How I got selected for GSoC 2019 with Synfig

GSoC (Google Summer of Code) is one of my biggest dream, because of which I have sacrificed (or I was made to sacrifice) some other thing which are very important. And from then on I decided that I choose what to do; well I may be able to do everything but what’s wrong in dreaming big. I have got selected for GSoC 2019 with Synfig and I will be working on my project Vectorization of bitmaps with my mentor Konstantin Dmitriev this summer.

Njack Winter of Code to Google Summer of Code

I started contributing to Synfig as a part of NWoC 2018. Synfig is the first open source organization I started contributing to. It was an awesome experience as my mentor Konstantin Dmitriev is so cool. Specially how he use ASCII emoji (^_^) [^_^] and encourage newcomer on improving the code quality. During this period I got an understanding about Synfig how it works, how GitHub and Travis CI works, and the do’s and don’t while contributing.

As Synfig was not in previously selected organizations I moved my focus to some other organizations and started contributing there.

And when I came to know Synfig is applying for GSoC I improved their documentation, COC, etc and helped them in the process. Till then I was strongly willing to apply at Synfig and not any other organization. So I decided to dive deep into Synfig’s Codebase. I learned GTK3+/Gtkmm, Shell scripting, SVG and creating various GUI elements in GTK(using C++).

As soon as the mentoring organizations were declared and I found Synfig in the list I became super happy !! I had already decided which project I will be choosing. The project I selected involved creating a convertor for Synfig which allows users to convert the raster images into vector images using Opentoonz Raster to Vector algorithm. My mentor asked me to solve issues related to adding options in menu and creating input dialog. He also asked me to mention the step by step conversion algorithm from raster to vector in my project proposal. The algorithm was actually no where mentioned so I had to understand it myself from Opentoonz Codebase.

So I did whatever I was asked and submitted my proposal.

I was overwhelmed and excited to see my name on Google Summer of Code website. I have started working on my project but due to end semester exam my pace is slow. I will be sharing my further experience through blog posts.