From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-ID: <4D94E0A4.90806@gmail.com> Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2011 22:14:28 +0200 From: Till Kamppeter MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"; format="flowed" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Subject: [Printing-architecture] Google Summer of Code 2011 - Nice project, who wants to mentor it? List-Id: Printing architecture under linux List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , To: Open Printing Hi, the following application with a project idea from a student has arrived. I would much like that this project will get turned reality. It is not one of our work which needs to be done urgently, but it is also something useful. And the student needs it for his department, so another motivation which counts in. So I want to ask all of you, who would like to step up as a mentor for this project? Till P.S.: Please register as mentor for the Linux Foundation on http://www.google-melange.com/ if you want to participate in the selection process or if you want to actually mentor. ---------- Ticketed Print Monitoring System -------------------------------- Samantha Christoff Email: firebirdy4 at gmail dot com Mentor: No mentor assigned Possible mentors: ??? Short description: Implement a monitored print server in CUPS to allow graduate students and faculty to print to a network of laser printers with a ticketed system hooked up to a monitor server with a front end GUI available on all platforms. This is in order to set printing limits and to meet budget constraints on toner and paper. Google Summer of Code Application Name: Samantha Christoff University: Arizona State University, dual majoring in Physics and Philosophy, currently a Sophomore Short Biography:I am a twenty year old pink haired motivated programmer, physicist, philosopher, pop star, with a lot of problems to solve and a lot of math to do it with. I freelance in most of my work and have experience with platforms up and down the board, recently, C++, Grails, and jQuery. I’m a list oriented person who is a bit messy when it comes to keeping office space. You can say I’m a Highly motivated, workaholic with a passion for coffeecake, open source, differential equations and shoes. IRC Nickname: FinalPhoenix Platforms: 1. MacBook Pro 2011 Core i7 8gbs RAM 500gb HDD running MacOSX/Windows 7 2. iMac 24” Summer 2009 8gb RAM 320GB HDD running Ubuntu 10.10/Arch Pertinent Languages: C, C++, PHP, CSS, HTML5, jQuery Relevant Experience: I code in C and C++ for various academic programs for Physicists and Psychologists, modeling electron microscopy and emergent systems. I use CSS, PHP, HTML5, and jQuery every day for various web design and development work. Involvement in the Open Source Community: This will be my first major Open Source Project, I have been a freeloader in the past and would like to correct that. Development Idea and Implementation: The idea came from my actual day job. I manage servers and labs at Arizona State University at Coor Hall in the Geography and Urban Planning Department. Due to state budget cuts we have been forced to rely more and more on open source software, however those budget cuts have also affected how much paper and ink we can buy. These budget cuts are felt by most of the faculty, however, the grad students are largely unaware. Our graduate students are good people from all over the world, but they love printing. They love printing so much that they’re bleeding us dry. Often the graduate students will print entire textbooks on laser printers, ten or so copies of 200 page theses, etc. This has become a very big problem and I am supposed to solve it. If I can create a ticketed, monitored print system with user accounts. I can stop these ink-hungry graduate students and perhaps save the day, and the department from further measures like taking on less graduate students, or even worse, cutting the IT budget. Expected Achievement: Create a ticketed, monitored linux print server with a web user interface for both administrators and users on all platforms. Why I am suited for this project: I have been involved in the Linux community for five years, and a member of the Linux Users Group at ASU for two. I would like to finally make Linux print servers viable for large organizations and make Linux a friendly way to go in the office. I am well versed in coding in the specific languages needed and C/C++ were part of the first languages I learned six years ago. I have to solve this problem, and I would like the support of the Open Source Community to not only save my department from further measures, but to help other people in similar situations. Invested Time: I will be contributing 40 hours a week or more to this problem as it is urgent to the success of my department. Not only is my day job allowing me to do this, but I will be most likely doing the real extensive testing at home in my own environment. Rough Schedule of Project Subtasks: First two weeks – Planning and Research into the CUPS platform and similar closed source ticketing systems Seven Weeks – Developing and Implementing a ticket based system to be interpreted by job (i.e. File Name, Size, Number of Pages, When it was printed, from what IP) and sent to a monitoring server where each job is recorded. These jobs will be sent to a database. Six Weeks – Developing a user database to match up to ticketing system in order to set print limits on users, know which user printed what and how many, etc. Three Weeks – Developing and Designing a front and back end GUI accessible through the web available on all platforms (Mac/PC/Linux) in order to install print drivers, see jobs, progress towards page limit, and a back end for administration use, such as a print out of the requested jobs for each printer, who is at their print limit, how many pages are going through each printer, etc. Two weeks – Debugging, Testing, Implementing.