GSoC 2008 Opendocument Exporter and Importer

Title/Summary 	 OPENDOCUMENT EXPORTER AND IMPORTER Student 	viwe simon lolwane Student Email 	***************** Student Major 	Computer Science Student Degree 	undergrad Student Graduation 	2009

Abstract
The ISO Opendocument format is a standard that is used to exchange Information over various application, this standard is used by many projects or applications like the Open Office. The scope of this project is to improve or write the current Scribus 's open Office support, so that it can import and export the opendocument format file without data loss. This will enable Scribus to support and exchange information with Open Office.

Detailed Description
OPENDOCUMENT EXPORTER / IMPORTER BY VIWE SIMON LOLWANE email: ************

Introduction
The ISO Opendocument format is a standard that is used to exchange Information over various application, this standard is used by many projects or applications like the Open Office. The scope of my this project is to improve or write the current Scribus 's open Office support, so that it can import and export the opendocument format file without data loss. This will enable Scribus to support and exchange information with Open Office.

About me
I am a final year student at the University of South Africa, studying towards a Bsc degree in Computer Science. My programming skills are c++, python, java, c# and delphi. I am familiar with the Qt / KDE framework, I have a 3 year experience on 3D modeling and animation, the current software that I use is Blender. My current interest are on how a 3D raytracer rendering engine can be build. I have worked on a small project to reduce, high polygon meshes to lower polygon meshes without losing details of their structure.

Description
This can be done by extending the current Scribus OO text importer and OO text exporter plugin and write a plugin that will import / export a valid opendocument file format. I would need to research or analyze the current Scribus OO text / importer and the current structure of the Scribus document so that I can write an exporter and importer that are complaint to scribus. The project s schedule is a three month project and it must be completed in this time frame.

Software development process
The project will be designed with Extreme Programming “XP” software development process. Since executable Code is the most important part of the ultimate deliverables of the software development process, XP focuses on the executable code from the very beginning, the process consists of frequent and small releases, each iteration produce a release. The very first iteration will produce a minimal, skeleton and executable implementation of the system being developed, then each subsequent iteration should enhance or improve upon the deliverables of the exceeding iteration and produce a new executable code. Which will be posted on the website for users to download, and test it. I selected XP process because it fits well into system developed on open source, where frequent releases are a norm, and the process involves both users and developers to take part, and the best part is that some RUP ( Rational Unified Process ) Models like UML can be incorporated on the process.

Testing
The frequency of defects discovered during each phase of the cycle falls within the following ranges, most are found during unit testing,followed by product testing and system testing respectively. This show that identifying and fixing defects during unit testing is significantly less expensive than doing so during other phases. This means that testing should be performed from the very beginning of system development and we must make sure that all the test are validating the planned functional coverage or use.

Project deliverables
The project deliverables are divided into functional and non functional requirements. Functional requirements The project should have a Open document complaint exporter The project should have a Open document complaint importer The importer must import a complaint Scribus document Each import and exporter must be be created as separate plugin Non functional requirements All plugins should be user friendly and responsive without freezing other windows By project completion all requirements should be delivered. simon viwe lolwane