Public Lab Wiki documentation


SoC ideas

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« Back to Summer of Code programs

This is the ideas page for Public Lab's Google Summer of Code program.

Our main repositories can be found on our Github organization page, but a clearer listing with descriptions is on our main developers page

Important -- to learn how to contribute to Public Lab software, see our Contributing to Public Lab software page

Who to contact

Generally, with programming related topics, reach out on plots-dev - the Public Lab developers discussion list shown in the left sidebar.

For active Google Summer Code projects, use plots-gsoc - the GSoC discussion list.

For chatting and real-time meetings, use the Gitter chat room or type directly in here (if you have already authenticated on another page):

Contribution guidelines

Our Contributing to Public Lab Software page has our preferred guidelines for submitting changes. Please read it over!

We also love it when students show that they can work well with us by checking out some of our easier issues in PublicLab.org, Spectral Workbench, or MapKnitter, and even submitting a pull request. This gives us confidence that you've read our contribution guidelines and would be ready to jump into a project.

How to post a proposal

(for students)

Please first leave a comment on the post below, and tell us what you're interested in and a bit about your experience. It's also great to hear if you've forked one of our codebases) and installed it on your computer or a test server. Done with that? How about running tests? Tell us how far you've gotten, and ask us for help -- we're happy to help you get started!

Read the call for proposals, ask questions, and post your ideas:

Post a proposal here -- and view proposals posted so far

Ideas

Email notification overhaul

Part of: https://publiclab.org / https://github.com/publiclab/plots2

Description: Scheduling, per-user settings, batched tag-based updates, log, de-duplication -- see https://github.com/publiclab/plots2/milestone/6

List: plots-dev@googlegroups.com

Prerequisites: Ruby on Rails

Difficulty Level: medium

Potential mentors: Jeff Warren

ImageSequencer

Part of: https://github.com/publiclab/image-sequencer

Description: An experimental, non-destructive image processing/analysis system based on the mental model of a storyboard: each change to the image produces a new version of the image, rather than affecting the original.

List: plots-dev@googlegroups.com

Prerequisites: JavaScript, possibly Node.js

Difficulty Level: medium/hard

Potential mentors: Jeff Warren

Expanded Rich Wikis

Part of: https://publiclab.org / https://github.com/publiclab/plots2

Description: An expansion of the Rich Wikis project, this project would create more interactive and responsive interfaces for authoring documents, from form generators (open source Google Forms) to embedded maps and even spreadsheets or in-line file viewers. The Public Lab Wiki is the backbone of our co-created knowledge base, and it could be a lot more alive!

Learn more about our nascent "short codes" system here: https://publiclab.org/wiki/power-tags#Inline+tags

List: plots-dev@googlegroups.com

Prerequisites: Ruby on Rails

Difficulty Level: medium

Potential mentors: Jeff Warren, Liz Barry

Tagging interface

Part of: https://publiclab.org / https://github.com/publiclab/plots2

Description: Our new editor has a great new tagging interface, and we should standardize and extend that over all tag inputs across PublicLab.org. Additionally, with our power-tagging system, the increasing set of abilities and options for power tags means we ought to have a more intuitive menu for selecting power tags, so people don't have to type them in manually.

List: plots-dev@googlegroups.com

Prerequisites: Ruby on Rails, JavaScript, Bootstrap

Difficulty Level: easy

Potential mentors: Jeff Warren

Wiki discussion

Part of: https://publiclab.org / https://github.com/publiclab/plots2

Description: Commenting inside a wiki document, and/or making suggestions, is an important planned feature for making wiki pages more interactive and discussion-oriented. We have several rich wiki features coming together, and more Google Docs-type features on our pages would make contributing to Public Lab easier. This would probably involve inserting expandable forms between paragraphs (perhaps like our Prompts system) and displaying expandable comment icons alongside text, with full comment display as in a Google Doc.

List: plots-dev@googlegroups.com

Prerequisites: Ruby on Rails, JavaScript, Bootstrap

Difficulty Level: medium

Potential mentors: Jeff Warren

Map of projects

Part of: https://github.com/publiclab/plots2

Description: A browseable map of projects (wiki pages tagged with "project" tag) for people to find and learn about projects near them. We'd probably use Leaflet maps such as shown on https://publiclab.org/archive, and upon clicking on map marker, you'd see things like the title, lead image, # of contributors, and topics of interest. This would require both JavaScript work with Leaflet and Ruby on Rails work to generate the listings, as well as interface design work to develop the browse-able map interface.

List: plots-dev@googlegroups.com

Prerequisites: JavaScript, Ruby on Rails

Difficulty Level: medium

Potential mentors: Jeff Warren (@warren), Stevie Lewis (@stevie)

Tidy up photo monitoring plugin

Part of: https://publiclab.org/wiki/photo-monitoring-plugin

Description: The photo monitoring plugin is in need of some work. Two broad areas that could be addressed in order of priority are: 1) rewriting (refactoring) the code to make it compatible with the latest version of ImageJ/FIJI 2) adding new functionality like geotagging NDVI which has been developed (to some extent) but hasn't been incorporated into the public release

List: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/plots-infrared

Prerequisites: Java, willingness to learn to write plugins for FIJI (https://fiji.sc/)

Difficulty Level: medium/hard

Potential mentors: Ned Horning

OAuth-based login for FB, Twitter

Part of: https://github.com/publiclab/plots2

Description: Very highly sought! Add OAuth user login so people can log in via Google account, Facebook, Twitter.

https://github.com/publiclab/plots2/issues/683

List: plots-dev@googlegroups.com

Prerequisites: JavaScript, Ruby on Rails

Difficulty Level: easy/medium

Potential mentors: Jeff Warren

Add a project idea

[prompt:paragraph:Copy template from below and insert new ideas here]

Project idea template:

### Project idea title

**Part of:** https://github.com/publiclab/plots2

**Description:** (what the feature should do and WHY)

**List:** plots-dev@googlegroups.com

**Prerequisites:** JavaScript, Ruby on Rails?

**Difficulty Level:** easy/medium/hard

**Potential mentors:**  Jeff Warren, ADD YOUR NAME HERE

****

Old ideas list

From past years:

Mapknitter Annotations

Part of: Mapknitter.org

Description: building on 2014 mapknitter annotations project to get it live and integrated into Mapknitter. Read more on the state of development..

List: plots-dev@googlegroups.com

Prerequisites:

Difficulty Level: hard

Potential mentors: Jeff Warren, Liz Barry

Distortable image ordering in MapKnitter

Part of: MapKnitter, Leaflet.DistortableImage

Description: This project is for a long requested feature on our most popular websoftware -- being able to choose which image shows up on top of your map! Tackling this would be a huge contribution to community cartography. Currently, images are automatically ordered by their geographic extent: bigger images end up on the bottom, little images on top, with no way for the mapmaker to manually reorder them. Longer story: Create simple methods for ordering images in Leaflet.DistortableImage, the heart of MapKnitter, and saving these asynchronously in MapKnitter. Modification of export system to accept an order parameter.

List: plots-dev@googlegroups.com

Links:

Prerequisites: Ruby on Rails, JavaScript/jQuery

Difficulty level: medium

Potential mentors: Jeff Warren

Queue-based MapKnitter export system

Part of: MapKnitter

Description: De-couple MapKnitter main app from GDAL-based export queue to enable better scaling of exports and fewer interruptions of primary MapKnitter.org service during large exports.

List: plots-dev@googlegroups.com

Links:

Prerequisites: Ruby on Rails, GDAL, asynchronous queue-based server architecture, Amazon S3

Difficulty level: medium

Potential mentors: Jeff Warren

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