From: Jason Taylor <jasontaylor_at_rcn.com>
Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2012 09:26:42 -0500 (EST)

--- Original message ----
>Date: Wed, 07 Mar 2012 12:00:04 +0100
>From: rockbox-dev-request_at_cool.haxx.se
>Subject: rockbox-dev Digest, Vol 78, Issue 5
>To: rockbox-dev_at_cool.haxx.se
>
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>Today's Topics:
>
> 1. Rockbox's Google Summer of Code 2012 Status (Austin Appel)
> 2. Rockbox's Google Summer of Code 2012 Status (Austin Appel)
> 3. Re: Rockbox's Google Summer of Code 2012 Status (Marcin Bukat)
>
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Message: 1
>Date: Tue, 06 Mar 2012 08:20:13 -0700
>From: Austin Appel <scorche15_at_gmail.com>
>To: rockbox-dev_at_cool.haxx.se
>Subject: Rockbox's Google Summer of Code 2012 Status
>Message-ID: <4F562B2D.2090807_at_gmail.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
>So then...
>
>Frank sent en email out on February 10th regarding what we need to pull
>together and do in order to participate in Google's Summer of Code
>(GSoC) program this year. As you likely know (or have figured out), the
>response to the email was...underwhelming
>
>As the main drum-beater/organisation admin for Rockbox for GSoC, I have
>decided not to make the effort to apply for Summer of Code this year.
>
>I still would like to see us participate in future years. I still feel
>that Google's Summer of Code is a great benefit to us as a project and
>the open source community at-large. It funds Rockbox development,
>attracts new developers to our project, and just plain gets-stuff-done.
>
>
>If we decide that Google Summer of Code is still worth participating in
>(I can't be the only person who thinks so), there are a number of things
>we need to do before next year's application period:
>
>First, we need to re-evaluate how we feel about GSoC. We were
>super-excited about it for the first number of years. However, I (at
>least) get the general feeling that the community in general has a very
>blas? feeling towards GSoC now. This is the main reason why I (and
>others) feel that it is best to take a year off. I don't know what we
>need or what I am expecting of the Rockbox community to fix this, but
>something needs to be done.
>
>We need to completely re-visit the entire ideas list (
>http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/SummerOfCode2012 ). Most of these ideas are
>carried over from past years which many of us feel differently about now
>than we did in the past. While we don't typically have official
>maintainers over specific areas of Rockbox, you all tend to specialise
>in a few areas. I am sure there are ideas in your bucket list of things
>you would like to see implemented, but have no time for. These can go
>on this page. Of course, don't just put a single sentence listing the
>idea - flesh it out! We could likely use the page as a sort of
>more-detailed version of http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/MrSomeonesTodoList
>. Don't worry about difficulty level for now, but at least make sure it
>is something that could potentially take a few months for someone with a
>beginner-to-moderate skill level.
>
>Most importantly, we need core developers who are ready and willing to
>donate a bit of their time towards mentoring a student. This doesn't
>take a massive amount of time (well, it shouldn't), as we tend to urge
>students towards using the community as their mentors, but some
>investment needs to be made.
>
>Feel free to discuss further - especially if you might have any ideas to
>help to fix this.
>
>- Austin 'scorche' Appel
>
>
>------------------------------
>
>Message: 2
>Date: Tue, 06 Mar 2012 11:42:41 -0700
>From: Austin Appel <scorche15_at_gmail.com>
>To: Rockbox development <rockbox-dev_at_cool.haxx.se>
>Subject: Rockbox's Google Summer of Code 2012 Status
>Message-ID: <4F565AA1.5070401_at_gmail.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
>
>So then...
>
>Frank sent en email out on February 10th regarding what we need to pull
>together and do in order to participate in Google's Summer of Code
>(GSoC) program this year. As you likely know (or have figured out), the
>response to the email was...underwhelming
>
>As the main drum-beater/organisation admin for Rockbox for GSoC, I have
>decided not to make the effort to apply for Summer of Code this year.
>
>I still would like to see us participate in future years. I still feel
>that Google's Summer of Code is a great benefit to us as a project and
>the open source community at-large. It funds Rockbox development,
>attracts new developers to our project, and just plain gets-stuff-done.
>
>
>If we decide that Google Summer of Code is still worth participating in
>(I can't be the only person who thinks so), there are a number of things
>we need to do before next year's application period:
>
>First, we need to re-evaluate how we feel about GSoC. We were
>super-excited about it for the first number of years. However, I (at
>least) get the general feeling that the community in general has a very
>blas? feeling towards GSoC now. This is the main reason why I (and
>others) feel that it is best to take a year off. I don't know what we
>need or what I am expecting of the Rockbox community to fix this, but
>something needs to be done.
>
>We need to completely re-visit the entire ideas list (
>http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/SummerOfCode2012 ). Most of these ideas are
>carried over from past years which many of us feel differently about now
>than we did in the past. While we don't typically have official
>maintainers over specific areas of Rockbox, you all tend to specialise
>in a few areas. I am sure there are ideas in your bucket list of things
>you would like to see implemented, but have no time for. These can go
>on this page. Of course, don't just put a single sentence listing the
>idea - flesh it out! We could likely use the page as a sort of
>more-detailed version of http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/MrSomeonesTodoList
>. Don't worry about difficulty level for now, but at least make sure it
>is something that could potentially take a few months for someone with a
>beginner-to-moderate skill level.
>
>Most importantly, we need core developers who are ready and willing to
>donate a bit of their time towards mentoring a student. This doesn't
>take a massive amount of time (well, it shouldn't), as we tend to urge
>students towards using the community as their mentors, but some
>investment needs to be made.
>
>Feel free to discuss further - especially if you might have any ideas to
>help to fix this.
>
>- Austin 'scorche' Appel
>
>
>
>------------------------------
>
>Message: 3
>Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2012 20:39:51 +0100
>From: Marcin Bukat <marcin.bukat_at_gmail.com>
>To: Rockbox development <rockbox-dev_at_cool.haxx.se>
>Subject: Re: Rockbox's Google Summer of Code 2012 Status
>Message-ID:
> <CABEBQmes7YFZwp-uHcsGrxHpY=s+zyBtVvXXy9kPz0KH1uyZyw_at_mail.gmail.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
>> ?I am sure there are ideas in your bucket list of things
>> you would like to see implemented, but have no time for. ?These can go
>> on this page. ?Of course, don't just put a single sentence listing the
>> idea - flesh it out! ?We could likely use the page as a sort of
>> more-detailed version of http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/MrSomeonesTodoList
>> . ?Don't worry about difficulty level for now, but at least make sure it
>> is something that could potentially take a few months for someone with a
>> beginner-to-moderate skill level.
>

