www/ OpenIcc/ GoogleSoC2010

OpenIcc/GoogleSoC2010 Wiki is intended to collect ideas for possible projects participating in Googles Summer of Code program. They are mentored by members of OpenIcc projects.

OpenICC is a group of people dedicated to organise how applications, libraries, toolkits and colour devices talk each to the other about colours. The center of this work is the ICC specification, which is surounded be several general and operating system specific conventions to create a open sourced colour management system.

Oyranos is a example implementation of mentioned conventions to cover ICC profile handling and colour conversions. The newBSD licensed code base is plain C. Its core requires very few dependencies, namely libxml2. Device support and colour conversions involve according APIs. Goal is to use existing standard technology like XML, XFORMS and GLSL. Oyranos features a (almost) data independent framework to plug-in data manipulators, for colour conversions, tonemapping, image I/O and other operators into a data processing graph.

About the Group

OpenIcc consist of the participants of the OpenICC email list. It was started by Scribus members to better support introduction of colour management into applications and discuss general issues. List contributors are application and CMS developers as well as colour management specialists and users, no matter whether commercial, open source and both. The main focus of this group is to expand the level of support for color management on open source software systems.

  1. About the Group
  2. Project Suggestions
  3. Alternative Ideas
  4. Requirements
  5. Communication

Project Suggestions

Simple Toolkit Abstraction

  • The Oyranos colour management system is in parts only a thin layer between imaging applications and advanced moduls or plug-ins. To deploy these plug-ins flexible and maintain toolkit independency the plug-ins must present their UI in a own language. Goal is to create a simple and highly flexible GUI system, which allows easy creation of dialogs including callback meachanisms. This project lets you explore concepts like W3C XForms/DOM, and how to adapt it to traditional event driven programming. The result should be something simple and powerful enough to use for a wide range of applications not limited to Oyranos. Possibly this will result in a stand alone project.

Expectations

  • design and implement a minimalistic widget set, which allows easy implementation, exchange and processing (create a XForms profile, interact with DOM)
  • write a interpreter for console applications as proof of concept
  • write a HTML backend for documentation
  • simple examples showing what is intented to work

Skills

  • clear and highly modular API design
  • design of interactive applications
  • good abstraction
  • C, (C++), XML, DOM
  • good communication

Contact

  • Mentor: , Advisor: Jon A. Cruz

Optional

  • allow some basic events and C callbacks
  • write one or more toolkit dependent interpreter(s) (Gtk, Qt, Fltk ...)
  • script bindings to Java/Python/?
  • build a colour chooser based on the above widgets and callbacks

Oyranos Device Settings to ICC profile layer

  • Devices need to be introduced to a colour management system, in order to control the colour behaviour of a device. For instance different drivers may produce different colour on a otherwise identical device. A CMS needs some mechanism to connect colour influental device settings and driver informations and a particular colour profile reflecting these settings. ICC profiles containing such information would allow for automating many user decissions.
  • Overview and informations: http://www.oyranos.org/wiki/index.php?title=Device_Settings
  • implement based on a ICC confirmed proposal
  • Draft for new ICC colour profile tag: http://www.oyranos.org/wiki/index.php?title=Device_Settings_in_ICC_0.2 (reading is implemented in Oyranos)

Expectations

  • create and implement a API for inclusion of driver specific data into ICC profiles in a generic way
  • filter profiles according to theire included gerneric driver informations
  • apply your API's to one device driver API, for instance Gutenprint, libopenraw or Sane to study their effects
  • write a command line tool for use by end users including a manual page
  • document the API usage

Skills

  • portable C
  • be fit in compiling various libraries and applications

Contact

  • Mentor: Kai-Uwe Behrmann < ku.b@gmx.de > + Robert Krawitz, ...

GLSL-/+OpenCL meta backend for Oyranos

  • In order to build fast filters in Oyranos a meta backend is to be programmed. It should allow for fast manipulation of image data like colour conversions, tonemapping, blending or geometric transformations..

