SoC 2007

Adding Semantic Web support into CCK

Motivation

I (also it seems) submitted a proposal on the SVG drawing idea. I'm also posting a copy here to get any comments.

Please excuse any misnomers I might have. I'm calling it a Drawing Module, however I think API might be a more appropriate term. I currently only have a basic grasp on the structure of Drupal.

I've started a section on my personal site to put up more information located here.

Abstract

Currently, Drupal has no SVG (scalable vector graphics) generation capabilities
and limits a Drupal plug-in developer to either using external libraries (e.g.
PEAR's XML_SVG), manually generating SVG, or bypassing SVG entirely and using GD
(or any other similar graphics libraries).

I will implement a drawing module and a SVG plugin for said module into Drupal
to give plug-in developers SVG capabilities and keep open the choice to add
different drawing API's into the drawing module.

Synopsis
My proposal is for a Drupal 'undelete' module: a module which provides node content- and node content admin- modules with a standard API for implementing operations for restoring deleted nodes, and therefore provides a Drupal site end-users and admins with a well-understood piece of functionality, through which common paradigms like a node 'trashbin' can be implemented. The ability to restore a previously deleted piece of content is a major advance for Drupal functionality-wise, and one much requested and desired. It will lay the groundwork and may even find time for natural extensions like 'un-edit', 'un-insert' – pieces of a general functionality for 'undoing' content operations, like that found in the Plone CMS. It will also be an advance architecture-wise, as it will stimulate activity and consensus in the Drupal developer community around ambiguous or only partially-specified pieces of Drupal architecture; like what defines a content 'operation', content 'delete', relations among content nodes, content operation 'transactions' across modules, content node data storage; down to a clearer idea of what an piece of Drupal content should look like in code. However, the module will not require changes in any way to the current Drupal core and node handling code, nor in any existing Drupal database objects. One overriding design principle for undelete is that it be implemented as an independent, self-contained module, which modules may choose to use and implement as additional functionality that does not require any changes to existing code – undelete will install only new database objects and code. It will not require rewrites of any existing PHP or SQL code and will not attempt to use hook_nodeapi to inject SQL code for modifying node data without knowledge of the node module. Although differing in several key approaches. The undelete module builds on the work being done on the Drupal 'delete'API' and 'trashbin' code by Chad Phillips, which has been in development (and debate) for more that 1 ½ years.

Hello all,
Sorry for cross-posting; but I think people working on different aspects of Drupal may have interest in this idea.

I've submitted a SoC 2007 Drupal proposal on automating the whole process of creating a complete Drupal site with a LAMP stack in a self-contained virtual machine image. A formatted PDF version is here:
http://www.abeharry.info/SoC2007_DrupalAST_FullProposal.pdf
Here is the abstract:

The Drupal automated staging toolkit is a proposed set of code libraries, file schemas and parsers, and code generators, for

I just uploaded my application to Google's Summer of Code web app, and I can say I'm quite proud of its current state. The application has seen a couple of iterations based on valuable feedback by Adam Light and Derek Wright, both of which are working on RCS stuff for the Project module. Being fed into Google, this means that the Drupal mentors can now place private comments and supporting votes there.

Given that there are a good number of comments on some of the other proposals in this group, I'm still wondering if there is something I can do to spread the word and get more input from the greater public. After all, work on the Project module severely affects the great majority of drupal.org users, and getting rid of CVS as a hard dependency should really be discussed in the wider community. So do communicate your opinions about my application, its benefits for Drupal, its chances to get elected, its shortcomings, challenges, etc. ...I'm listening.

Synopsis

Drupal stresses ease of use. To that end, I will be submitting an API to offer dragging, dropping, and sorting functionality to modules. This will greatly enhance not only the ease of making changes to the user interface, but also the development of associated drop and drag projects. To highlight the abilities of the API, I will also be creating a module to drag and drop blocks.

Project details

This is my project proposal for the Summer of Code 2007. Better multiple value handling in CCK is needed and could be useful to a lot of people, so I am interested in having your opinion before I officially submit this project proposal to Google.

For this Summer of Code, I'll apply for reworking the Project module to free it of CVS specifics. The greater plan is, of course, to get SVN support into project.module (and pave the way for other RCS backends), but if I am to believe knowledgable developers like dww and chx, getting the revision control functionality abstracted out into an RCS API module is already a lot of work. In case it should work out faster than expected ("unlikely" :D ) I figure I can still do the SVN specific bits in the time that remains.

You can find my application here. It's essentially complete, but before submitting it to Google I'm still waiting for feedback from dww, and yours can be helpful as well! As a short teaser, here's the introductory part of my application as copied from my website: