project? The Summer of
Code work period is 7 weeks long, May 23 - August 10; tell us what you will
be working on each week. (As the summer goes on, you and your mentor will
adjust your schedule, but it's good to have a plan at the beginning so you
have an idea of where you're headed.) Note that you should probably plan to
have something "working and 90% done" by the midterm evaluation (July 6-13);
the last steps always take longer than you think, and we will consider
cancelling projects which are not mostly working by then.
# Convince us, in 5-15 sentences, that you will be able to successfully
complete your project in the timeline you have described. This is usually
where people describe their past experiences, credentials, prior projects,
schoolwork, and that sort of thing, but be creative. Link to prior work or
other resources as relevant.

Ans.

1. Preparation phase
  Time : April 25 - may25

   a) gathering requirements of the project
   b) getting involved with Mentor in verifying and validating the
requirements.
   c) Architectural design / Pseudo code.

  This phase, I would be communicating with people as much as possible,
getting requirements and verifying with people or community. I would also go
to the pre-releases of similar softwares to get prons and cons and trying to
improve in our project development.I am sure to get community support on
this very interesting project.


2. Coding Phase
  Time: May 25- July1 ( This phase would be subdivided to different phases )

   a) divisions for coding timeline
   b) decide approach for programming
   c) actual coding, testing accordingly
   d) documenting code parallely
   e) periodically sharing information with mentors and community members

  This phase will include actual coding. Since I already knew the related
technologies and familiar to sugar development process. I can devote more
time to coding and thus improving the project at each phases. I will share
doubts with community if occurs.


3. Testing Phase
   Time: July7- July 25

   a) full testing of system with different phases
   b) use coverage analysis to know the redundance code and improving it
further
   c) fixing bugs if any
   d) Last minute changes before final submission
   e) finish any documentation steps if left.

  After coding, this is the most interesting part for me. Past I have also
worked on code coverage tools for python and really love to analyze the
efficency of program. I will go for different testing tools on program, Some
tools I would like to go with
a) coverage
b) I will use boost algorithms to improve run-time if it comes under
requirement. I have been using CPYTHON for coding competitions and familiar
with different tweaks to modify run time such as psycho module. This will
help in increasing the robustness and stability of program.

4. Finalizing phase / Revision
   Time: from August 1 to END.

   a) review of code/ algorithm
   b) production of coverage reports, analysis, performance etc.
   c) discussions on limitations of software and beneficials.
   d) preparing final deployments for various systems.

 Documentation stuffs would go in this phase

Time line: Seems very little time to do so many things, but I will try to
give the best from my side.

I have worked on variety of projects ranging from web application, mobile
j2me midlets, Web server management( python project ) and desktop
application. One of the interesting projects I worked on is "cross platform
windows explorer" which I built in python using wxwidget. I have been
working as an intern in california based company and worked on various
technical areas like Web services, remote health care using mobile and also
closely working with project manager in designing complex medicare systems.

Believe me, I have that talent needed to build or design a complex system
for customers. Below are some of my projects I worked on

a) Shallow file browser: cross platform browser
b) Multithreaded multi media-server : A multithreaded cross platform
media-server for streaming podcast or mulitimedia contents to media devices.
It is currently being used by medicare services to stream health podcasts to
the users.
c) Mobile Softwares: I had done some freelance work in mobile computation
last semester. Major projects, I was associated with are Mobile shopping,
SRV navigation tool for medicare services .
d) Web Services: I have been actively involved in web-development from past
1 year and used Ruby on rails and Django for development. Django, by far,
was among my best tool for Web-UI applications.
e) Minor projects on kernel implementation ( as a part of OS course ),
Database managment projects and others.


Me and the community
------------------------------


Q11. If your project is successfully completed, what will its impact be on
the Sugar Labs community? Give 3 answers, each 1-3 paragraphs in length. The
first one should be yours. The other two should be answers from members of
the Sugar Labs community, at least one of whom should be a Sugar Labs GSoC
mentor. Provide email contact information for non-GSoC mentors.

