GSoC 2012 LogoI know it's already late, but you know how it is for hackers: we are delaying stuffs to continue hacking until we can't delay anymore. It's only a week before Google mentor summit, and the time for a LibreOffice GSoc 2012 wrap-up has come.
This year we had 10 students and 9 successful projects.

The completed projects are:

Daniel improved the load time of both ODF and XLSX format in many ways. Especially in the large XLSX files, the improvement can be as big as loading in 6 seconds instead of more than 8 minutes!

  • Enhanced Impress SVG export filter from Marco Cecchetti, see sample outputs

Marco improved his previous work to export slides in SVG by adding animations features to it. Thanks to his work, you will only need to have Firefox around to play your presentations everywhere. You can check a few of the results outputs to see how cool this feature is.

  • A MS Publisher import filter from Brennan Vincent, see the code

Brennan's work was particularly hard, because he had to reverse-engineer the file format. Together with Valek Filipov, they managed to cover MS Publisher format from 97 to 2010 - all shapes, fills, and text properties that Open Document Graphics supports.

  • A Java GUI to pick up files for LibreOffice on Android from Iain Billett

Iain's work is particularly important for the LibreOffice Android port. While the porting efforts lead to displaying documents, the entire viewer needs much more - particularly UI that allows you pick the documents to show, move, zoom; and this is what Iain delivered, see the screenshot below.

Rafael worked on creating a modern UI to pick-up a template to create a new document. He also added support to connect to remote repositories of templates which will soon help us to connect directly to the LibreOffice templates site. This way LibreOffice will bring template's use to the users.

Thanks to Gökçen, we can now digitally sign the PDFs directly as they are produced by LibreOffice. This is very important in the world where security and trust of electronic documents needs to be maintained.

Andrzej's Android Remote Control allows you to control the slide show directly from your Android mobile phone. Just connect your phone to the presenting computer via network or bluetooth, and you will see previews of the slides on the phone, and will be able to navigate that - instead of using the computer's keyboard or usb remote control.

  • Improved group session and UI for the collaborative editing of files from Matúš Kukan

Matúš progressed the Calc collaboration demo further - added user interface, and continued on the core work. This work, once completed, will allow you to collaboratively edit one spreadsheet with your colleague conveniently, as if you chatted with them on an instant messenger, without the need to send files around.

  • Unit tests improvements from Artur Dorda

Unit tests are extremely important for LibreOffice. They are the tests that are run during the build time, and consequently are run by every developer that builds LibreOffice. Unit tests help you to make sure that the functionality hasn't regressed over time, and if it does, help you to discover the regression quickly. Artur did great job extending the unit tests mainly in the area of Calc.

Their code is is already in the LibreOffice master branch either as experimental feature or already in use. If you want to meet some of our successful students in person and know more about these nice projects, watch for the "GSoC results" session at LibreOffice conferences next week. Here are a few screenshots for the lazy ones:

Android LibreOffice file picker

Android LibreOffice file picker  

Impress and its Android remote control

Impress and its Android remote control

New templates picking UI

New templates picking UI

Thanks a lot to Google and their friendly Open Source Program team for organizing GSoC this year again and allowing us to participate!