GSoC/Outreachy ideas for gdk-pixbuf

[Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net>]

Hey,

I spent a bit of time with gdk-pixbuf at the end of December, and had
an idea for gdk-pixbuf.

I know a few people want to get rid of gdk-pixbuf, but let's be
realistic, the amount of work needed to shift away from it would be far
too great to be done in one go, so why not make gdk-pixbuf
better/smaller to make it easier.

1) ICO/BMP code sharing
Both uncompressed ICO and BMP use the same DIB format, though the
headers are different. I think there's quite a few pieces of code that
could be shared.

Patches to share structures between both would be a good first patch
contribution, which we now require for GSoC at least.

2) Use giflib to load GIF files
Again, the gif loader is kind of hard to read and maintain and giflib
seems to be well maintained. It would start with a new loader, which we
could force load and check that it can pass all the test cases we have
for the home-made GIF loader, and then use it to fix the additional
bugs.

This would be a single GSoC, with 1) being used to become familiar with
gdk-pixbuf loaders, and 2) the actual target.

We'd need someone that knows about GIF to help mentor 2), I'd be happy
helping out with mentoring 1) and handling the test suite.

Any takers?

Cheers