Ans. This project support children creativity and imagination. These small
games, development activity will surely help them to become problem solvers,
innovators, and creative thinkers. These activities will also help the
children to develop many important skills that boost a child's learning and
success.

[ TODO ]

Q12. Sugar Labs will be working to set up a small (5-30 unit) Sugar pilot
near each student project that is accepted to GSoC so that you can
immediately see how your work affects children in a deployment. We will make
arrangements to either supply or find all the equipment needed. Do you have
any ideas on where you would like your deployment to be, who you would like
to be involved, and how we can help you and the community in your area begin
it?

Ans. That would be a great idea to go with. I've been working in NGO for
primary children education called "ASHA-KIRAN" in our college and it would a
great learning experience for them. Here, in hyderabad, We have a language
problem, they don't understand hindi, my mother tongue, and I don't
understand, telgu ( local language ). So, I always use different activities
to teach them like sound creation, drawing, Word dictionary, some local
plays etc. I believe in case of language problems like India, We should
teach the children as:

a) Alphabet creation, as a drawing practice
b) Sound, give alphabets some sound, try to echo them loudly, may be in
funnier way.
c) Try to associate meaning to words, here imagination comes into play. I
use some stories behind words, or pictures
d) Last, use them in sentence.

I can associate these features in my project and sugar lab can help us to
provide technical equipments to teach children. We already have a good
infrastructure in campus, so I will start using my project even in
development stage with them and report the status to sugar community.



Q13. What will you do if you get stuck on your project and your mentor isn't
around?

Ans. I have been working on open source projects for quite a long time and I
know, we always get stuck with some problem may be installation, compiling,
syntax error, many more but I guess this is where the interesting part
begins and open source community comes into play. In my views, we always
learn new things about the error/software if we ask doubts in community. So,
if I ever get stuck on the project, I will raise my doubts in mailing lists,
ask clearifications in irc chat, write in blog or on some related community
sites where I can get any assistant from.

Other assistant I am sure to get it from my seniors, they all have been
participating in GSOC from past years and would love to assist me if need
occurs.


Q14. How do you propose you will be keeping the community informed of your
progress and any problems or questions you might have over the course of the
project?

Ans. I love interactive with people and I will keep community members duly
informed. I can try following things to work this out

a) Chatting on IRC chat
b) Mailing lists
c) tracking specific person or related to the area personally via email.
d) Posting queries on blog



Miscellaneous
------------------------------

Q15. We want to make sure that you can set up a
[[DevelopmentTeam#Development_systems|development environment]] before the
summer starts. Please send us a link to a screenshot of your Sugar
development environment with the following modification: when you hover over
the XO-person icon in the middle of Home view, the drop-down text should
have your email in place of "Restart." See the image on the right for an
example. It's normal to need assistance with this, so please visit our IRC
channel, #sugar on irc.freenode.net, and ask for help.
Ans.  I am a fedora loving guy and installed sugar system on my fedora PC. I
googled for the installation and successfully completed the following tasks

a) Installed the system using yum packages.
   This is just double click installation like windows. But I could not find
the development procedure here.

b) Built using source.
   I used jhbuild to install and update the source code needed for the sugar
development. I tested it by creating some activities given on wiki page of
sugar lab and it was working fine.

I've started exploring things and really looking forward for a good open
source development.
[Todo]


Q16. What is your t-shirt size? (Yes, we know Google asks for this already;
humor us.)
medium


Q17. Is there anything else we should have asked you or anything else that
we should know that might make us like you or your project more?

  Just for introduction, I am pursuing my BTECH degree from IIIT Hyderabad.
I had started using linux from past 2 years and since then I love every bit
of it. I also have research interest and working on my research paper on
"simulation of rigid blocks during earthquake". I am an active coder in SPOJ
and topcoder and have a strong python programming skills. I have also worked
as an intern in california based company "buddibot" developing medicare
services for elderly people.

  No matter if I get selected or not, but I love to continue with sugar
community.I already registered myself in sugar bug reporting tool and trying
to study source code. Please let me know how can I assist to open source
community.

Thank You & Regards,
Puneet.




-- 
Puneet Girdhar
BTECH CSE ( IIIrd Year )
IIIT Hyderabad
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