Sunday 17 June 2012

Making a good start is half task done

The Project Manager


This project upon completion will totally change how big books are handled in scribus.


When I chose this project for gsoc, it seemed to me that it would be easy when i saw its description on scribus-gsoc-ideas page. But during a discussion on irc, malex told me that this project cant be fully completed by 2 of us even in a year. I was still not sure. But I now know that the scope of this project is too big and proper planning is required to make it successful. 


There were a lot of things to be done before I could actually start coding. Presently, PM(project manager) is going to be coded as a new app which will be launched when a book has to be handled.
A new file format sla2(project description file) is to be made using xml to store shared attributes.  Before that invercity mailed me to discuss use cases, so i looked up use cases in some books (never heard of it before). I saw scribus  user-documentation to see how scribus works in detail. I learnt how to make gui using qt-designer by making ui files to make some base gui to code upon. After that JLuc told me to make some api and basic function names to be used in PM which i did. I also made project description file (data types that should be added to sla2 ) after MrB gave me some hints. I tried to add new files to scribus repo but compilation error occured and i tried solving the problem myself and by asking at qt and c++ irc nodes but with  little help. I am trying to learn basic cmake.Before that I learnt git and added some testing branches to the repo. I learnt how xml is parsed presently in scribus and which classes and functions are there for importing and parsing masterpages and styles.
Since there are a lot of new things to be learnt, it is difficult to start coding right off. Though I coded some sample load/save code in testing branches at git.


Problems that occurred.


When adding a new file to scribus repo, scribus does not compile. Throws an error ---> undefined reference to newClass>function. Maybe that file needs to be added to sources list somewhere.


Things I did

1.Project Definition file
2.API
3.Learnt XML
4.Learnt git.
5.Learnt qt designing using qt designer
6.Browsed scribus code for
a)existing import functions for masterdoc and styles
b)how present sla is parsed
7.Making primitive use cases.
8.Examining the present sla to see how the xml format is designed in scribus and how are attributes stored presently.
9.Learnt making a new app in qt.
10.Learning cmake.
11.Made some primitive code for saving/loading xml.