[Gsoc-students] Re:

[Martin Aspeli]

Michael,

I suggest you submit this as is, in time for Monday's deadline. :)

Martin

miken087 at berkeley.edu wrote:
> Hi
> 
> I have addressed the comments Martin has made to my proposal. I have made
> some changes to my abstract.  Also I attached my detailed description to
> address how I would approach the project. If you could provide more
> feedback, that would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
> 
> Michael Ngo
> 
> 
> Abstract (2500 character limit, text only, no HTML) The Abstract of an
> accepted student application is displayed on the public GSoC web site.
> Please do not include personal information.
> 
> This proposal will improve the current email handling system in  Plone by
> incorporating an email-blog gateway feature to:
> 1. allow incoming email messages (in Plone) to be converted to new blog
> entries, and
> 2. allow new blog entries (and comments on blog entries) to generate
> outgoing email messages to anyone subscribed to a blog’s watchlist.
> 
> The mail-blog gateway would offer richer functionality than an
> email-only subscription list, as the user is free to choose to receive
> notifications of new entries as: an RSS or Atom feed, or as an email
> notification.  As the user is able to add new entries to the blog simply
> by sending an email to the mail-blog gateway in Plone, all mailing list
> entries are transparently logged in Plone for archival purposes.
> 
>  The mail-blog gateway feature may initially be implemented as an
>  add-on  product to avoid bloating Plone's core code base. Plone's core
>  framework  team would decide at a later time if the add-on product is
>  valuable enough  to be included as a core feature in a future release of
> Plone, a
>  discussion  beyond the scope of this proposal.
> 
>  The mail-blog gateway aims to offer an improved method of getting content
> into the system and exporting content out of the system. The gateway will
> address Plone improvement proposal (PLIP) 182:
> 
>  http://plone.org/products/plone/roadmap/182
> 
>  and may address parts of PLIP 183 as well.
> 
>  http://plone.org/products/plone/roadmap/183
> 
> The gateway, developed as a generic component would plug into Plone, could
> potentially be leveraged to allow any content object (ex: content type) to
> be created by the incoming email handler, including custom Archetypes –
> based content types.
> 
> Development of the gateway will involve review of “listen,” a mailing list
> management system by Alec Mitchell, and will also investigate the email
> infrastructure in Zope 3.  Performance, testability, and developer
> friendliness will be considered top priorities during the development of
> the email gateway component.
> 
> Detailed Description (7500 character limit, text only, no HTML) The
> Detailed Description of a student application is visible only to mentors
> and will not be displayed on the public GSoC web site.
> 
> Student's Background and Experience
> 
> Currently I am a student working towards my Bachelor’s degree in
> Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of
> California, Berkeley.  I have been programming for approximately four
> years, with Java as my first language.  Since then I have learned to code
> in C, Python, HTML, PHP, and MIPS.  I also have set up web servers with
> Apache and Linux.  Currently I am new to Plone and know how to use and
> configure an installation of Plone.  However my recent exposure to the
> Plone CMS should not hinder my contribution to the Plone project because I
> have begun to recognize the power of this project.  Therefore this
> interest in the Plone project, along with my dedication as a student, will
> encourage me to learn how to use Plone and use this knowledge to make
> managing web sites easier.  Also since I have had previous experience with
> Apache, my Plone learning experience will be easier.  I have developed
> many projects where my biggest projects are Puzzle Solver (Java), Spatial
> Database (Java), Jumping Cube (Java), Instant Markup (Python), and
> Microscheme (C).  Each of these projects focused on different concepts
> ranging from implementing new data types to efficiency to remote
> networking.  All of these projects were also meaningful and educational.
> Not only that, each of these projects, with the exception of Instant
> Markup, took a significant time commitment where each project took 30 to
> 50 hours of coding/ debugging within the course of a week.
> 
> Approach to Project / General Timeline
> My approach on the project would be to look over and understand “listen”
> and the Zope 3 email infrastructure.  After doing that I will look over
> Atom feeds because they are new to me.  Then when I finish school around
> May 20th, I will start my planning of how I should break down the project.
>  Then I will start coding about 30 hours a week, but if this project seems