Expectations

  • study basic concepts of OpenGL shaders, their implementation in Mesa and the Oyranos CMM framework
  • decide for a implementation concept (GLSL/OpenCL)
  • work on existing code and integrate your implementation using most of the already available functionality, extent where needed
  • documentation for users - should be very few

Skills

  • basic communication
  • basic mathematical skills like matrix operations
  • portable C and OpenGL shader programming

Contact

Optional

  • convert the available small ICC colour transformation application for demonstration with colour table lookup into a shader plug-in

CMM's for Oyranos

  • SampleICC is the official implementation of the ICC colour profile standard from members of the ICC. A module of this engine to plug into Oyranos would be cool. Lcms2 will be soon released and replace the work horse lcms. Oyranos needs a updated module to continue to provide a actual CMM.

Expectations

  • wrap the SampleICC API into the Oyranos Colour Matching Module (CMM) API
  • create a lcms2 module based on the already existing one
  • create a catalog of plug-in options to support by the CMM
  • optimise SampleICC, allow unbound HDR conversions
  • work out test and quality assurance strategies

Skills

  • good communication
  • basic mathematical skills
  • portable C++ and C

Contact

ICC Examin Library

  • ICC Examin is a profile analysing tool and colour visualiser. Many widgets are interesting to other applications. But they are written in FLTK and would be needed in an other toolkit in a modular fashion. This project instroduces in the process of effectively presenting various data.

Expectations

  • reorganise, modularise and rewrite parts of the existing project
  • create an easy to use API and build a example application with it
  • user documentation inline

Skills

  • portable C, C++,
  • OpenGL would be helpful
  • (Java/Python/?)

Contact

Optional

  • create one wrapper in a scripting language for basic widgets, Python
  • support profile editing
  • support plug-ins, to display reports and various graphs
  • support spectral data

Extending the Oyranos Colour Conversion Framework

  • The colour management system Oyranos provides high level means to render colours in a generic way. The advantage is, application developers can rely on Oyranos services without understanding the often complicated details. This project lets you create and optimise verious underpinnings of sytem level to advanced graphic tools. This project is a collection of many small and very versatile tasks. You can freely create a own plan what to do or will be guided according to your level of expertise.

Expectations

  • Possible targets:
  • implement efficient pixel conversion between arbitrary buffer types (low level C)
  • implement object observation to automatically update to data changes (object oriented C)
  • adapt Oyranos devices to catch outside events (X, dbus, ...)
  • add Create NamedColour format support
  • implement OS specific CMS connectors to ?ColorSync and WCS (cross platform)
  • analyse the concepts behind the Oyranos graphs and suggest means for complete data type abstraction (conceptual work)
  • extent the Oyranos command line tools set (build upon Unix/Posix)
  • build a small shiny graphical sample application (didactical GUI)
  • agreed upon parts shall be finalised, substitution is possible

Skills

  • depends on what we agree to work on
  • code organisation
  • conceptual fitness
  • good communication
  • work under different OSes (possibly)
  • basic to good C
  • understanding object oriented designs is helpful

Contact

API stabilization for Oyranos Colour Management System

  • Currently, Oyranos has a big part of it's API in an alpha state. That includes the object oriented part, modules and devices API. The objective of this project is to work on the necessary parts of oyranos, so that by the end of summer, at least the most wanted functionalities will have a stable API/ABI and be ready for wider use. Following APIs are a good target:
  • Miscellaneous->Generic Objects
  • Miscellaneous->Values Handling
  • Module APIs
  • Device API
  • Profile API
  • Named Colour API

Expectations

  • an object oriented C API with compile time safety (API and ABI wise)
  • enough transparency for common debuggers as it is provided now and for new
  • flexibility for further development

Contact

Kwin colour correction plugin

  • The compiz colour correction plugin is very useful for instant colour corrections including movies with minimal overhead. Port this idea to KDE's kwin. It will be almost a write from scratch. Due to a controversial discussion on the OpenICC email list the project is unlikely to be chosen until a reasonable consense is found.

Expectations

  • create a scheme before you implement and discuss it
  • write a OpenGL shader based plugin
  • work with kwin, Oyranos, OpenGL/Shaders
  • inline documentation

Skills

  • C++
  • good communication
  • Shader language

Contact

Optional

  • port the compiz plugin to v0.9 from C to C++
  • add grid and image based correction textures

LProf - Add DDC/CI and USB HID Monitor Controls for Monitor Calibration

  • LProf is an open source ICC profiler. This project will add DDC/CI and HID USB monitor controls support to the current monitor calibration functionality. This will allow the software to automatically make monitor adjustments during calibration so that users do not have to make manual adjustments to their monitors.

