Re: [LaTeXila] Ideas for GSOC to improve LaTeXila

[Sébastien Wilmet <swilmet gnome org>]

Hi Chunyang,

Sorry for the late response.

On Sat, Feb 22, 2014 at 06:34:42PM +0800, Chunyang Xu wrote:
> I am a third year student of Information engineering at Southeast
> University, Nanjing, China. I am a gnome user for the past 3 years. I feel
> comfortable with C and C++. I am interested in improving LaTeXila and
> participating in the Summer of Code. I have already read many gtk+/vala
> tutorials, built LaTeXila using jhbuild, filed several bugs and tried to
> fix them.

These are good first steps.

> Here are some rough ideas to improve LaTeXila according gnome idea list[1],
> LaTeXila bugzilla[2] and my use experience:
> 1. improve the completion of LaTeX commands

Yes the completion is important for writing LaTeX documents directly in LaTeX.

> 2. improve the display of source code (bold, mix different fonts size like
> Emacs+AUCTeX)

GtkSourceView (gsv) now supports almost directly this. It is really not 
difficult to enable it, you just have to uncomment a section in the gsv 
style scheme.

See:
https://git.gnome.org/browse/gtksourceview/tree/data/styles/classic.xml
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=723310

Note that I can also be a mentor for GtkSourceView. So if there are some 
tasks in latexila and some tasks in gsv, it is possible for a gsoc (but 
gsv is more complicated, since it is a library, not an application).

> 3. improve the build tools for generating the PDF and the error reporting

Indeed. A really important thing here is to have unit tests. GSubprocess 
could also be used to simplify the code (it is a new class in GLib).

Sometimes the filtered information is not correct. To understand an 
error, you have to look at the log file. This should be fixed in two 
ways: improve the post-processors, to display the right information; and 
have a way to switch between the filtered output and the complete 
output. In the complete output, what has been filtered should be 
highlighted, to easily see the relevant parts.

> 4. ease the writing of bibliography items

The gedit LaTeX plugin can already do that. We can do the same in 
latexila, or even better.

> 5. live parsing (automatic update document structure)

This is an interesting one. When I wrote the document structure code, I 
didn't have a lot of experience for doing this. Now I have more 
experience in this field, so I can more easily help you.

> 6. UI modernization (layout, fit gnome 3)

Yes, it is indeed also needed. Use GMenu and modernize some parts of the 
UI.

Another small thing is to improve the templates (the UI, but also the 
usability). It would be nice for example to be able to replace a 
template. Now it must be done in two steps: remove the template and 
create a new one.

> However, I am a bit confused about the possible proposal. Is it OK to write
> a proposal to implement "Several improvements to LaTeXila"  Or should I
> pick a specific one for example LaTeXila code view improvements and focus
> on this one instead? Which one is big enough for a whole summer work?

For the build tools there is enough work for the whole summer. But 
working three months on the same thing can be a little boring at the 
end. It's probably better to pick several smaller tasks, with a title 
like "Improve the LaTeXila user experience: better completion and build 
tools".

> Besides since I am new to gtk+/vala, could you show me any suitable bugs to
> fix to make sure that I have sufficient skills required for this project?

There is not a lot of bugs in latexila. You can read the bugzilla 
(non-enhancement bugs), but some bugs should be fixed in gsv, or some 
features should be moved from gedit to gsv.

For the GSoC, it is better to focus on the LaTeX-specific features of 
latexila, not the text editor part. For the text editor part, the plan 
is to work on gsv (side note: it is also a nice project for someone with 
already good GObject/GTK+ skills, for a second gsoc for example).

As I explained above, a small task for applying for the gsoc is to 
improve the templates. There is no bug reports for this yet, so the 
first thing is to file enhancement bug(s) to discuss more in details 
what to do.

Cheers,
Sébastien