So, just before the weekend, we received the great news that Google chose LibreOffice as a mentoring organisation for Google Summer of Code again this year. Some of you might remember that last year we had several extremely successful Google Summer of Code projects and that two of our successful students are currently employed working on free and opensource software as a direct consequence of their participation in the program. I had a priviledge to mentor Eilidh McAdam and we implemented a Visio import filter that is one of the flagship features of LibreOffice 3.5. Eilidh is now employed by Lanedo.
This year, we proposed with Valek Filippov two projects related to reverse-engineered file-formats. The first is the implementation of MS Publisher import filter for LibreOffice and the second is to help to improve and extend the Corel Draw import filter that will be part of LibreOffice 3.6 release. Both projects require working knowledge of C++ and a lot of good will. Each of the import filters consists of a standalone library and a glue that plugs the library into LibreOffice. These libraries can be built as system libraries and LibreOffice can use them from the system. The advantage of this approach for a student participating at the development is that there is only a minimum need of recompiling LibreOffice if some substantial part of the glue (that is rather small) changes. Therefore, I encourage all of you who are considering applying with LibreOffice for this year's Google Summer of Code to have a close look at those two projects. As a bonus is that if you are successful, you become famous and eventually rich.
You can have a look at libcdr, the horsepower behind the Corel Draw import filter and at the skeleton of libmspub, that will be the basis of the Publisher import filter. And don't hesitate to become rich and famous with Google Summer of Code at LibreOffice