Expectations

Implement DDC/CI and/or USB HID Monitor Control support in LProf. This will need to work in a broad range of platforms including *nix/X11, Windows (2000 and later) and OS/X.

Skills

  • General C/C++ programming skills
  • Some background in EDID and/or DDC
  • Ability to work in a cross platform environment. This will need to work for *nix/ Windows and OS/X machines.

Contact

LProf - Add a Regression Analysis Based Monitor Profiling.

  • LProf is an open source ICC profiler. LProf now has the ability to use various measurement instruments to take measurements for profiling monitors of various types. Currently the profiling algorithms are very simple ones and this needs to be corrected.

Expectations

This project will implement a regression analysis algorithm for monitor profiling.

Skills

  • General C/C++ programming skills
  • An understanding of 3D regression anaysis
  • An understanding of ICC profiles

Contact

LProf - Create a Robust Interative Video Card LUT Creation Algorithm.

  • LProf is an open source ICC profiler. LProf now has the ability to use various measurement instruments to take measurements for profiling monitors of various types. Currently the video card LUT creation algorithms are very simple ones and this needs to be corrected.

Expectations

This project will implement a robust interative video card LUT calibration algorithm and will be integrated into the LProf UI.

Skills

  • General C/C++ programming skills
  • An understanding of 3D regression anaysis
  • An understanding of ICC profiles

Contact

Alternative Ideas

Feel free to propose and discuss your ideas.

Requirements

License

BSD, LGPL extended by allowing for static linking are preferred licenses for libraries. GPL and other open source licenses are acceptable for other projects but in most cases the project mentor will specify the license to be used for the project.

Skills

Both good project and coding skills are expected, in order to set up our complex open source projects. We know it is sometimes difficult to talk to people you do not know, especially when they are not visible like over the internet. Nevertheless the mentors of these OpenICC projects want an open dialog with anyone interested in working on these projects. This is an important part of open software development and it is even more important for these Google Summer of Code Projects. Please feel free to contact any of the mentors listed above at any time. The earlier a candidate contacts us the more time remains for getting a feeling of the projects in advance.

Developers Environment

You are free to select whatever build environment you like as long as the project is targeted at that platform. Many of the above projects are targeted at Unix like systems and a few are fully cross platform. Our experience for cross platform projects is that some build environments are more difficult to setup than others. You will also likely find that these projects are significantly more complex than your school projects. For example, the LProf code base is now almost 100,000 lines of C and C++ code.

In order to help candidates be successful in completing their projects it is important that anyone selected is prepared to start actual project work at the project startup date. Please be prepared to have your development environment ready long before the project starts. This means that project mentors will want you to be to able to build and run the base system you are working on well before the project start date. For example, if you are working on one of the LProf projects you should be able to build and run LProf on your development machine at least a month before the project startup date. Windows build environments, in particular, have proven to be particularly difficult to setup and it is common for GSoC mentors to comment about how often the single biggest difficultly for students working on Wndows machines is getting a fully functional build environment setup.

Many open source developers use a unix like environment (IE. Linux, BSD ...) in part because setting up a working build environments is much simpler. This also means that there is a high likely hood that your mentor will not have much experience working in Windows or OS/X and may not be able to provide much assistance to help you get your builds working in those environments. So take this very seriously. On the other hand using a Unix like system like BSD/Linux/osX/Solaris can be a great learning experience for any student who has not worked on one of these in the past. Many big projects run on *nix systems deploying unix concepts and some of the projects listed above are *nix only projects that can not be worked on using a Windows machine. On request we simply expect the programmer to switch to BSD, Linux or osX. The installation should be no issue.

Communication

The OpenIcc list and the mentors for the above projects are all open for having contact with any prospective candidate. We will use a additional public list dedicated to the GSoC projects communication. IRC: freenode#openicc

For any uncovered toppics related to the GSoC project please contact Kai-Uwe Behrmann < ku.b@gmx.de >.