Don't be so hard on yourself. Rockbox is cool. But otoh the fact is you guys do not allow just anyone to submit project ideas, so 99% were not even allowed to contribute ideas. Perhaps you should allow anyone to be a mentor not just an experienced coder.

Rockbox community is huge, and you have enough support and a big enough user base that to not have the energy to even take advantage of this project is indeed something to be a little embarrassed about IMO. Google offers to improve and you say no thanks? Wow. The projects I saw were indeed a bit non-brilliat, with near zero noticeable improvements (e.g., making a codec more efficient when the cpus are getting faster, going at 240 mhz, and only need 30 mhz for slow codec!!). Here are 2 of 100 ideas from the forums that are worth doing IMO:

1. There is no reason to not have plugins for all the popular machines before 1997. They is tons of open source plugins working for ubuntu that should be portable to rockbox. Existing plugins are all super poor, not even using existing methods discussed on wikipedia. Try adjusting line and frame skipping on rockboy sansa which is 10x slower than it should be. Crash city.

Idea: the portable revolution, from high performance desktops to tablet and cell revolutions, with most cpus being sold today being arms in small consumer electronics, with even microsoft publishing a noncripled arm-based version of windows, have shifted computer usage from high resolution (lcd and plasma) displays to low-resolution (oled and lcd) battery-powered displays. Nevertheless, though due to this shift usage-based screen resolution is declining overall, moore’s law nevertheless gives these new tiny devices more and more raw cpu power. As such, there are new fast devices with small screens. To reduce software development costs, the logical thing to do is emulate old programs designed to run at low clock speeds (e.g., a 4mhz z80) on these faster devices.

        The penalty for such emulation is generally a factor of 2-5, as there is an extra layer of cpu cycles that essentially fakes another processor. It is slightly higher than the assembly verses interpreted language penalty. Therefore, to emulate an old z80 4mhz chip, one requires about a 20 mhz cpu. Modern arm chips start at several hundred mhz. For instance, the arm in the sana clip zip mp3 player runs at over 240 mhz, apparently depending on the values of the FCLK and PCLK registers. Similarly, the iPod touch 3rd Gen, which is a few generations stale, runs at 800mhz. http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/ipod/ipod-faq/ipod-processor-type-portal-player-samsung.html

More on anti aliasing and good image rescaling on plugins stolen from the forum:

[T]he present screen driver does not use any known method of image re-scaling or anti-aliasing listed on wikipedia's articles. Instead it just removes lines, yet it has the raw horsepower to do most of the standard methods as well as interesting ones I won't get into here, but which would make emulated software plugins much more usable as only double bolded text is legible otherwise. With the wide variety of device screen sizes and finite software base the time has come to build actual image rescaling into the drivers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subpixel_rendering
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2xSaI#2.C3.97SaI
http://nesdev.parodius.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?p=82770#82770

Thanks for allowing this post to be read by anyone. Also before you respond, there is not really a need to bash me just for making these suggestions, so please just do not reply if you want to say I suck because I do not have time to write this code myself or spare money to donate to rockbox, so yes I know I already really suck and I apologize for this highly inappropriate post as I am not a developer and therefore should not even have responded. Again I was just brainstorming and perhaps it will give some ideas and perhaps not.

Cheers
Jason
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                --
Jason Taylor
Blog _at_ http://twitter.com/jasontaylor7 updated once a day.
HOME PHONE #: +1-301-277-6032
Received on 2012-03-07