[Scummvm-devel] GSoC mentoring / handling student inqueries

[Max Horn]

Am 22.03.2010 um 14:03 schrieb yotam barnoy:

> I think the gsoc-mentors list makes sense. That way only people who want to get those emails will do so. If a question is posted which warrants the attention of -devel, it can be forwarded here. 

Yup, I agree, and I'll handle it like that.

> BTW please add me to the list.

I added you.


Folks, the OpenTasks page could really need some lovin'! I just update the "build system" task a bit, as it didn't reflect the addition of create_msvc yet, nor the improved build system of the tools.


Maybe somebody would want to add entries for some of the following ideas  (even a brief stub would be a start). These are were brief and sketchy notes, and I am probably assuming too many things to be implicitly clear from the little I wrote; sorry for that, feel free to pester me for details on the why's and how's and I can try to provide them.
See also <http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/User:Fingolfin#Wild_unsorted_ideas> for some more ramblings of mine; feel free to borrow any of these for further task ideas.


== Vector based fonts (probably using TrueType fonts and the FreeType lib) ==

An optional feature, of course, it would have to be possible to disable it completely for low end devices, and fall back to the current bitmap based code instead. This would e.g. make it possible to create more advance themes. Also, it would help a lot with the next task idea, localizing ScummVM In particular, once / if we extend that one to UTF-8 support.


== Allow localizing ScummVM ==

Probably using gettext; other approaches can be suggested, too.

Once again, it must be possible to turn this feature OFF during compile time, to not hamper ports.

I would recommend focusing on western languages, at least initially. That is, languages which work with a simple 8bit encoding. This would make it easier to adapt most of ScummVM. Also we would not have to deal with things like UTF-8, and rendering unicode char data. Also, it would make it possible to write the code such that even on the NDS one could benefit from localization, by making the localized text loading super light-weight. 

Full Unicode support, if you want to do it properly, is a *major* PITA, and gets worse if you want to add support for languages which do not just use "funny" character (no offense intended), but also go from right-to-left or top-to-bottom. But maybe UTF-8 support is still doable if one restricts to "simple" non-composite chars, and only left-to-right support, at least if you use freetype anyway; if so, it would then be quite nice to have.


== Anything you can dream of ==
OK, we already have that one: <http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/OpenTasks#Anything_you_can_dream_of>. But maybe we should also add a link to the feature request tracker?



Cheers,
Max