Gsoc 2008 Ideas

Google Summer of Code 2008

Google's Summer of Code program provides funding for students who'd like to contribute to open source projects. Mixxx is a good project to work on because it gives you experience working with cross-platform development as well as writing code that's going to power live performances (ie. stability is key).

Ideas

Here are some of our ideas. Under GSoC you can either apply to work on one of these suggestions or you can come up with an idea of your own. Also you may like the general outline of one of our ideas but would like to put a different spin on it, we're happy to discuss all these things.

Scalable Skins with SVG

Mixxx currently uses bitmap skins to allow users to change the look of the application. However this ties each skin to a specific window size. Being able to render skin elements using SVG would allow for not only a higher level of graphical quality but would also allow skins to fit many different screen sizes. A student would initially implement support for rendering SVG graphics within the existing skin framework and would then go on to implement support for changing the window size of Mixxx. This project might also be a good opportunity for a more artistic student as an optional add-on would be to design an SVG based skin to test all the code changes thoroughly.

Better Support for MIDI Devices

There are hundreds of different MIDI controllers in the world, all of which have different buttons and knobs. Mixxx currently relies on XML files which describe how to map MIDI events to user interface elements. At the moment these have to be created by hand and allow only the most basic types of mapping. Hardware support is a key aspect of Mixxx and one which could benefit from more dedicated attention. A successful student in this project would put themselves in an excellent position to continue as a key member of the Mixxx development team after GSoC, should they want to do so. We have two ideas which we think would significantly improve support in Mixxx given below but we'd be happy to discuss others:

Support More Advanced Controllers

There are all sorts of interesting controllers out there with buttons that return wierd ranges of values or that when you hold down make other buttons do certain things. Generally to support these you end up having to write some small piece of C++ that maps the output properly and then activate that from the XML somehow. This is kind of silly and means that if you aren't willing to compile your own version of Mixxx, it's often hard to get some features of your controller supported. The solution we're considering is to write a simple interpreter that parses commands in the XML file to allow simple calculations to be performed in a highly configurable way. This isn't as scary as it sounds and would be a really interesting piece of code to write.

Better Usability

Some people will never write an XML text file by hand to make their controller work. It would be really nice to have some kind of GUI which would allow even a preliminary version of an XML mapping to be produced. This would be a highly user interface focussed project and would be ideal for someone who enjoys this type of work.

Mobile Device Support

A very nice addition to Mixxx would be to auto-detect when media players, mobile phones and mass storage devices are connected to a computer and allow access to this music immediately from within the library view. Then next time you're DJing at a party and someone says, 'Do you have "The Obscure Guys - Ambient Experiment #53 (Rare Techno Remix)"?', you can say, 'Just plug in your iPod'.

Some thought for this project would need to be put into how to detect media devices in a platform independant way. This is a very self-contained task and would therefore be suitable even for someone without too much experience working on large software projects.

Stability

For live performances, Mixxx must never-ever die. Although Mixxx is pretty good at the moment, there's room for a more serious approach to stability than just fixing crashes as we find them. A student could for example write a stress testing robot for Mixxx which helps weed out memory links and crash bugs automatically. They could also explore possibilities for recovering from crashes automatically and quickly. There is presumably plenty of room for clever ideas here. We offered this project last year and had to turn down some competent people in favour of higher priority projects but this year we're offering it again and would encourage people to reapply if they did so in the past.

We're currently compiling a list of ideas for potential projects from our developers. The ideas list "is meant to introduce contributors to your project's needs and to provide inspiration to would-be student applicants".

Your idea here

(With thorough description)

• Scalable Vector based UI
• Use SVG graphics, scale them, copy the way KDE games do scaling.
• MixxxCharts
• Collect playback stats from willing users into a DB; generate chart web pages by Genre, Promo tracks, and New tracks

Adam's (no longer) Mental Notes

Not all of these may still seem like good ideas for projects in the cold light of day...

• More detailed MIDI controller support
• All this state machine transformations stuff done properly... will write this into a real project asap
• Rewrite the waveform display!
• Get LADSPA stuff finished and into GUI, don't really want to offer effects again...
• Make it easier to develop skins
• Auto-testing, crash-proofing etc etc can come around again although we didn't accept anyone for it last time
• Something to do with auto-learning midi controllers or creating configs through some fancy UI or something
• Support for mobile devices, ipods and phones and mass storage in general
• Sampler!
• Kittens!

* 
* ... out of ideas for now ...

Have a better idea?

We're all ears! Please outline your ideas in detail in your student application to GSoC 2008, as per Google's outline.