[Dms-commit] Changes to gnomejournal/SoC/SoCInterviews.txt

[Julien Gilli]

Index: gnomejournal/SoC/SoCInterviews.txt
diff -u gnomejournal/SoC/SoCInterviews.txt:1.1 
gnomejournal/SoC/SoCInterviews.txt:1.2
--- gnomejournal/SoC/SoCInterviews.txt:1.1      Sat Aug 27 16:52:02 2005
+++ gnomejournal/SoC/SoCInterviews.txt  Sat Aug 27 20:17:27 2005
@@ -0,0 +1,53 @@
+Summer is over. For many of us it means shorter days, shedding tears saying 
goodbye to our summer love and getting ahead lot of troubles^W fun at work. 
Obviously, you need some lovin to get over it. GNOME Journal is right on time 
again. We have a present for you. Hurry up and read on to open a pack full of 
GNOME goodies, jewels and magic ! 
+
+Unless you've been hiding in a deep cave during the last two months, you've 
heard about the Google Summer of Code. This article is a collection of 
interviews of all the students that have been hacking on GNOME bounties during 
the Google SoC. Not only will you discover eleven great concrete and working 
projects, packed full of genius, nice tricks and eye candy. You will see how 
these students, together with their mentors, the GNOME project as a whole and 
Google got it right once again and pushed the GNOME desktop where it hasn't 
been before !
+
+First, be sure to gather as much friends as you can around your screen, and 
that no one miss the fun. Is everyone ready ? Ok, let's start the show ! 
+
+The first present is a cute little locked box. We all know that size doesn't 
matter (does it ?). Let's get some help from his creator to unlock the magic.
+
+Encrypted folders and partitions have existed for quite a while now. How about 
packing this into the usual GNOME eye candy and usability excellence so that 
it's just one click away from anywhere on the desktop ? Let's discuss with our 
encrypted-folder wizard about that.
+
+FIXME : Questions/Answers to/from John Manning.
+
+Wait, do you ear that sound ? Yes, we all noticed the nice melody playing out 
from that box over there. Let's move on to see what's inside !
+
+
+FIXME : Questions/Answers to/from Raphael Slinckx
+
+Clever are the foxes, so clever must be the ideas packed in this 
firefox-looking package. Let's prepare for the best while we hear the paper 
scritch and scratch by opening this one !
+
+John Manning is the lucky guy that got working on this great Firefox 
extension. SearchParty allows you to find some help from people all over the 
world when you can't find the right keywords in order to perform a google 
search. It's as simple as typing your query in the google search field to find 
that you need some help, click a button to automatically join the right chat 
room, and automatically get the keywords used by successfull queries on the 
same topic. 
+
+GJ: Does the project still match the initial plan ? If not, how far is it from 
the initial plan and why ?
+
+JM: Yes and no.  One technical detail changed, and made quite a ripple 
throughout the rest of the project.  I initially intended to write the Search 
Party Protocol directly over TCP, and have a Java server somewhere that took 
care of matching up users with the proper chat room, etc.  My mentor, Seth 
Nickell, pointed out early on that this might make the extension unusable for 
those behind various firewalls, so he suggested XML-RPC.  This changed several 
things.  First of all, I had to learn XML-RPC (it's not hard at all).  Second, 
I had to write a very different sort of server.  It is esentially a PHP page 
that responds to XML-RPC requests and stores all its data in a MySQL database.  
Third, I had to teach the extension to speak XML-RPC, and Firefox's included 
implementation is broken, so I had to find a third party Javascript library 
(http:// solait.net/).  So I ended up spending a lot more time on the extension 
than I had initially intended.  As a result, I think the extension is pretty 
cool, but I haven't had that much time to focus on the trickiest part of the 
project: deciding what  exactly makes two search queries similar.  I have a 
decent algorithm, but it will be receiving a lot of love very soon. 
+
+
+GJ: Did you enjoy your summer ?
+
+JM: Yes, very much.  I graduated at the beginning and moved to California, and 
now after much searching have a new software development job.  It means I had 
to work pretty hard to fit in as much time for Search Party as I wanted.  But I 
am very happy with the results of my efforts so far.
+
+GJ: Do you have somme funny anecdotes to tell our readers ?
+
+JM: Nothing in particular.  My wife thinks the funniest thing is how she would 
come in to see how I was doing, and I'd explain some horrible untraceable bug 
that was driving me nuts (stupid interpreted languages!).  A few hours later 
(or the next day, after some rest), she'd hear me go 
"OOoooooooooooooohhhhhh!!!", which meant that I'd figured out the simple source 
of the problem.  By the end of the summer, she'd go "Oooooooooooooooohhh!!!" 
right along with me.  She loves to make fun of me!
+
+GJ: Can you tell us about your mentor ? 
+
+JM: Seth helped me out at some very key points in development.  First of all, 
it was his idea.  ;-)  Second, he pointed me at XML-RPC as I mentioned earlier. 
 As the extension took form, I was unhappy with the user interface (there was a 
separate toolbar that gained a button for every search you made).  Seth 
suggested a cleaner solution based on his original mockups.  Now he gives me 
general UI tips whenever we meet up in IRC.  I hope Seth continues his 
involvement with Search Party development, since he is a very insightful 
designer.  Besides, if Seth is using Search Party, all the other kids will want 
to be cool and use it, too!
+
+GJ: If you had to choose the three most important things you learned by 
working on this project, what would they be, and why ?
+
+
+JM : 1. Get your code in CVS as early as possible.  The shame of it all will 
drive development and increase productivity quite a bit.
+2. KISS (keep it simple stupid).  Don't over-engineer, but don't desgin 
yourself into a corner, either.  Reuse code (your own and others') where you 
can. 3. Keep lists.  I eventually moved mine over to 
http://live.gnome.org/SearchParty , but before I had my stuff in CVS, Tomboy 
was my constant companion!
+
+GJ:  By hacking on this project, what are the things (technical or not) you 
found truly amazing with GNOME ? What do you think need substantial work to be 
as amazing as the rest of the desktop ?
+
+JM: The most amazing thing was learning about everyone else's projects! 
Behdad's preload stuff for Fedora has so much potential.  Raphael's gshrooms 
project is of course super cool and will soon take over the world.  Adam's 
CamTrack is so nifty I can't wait to see how people make use of it.  GNOME is 
already great, and these people just ensure that it will keep blowing us all 
away.
+
+GJ: Last but not least, is the project done ? If not, will you keep hacking on 
this project in the future  ?
+
+JM: No, it is not done.  I intend to continue working on it for quite awhile.  
If this project is successful, I suspect the server will go through a lot of 
performance tuning and other refactoring.  Not to mention all the work I would 
like to do on the query matching algorithms.  However, the extension is really 
becoming quite useable, and I would love for people to download it from the 
wiki, try it out, and tell me what they think!  I hope to make a release to the 
general Gnome/Mozilla communities in the near future.
+
+