02 May 2017

Tender to improve image handling in LibreOffice (#201705-01)

Posted in Tenders By Mike Saunders On May 2, 2017

The Document Foundation (TDF), the charitable entity behind the world’s leading free office suite LibreOffice, seeks for companies or individuals to

improve and fix issues with image handling in LibreOffice

to start work as soon as possible. TDF is looking for an individual or company to, as a turnkey project, implement the following:

  • Use a robust and hard lifecycle mechanism (eg smart reference count) for every reference to an image
  • Propagate this lifecycle mechanism through filters and UNO APIs
  • Copy all (compressed) image streams out of document storages into an on-disk cache – to avoid data loss on file movement
  • Improve image detail reading and storage, to avoid reading a whole JPEG or PNG just to work out its pixel size and discard/swap-out the result
  • Reduce excessive swap-in and out thrash
  • ideally – but non-essentially cleanup the “graphics cache size” and manage caching of images in a more intelligent way

Required skills

  • Extensive knowledge of C++
  • Experience working on the LibreOffice source code

We exclusively use free, libre and open source (FLOSS) software for development wherever possible, and the resulting work must be licensed under the the Mozilla Public License v2.0.

Other Skills

  • English (Conversationally fluent in order to coordinate and plan with members of TDF)

TDF welcomes applications from all suitably qualified persons regardless of their race, sex, disability, religion/belief, sexual orientation or age.

As always, TDF will give some preference to individuals who have previously shown a commitment to TDF, including but not limited to members of TDF. Not being a member, or never having contributed before, does not exclude any applicants from consideration.

The task offered is a project-based one-off, with no immediate plans to a mid- or long-term contractual relationship. It is offered on a freelance, project basis. Individuals and companies applying can be located anywhere in the world.

TDF is looking forward to receiving your applications, your financial expectations (name the final price for the turnkey project), and the earliest date of your availability, via e-mail to Florian Effenberger at floeff@documentfoundation.org no later than June 2, 2017. You can encrypt your message via PGP/GnuPG.

Applicants who have not received feedback by July 3, 2017 should consider that their application, after careful review, was not accepted.