Hi everybody!
My project proposal (KStars: Printing support) for this year’s edition of Google Summer of Code has been accepted! Many thanks to everybody at KDE, KDE-Edu and KStars for giving me the opportunity to work on it. Special thanks go to my mentor – Victor Cărbune and Akarsh Simha for support and useful advice.
The aim of my project is to extend functionality of KStars in terms of printing. Currently, KStars can print rendered images of the sky, but objects are not well-annotated, there is no possibility to include legend or user-defined comments. I will work to provide KStars project with aesthetically pleasing, fully customizable, yet easy to use finder charts with multiple fields-of-view.
Second feature that will be added to KStars is printing logger forms. Much of the work that needs to be done to implement this functionality if quite similar to that in the first part of the project.
The third part of my project – converting printed forms to OAL-compliant reports using OCR should be treated as optional – I doubt it can be reliably done within the time-frame of GSoC. To be completely fair and to avoid promising things I am not 100% sure I can handle, I haven’t mentioned it in my project proposal. After tinkering with a few Open Source OCR libraries, I am quite optimistic about this feature – even if it is not ready at the end of GSoC, I will finish it later, as I plan to still work for KStars after the summer.
Rough time-line for my project, taken from my application is:
- April 25 – May 23 – further research of KStars code base, writing mock-up proof-of-concept implementations of multiple FOVs feature;
- May 23 – May 29 – evaluation of results obtained during Community Bonding Period and implementation of finder charts legends;
- May 30 – June 5 – implementation of finder chart legends;
- June 6 – June 12 – implementation of finder chart annotations;
- June 13 – June 19 – implementation of finder chart annotations;
- June 20 – June 26 – implementation of finder chart annotations;
- June 27 – July 3 – implementation of basic FOV functionality – user-defined FOVs;
- July 4 – July 10 – implementation of basic FOV functionality – user-defined FOVs;
- July 11 – July 17 – implementation of basic FOV functionality – user-defined FOVs;
- July 15 – Mid-term evaluations deadline – finder charts with legends, annotations and multiple FOVs will be finished.
- July 18 – July 24 – implementation of observation logger forms printing (including developed multiple FOVs feature);
- July 25 – July 31 – implementation of observation logger forms printing;
- August 1 – August 7 – implementation of star hopper-based FOVs, based on already gained experience;
- August 8 – August 14 – finishing implementation of star hopper-based FOVs, final corrections and improvements;
- August 15 – August 21 – final corrections and improvements;
- August 22 – August 25 – “buffer period” in which I will be able to do some slight changes, if required;
- August 26 – Final evaluation deadline;
- August 27 – September 4 – I will be available to answer any questions;
- September 5 – September 11 – I will be available to answer any questions.
I am really excited about my project and I am sure it’ll be rewarding experience with benefit to the community and users of KStars 🙂
KStars Printing Support 