GSoD 2019

This page summarize the current list of ideas for VideoLAN project, for Google Season of Docs 2019.

The list is not exhaustive, and is not limitative. Feel free to apply with your own idea!

Introduction & Information

This wiki page covers the attempt by the VideoLAN project to act as a mentoring organization for Google Season of Docs 2019 in order to improve the VLC documentation.

Season of Docs

Google Season of Docs is a way for technical writers to have a paid stipden by Google to work on open source projects and improve their documentation.

VLC is in very big need of documentation, both for developers and end-users, and we're in the progress of revamping all that.

GSoD is run by the same people running the Google Summer of Code program.

VideoLAN was a Google Summer of Code mentoring organization in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019

This page list some documentation ideas for both VLC and VLC mobile ports, developer and user-facing documentations.

VLC

VLC media player is a cross-platform multimedia player, encoder and streamer application. It is one of the most successful open-source projects without any professional structure underneath.

VLC media player is downloaded at an approximate monthly rate of 23 millions from the main website and that's not including third-party distributions (Linux)!

You can find more information on VLC on Wikipedia or on this wiki.

The documentation of VLC is mostly for end-users using VLC.

libVLC

The engine of VLC is libVLC.

It can be used to do 3rd party applications, media players, or other type of multimedia application.

Its API is documented but is far from being simple to understand. It should be improved.

How to Start

Find an idea

First, you need to find an idea.

This current page gives you a list of ideas. Those ideas are NOT exhaustive: you can bring your own idea! Some of the best ideas we've ever had were custom ideas!

Submit your idea

You need to submit your idea on the Google Season of Doc platform.

You should do so, quite quickly, so that we can give you early feedback to improve your submission.

Compile libVLC or VLMC

This may sound trivial, but it's harder than many expect. See https://wiki.videolan.org/Category:Building/ for more informations.

You should come on IRC to get help to compile.

Provide a small patch

To demonstrate your skills, share a small patch with us. This will let you become familiar with Git, in case you don't know it already and our process on merging patches.

Let's get in touch

If you have a doubt, are not sure about anything or want clarification, please get in touch with us.

We have 3 major communication channels: Our mailing-lists to discuss patches and further development related topics. Furthermore, we have our web forums for VLC-related end-user support - a VLMC section will be created once the product is published. Finally, there is our IRC channel #videolan (for libVLC) and #vlmc on the Freenode network. It's open to any kind of discussion. Usage issues, questions how to compile VLC/VLMC, getting to know the fellow developers, etc.