2022 is Joplin second round at Google Summer of Code. Detailed information on how to get involved and apply are given in the [general Summer of Code introduction](https://joplinapp.org/gsoc2022/index/)
**These are all proposals! We are open to new ideas you might have!!** Do you have an awesome idea you want to work on with Joplin but that is not among the ideas below? That's cool. We love that! But please do us a favour: Get in touch with a mentor early on and make sure your project is realistic and within the scope of Joplin. Just make sure your idea is within this year's theme:
- **Plugin development** - implementing new features using Joplin's plugin system.
- **External desktop applications** - build external Joplin applications by retrieving, creating or modifying notes via the Data API.
- **External server applications** - leverage the Joplin Server API to provide online features to Joplin users.
# Information for Students
These ideas were contributed by our developers and users. They are sometimes vague or incomplete. If you wish to submit a proposal based on these ideas, you are urged to contact the developers and find out more about the particular suggestion you're looking at.
Becoming accepted as a Google Summer of Code student is quite competitive. Accepted students typically have thoroughly researched the technologies of their proposed project and have been in frequent contact with potential mentors. **Simply copying and pasting an idea here will not work.** On the other hand, creating a completely new idea without first consulting potential mentors rarely works.
# List of ideas
## 1. Plugin system on mobile
The plugin system is currently available on desktop and CLI. We believe it could work on mobile too although some work will have to be done to make the plugin API compatible, as well as add a mechanism to load plugins.
Expected Outcome: Allow loading and running plugins on mobile
The desktop application currently supports automatic updates, however the process is not particularly smooth: the user is presented with a modal dialog, where they need to click "Download" and that opens the default browser to download the file. Then they need to run this file and go through the installer.
We would like to make this process smoother:
- The installer should be automatically downloaded in the background
- It should then install the app automatically when the next time the app is started
- And this should work at least on Windows and macOS (Linux may be special due to the different distribution methods)
Difficulty Level: Medium
Skills Required: TypeScript, React. Some knowledge of Electron and electron-builder.
## 3. Refactor the project documentation
The current documentation (under [joplinapp.org/help](https://joplinapp.org/help)) is mainly a giant README.md file and various smaller Markdown files under /readme. All this is then built into the HTML website by a script.
We would like to improve this by splitting the main readme into smaller sections, have a new menu that would reorganise the help into various topics, and of course the build script will need to be updated.
A good part of this project will be about researching how other projects organise their documentation, proposing a way that would work well for Joplin, and discussing your ideas with the mentors and users. This is still a technical project though since you will need to deal with TypeScript, Markdown, HTML and CSS (and any other technology that might help) to build the new documentation.
## 4. Implement default plugins on desktop application
We would like to bundle certain plugins with the desktop application, such as the Backup or Rich Markdown plugin. Some process needs to be implemented so that they are bundled and updated automatically. You'll have to consider how it will work on CI, and across platform. The process should be fault tolerant and retry when something fails.
Difficulty Level: High
Skills Required: TypeScript, JavaScript, knowledge of Electron and GitHub Actions.
## 5. Implement a toolbar for the mobile beta code editor
We would like the Beta code editor to eventually become the main editor, and for that a number of changes need to be made. The main one would be the addition of a toolbar to it, to set the various styles, such as Bold, Bullet list, Header, etc. Additionally there are number of bugs that will have to be fixed to get the editor ready for production - you will find them in the list of issues (under the "high" and "mobile" label).
Difficulty Level: High
Skills Required: TypeScript, JavaScript, React Native, React Hooks. You'll also need to learn about CodeMirror 6 if you're not already familiar with it.
