GSoC2008: Finch Improvements

Student: Mark Schneider

Goals

Finch currently lacks some features that its bigger brother, the GTK-based, Pidgin front end have available. One goal of this project is to incorporate spell-checking support into Finch. This can perhaps be done through the addition of a library similar to GtkSpell? but for Finch's GUI toolkit, libgnt. The second goal of this project is to add a tiling window manager to Finch. A tiling window manager will allow for the user to organize open windows into a set of non-overlapping frames, providing a more controller windowing environment. The third goal is to provide some enhancements to the GntTextView? widget provided by libgnt. Currently, there are some issues with handling the resizing of the GntTextView? widget's width that would be nice to address.

Tasks

• Write a simple application using GntEntry and GntTextView? to help get acclimated.
• Add spell checking support to libgnt
• Create window manager for Finch
• Analysis of GntTextView? widget resizing problems
• Create multi-line support to the GntEntry widget

Project Deliverables

1. Simple test application utilizing libgnt
2. Finch spell checking library/plugin
3. Tiling window manager configuration documentation
4. Finch tiling window manager library
5. Improved GntTextView? widget