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GNU Task List

11. Other Projects

If you think of others that should be added, please send them to tasks@gnu.org.

• Maintain a library for automatic graph layout. VCG might provide a base for this. Make sure there is a front end for manual and interactive intervention so that the result is a full substitute for equivalent proprietory software

• A "one stop shopping system" for advocates involved with social justice or other non-profit campaigns. The idea would be to create an easy-to-use interface to software that would allow someone to register a domain for their organisation, build a website, and set up mailing lists. The software would need options to easily do all this, and be made easy for non-hackers. Mainly the work would involve bringing together a number of existing tools with an overriding configuration program.

• An imitation of Page Maker or Ventura Publisher.

• An imitation of dbase2 or dbase3. (How dbased!) Harbour, a free replacement for Clipper, would provide a useful start. http://www.harbour-project.org/.

• A free replacement for Glimpse, which is not free software. Swish does some parts of the job, but not all.

• Software for desktop publishing. We are extending Emacs into a WYSIWYG word processor, to handle primarily linear text; what this item proposes is software focused on page layout.

• A program to play sound distributed in "Real Audio" format.

• A program to generate "Real Audio" format from audio input.

• Programs to handle audio in RTSP format.

• A braille translation and formatting system which can convert marked up documents into braille. This should let the user customize the braille translation rules; it would be good to divide it into a device-independent part plus drivers. Contact Jason White, jasonw@ariel.ucs.unimelb.EDU.AU.

• More scientific mathematical subroutines. (A clone of SPSS is being written already.)

• A scientific data collection and processing tool, perhaps something like Scientific Workbench and/or Khoros,

• A program to calculate properties of molecules by solving the Schroedinger equation.

• Software to replace card catalogs in libraries.

• A simulator for heating and air conditioning systems for buildings.

• A package for editing genealogical records conveniently. This could perhaps be done as a Gnome program, or perhaps as an Emacs extension.

• Grammar and style checking programs.

• A diagnostic program to test a hard disk.

• Optical character recognition programs; especially if suitable for scanning documents with multiple fonts and capturing font info as well as character codes. Work is being done on this, but more help is needed.

• A program to scan a line drawing and convert it to editable Postscript, or some other editable format.

• A program to recognize handwriting (we don't believe PocketLinux's handwriting capability is ready for non-PocketLinux environments, yet).

• A program that can translate from one natural language, into another. For example, a program to translate French into English.

• CAD software, such as a vague imitation of Autocad.

• A program to receive data from a serial-line tap to facilitate the reverse-engineering of communication protocols.

• A database program designed to store and retrieve patent information.

• A free software package to run on a Palm Pilot in place of its usual software, doing more or less the usual jobs. (Linux, the kernel, has apparently been ported, but according to what we hear this port is not useful yet.)