> like more work than I thought, I can always increase my work time as
> needed.  In any case I will put as much time as needed in order to ensure
> this project is completed.  I hope to finish this project in late July,
> but hopefully before August so I could leave the rest of the time to do
> testing.
> 
> Brief Project Descriptions
> 
> Puzzle Solver – This project displayed information about a person, if
> given a combination or all of the information of a person’s name, job, or
> house description.  This project was accomplished with OOP and arrays in
> JAVA.
> 
> Spatial Database – This project simulated particles in a box as well as
> their collisions.  The box would have an arbitrary size with an indefinite
> amount of particles.  All the particle locations were handled by the
> Quadtree data structure thus providing more efficient searching.  This
> project also included the implementation of this data structure.
> 
> Jumping Cube – This project focused on game development as well as the
> development of an automated player.  In addition this project included the
> development of a graphical user interface as well as the possibility for
> remote game play.  So any projects with different implementations should
> be able to connect to each other via the internet and play each other.
> 
> Instant Markup – This project parses a text documents and then adds the
> appropriate tags to convert it into a HTML document so it can be displayed
> as a Web page
> 
> Microscheme – This project implemented a bignum data type that could
> represent a number of infinite length and do basic arithmetic on these
> large numbers.  This data type was then implemented in a scheme
> interpreter.  Both the scheme interpreter and the bignum data type were
> implemented in C.  Also the resulting project required that memory was
> managed correctly in that there were no memory leaks
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> Hi Michael,
>>
>>> My name is Michael Ngo and I am currently studying Computer Science at
>>> University of California, Berkeley. Currently I am interested in
>>> contributing to Plone by working on the email handling system. My
>>> question
>>> is whether this proposal will affect Plone's core system or will it be
>>> added to Plone as an add on? My abstract for the proposal is attached at
>>> the end of the email.  Lastly any comments on my abstract will be
>>> greatly
>>> appreciated.
>> Most likely, you'd develop a generic component that could be configured
>> to plug into Plone. The decision on what goes into the core is up to the
>> framework team, who evaluate proposals, and the release manager, who
>> accepts them. I imagine that something like this would be able to start
>> as an optional dependency for third party products needing this
>> functionality, and then eventually would be considered for shipping with
>> plone core.
>>
>>> This proposal will improve the current email handling system in Plone by
>>> incorporating an email-blog gateway feature to:
>>> 1. allow incoming email messages (in Plone) to be converted to new blog
>>> entries, and
>>> 2. allow new blog entries (and comments on blog entries) to generate
>>> outgoing email messages to anyone subscribed to a blog’s watchlist.
>>>
>>> The mail-blog gateway would offer richer functionality than an
>>> email-only
>>> subscription list, as the user is free to choose to receive
>>> notifications
>>> of new entries as: an RSS or Atom feed, or as an email notification.  As
>>> the user is able to add new entries to the blog simply by sending an
>>> email
>>> to the mail-blog gateway in Plone, all mailing list entries are
>>> transparently logged in Plone for archival purposes.
>>>
>>> The mail-blog gateway feature may initially be implemented as an add-on
>>> product to avoid bloating Plone's core code base. Plone's core framework
>>> team would decide at a later time if the add-on product is valuable
>>> enough
>>> to be included as a core feature in a future release of Plone, a
>>> discussion
>>> beyond the scope of this proposal.
>>>
>>> The mail-blog gateway aims to offer an improved method of getting
>>> content
>>> into the system and exporting content out of the system. The gateway
>>> will
>>> address Plone improvement proposal (PLIP) 182:
>>>
>>> http://plone.org/products/plone/roadmap/182
>>>
>>> and may address parts of PLIP 183 as well.
>>>
>>> http://plone.org/products/plone/roadmap/183
>> This looks good, though you should also describe something about how you
>> intend to make sure you complete your work, and how much time you think
>> you'll have to work on it.
>>
>> Also, limiting the functionality to blogs only (and bearing in mind
>> Plone doesn't ship with blog functionality out of the box) seems a
>> little limiting to me. It may be possible to generalise further, so that
>> mail-in blogging is only one form of inbound mail handling.
>>
>> Martin
>>
>