
Ideas for contributors
======================

If you're thinking of contributing to Rosegarden, we'd prefer you to
work on something that interests you.  You're more likely to stick at
it, and more likely to be able to tell how good a job you're doing.

But, in case you're itching to contribute some code and you really
can't decide what you'd like to do, here are some ideas.  (Anything
listed on one of our general task lists that isn't also on one of our
personal task lists may be a good candidate, too.)

These are all things that we would like to see implemented but feel
unlikely to get around to doing ourselves.  As such, they're likely to
be tedious or hard work, because if they were interesting and easy
we'd be happy to do them.  Don't feel you ought to work on anything
from this list if it doesn't interest you: find something you really
want to do instead.


Tasks suggested by Chris (notation guy):

 -- The event list window could do with some more work.

 -- Various import/export filters.  These are usually boring to
 implement, but they're quite useful and help you learn a reasonable
 amount about the way the data structures work.  Good candidates
 include import of Finale ETF files (see
 http://www.cs.uu.nl/~hanwen/lily-devel/etf.html and various sample
 files at http://www.cpdl.org), import of Brahms files, and I/O of
 MusicXML (check first whether any other program actually uses it)
 and NIFF (likewise).  ETF is difficult, Brahms should be easy.  We 
 used to ask for Lilypond export here, but Hans Kieserman stepped up
 and wrote that.  I think he's now working on MusicXML as well, so
 perhaps that's out.

 -- Anyone with a particular interest in any sort of notation work
 is invited and encouraged to help write support for it into Rosegarden.

 -- Anyone who knows about KDE and Qt could be very helpful, as we
 have quite a lot of things that need sorting out in that area.
 (Guillaume can do a lot, but he doesn't have so much time at the
 moment.)  Personally I'd like to see every single problem with
 font sizing sorted out, for both Qt-2 and Qt-3, as well as making
 the fonts used for things like time signature, staff name and
 chord labels configurable.


Tasks suggested by Bownie (MIDI and audio guy):

 -- an audio (waveform) editor.  I've talked to the bloke who runs
 kwave and he's not really up to much with it at the moment, might
 eventually make a kparts thingy out of it but he's talking about next
 year.  We would want to use the aRTS extensible plugin architecture
 for effects stacks so it'd be a really interesting and rewarding part
 of the project.  I would do it myself but there's so much else
 Instrument/Environment-wise to come to support all that fun stuff.

 -- Someone should investigate and possibly implement the LADSPA plugins
 as well (www.plugin.org.uk, www.ladspa.org).

 -- a virtual MIDI keyboard for aRTS.  With a keyboard GUI that
 allows sending of MIDI events to any aRTS capable MIDI client (i.e
 the Rosegarden MIDI record port).  Also has a MIDI IN port that
 gives visual feedback on any events passing through - what keys are
 being played.  Useful little gadget for those with no external MIDI
 devices who are keen to play around with MIDI.

