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[or-cvs] r24203: {website} Revisions to project ideas and formatting on the volunteer p (website/trunk/getinvolved/en)
Author: atagar
Date: 2011-02-09 05:03:20 +0000 (Wed, 09 Feb 2011)
New Revision: 24203
Modified:
website/trunk/getinvolved/en/volunteer.wml
Log:
Revisions to project ideas and formatting on the volunteer page
Few of the simple changes discussed on -assistants.
- Formatting Fix: The starting entries properly used paragraph tags, but the later were just text with breaks. The result was that all the entries ran together (no spacing between the ideas).
- Moving the Vidalia projects to the bottom since we're pretty shaky about if we have a mentor for them. It sounds like Tom?\195?\161s would rather be a backup mentor, and no one has stepped forward to be the primary. :(
- Dropping the JTor project since we don't have a mentor for it. It's currently just commented out in case the project gets rekindled. I'll include JTor in the projects table I add later so potential volunteers are aware of it.
- Minor fix: Replacing Weasel with Peter as a mentor for one of the projects.
Modified: website/trunk/getinvolved/en/volunteer.wml
===================================================================
--- website/trunk/getinvolved/en/volunteer.wml 2011-02-09 04:56:48 UTC (rev 24202)
+++ website/trunk/getinvolved/en/volunteer.wml 2011-02-09 05:03:20 UTC (rev 24203)
@@ -181,46 +181,6 @@
</li>
<li>
- <b>Tor Controller Status Event Interface for Vidalia</b>
- <br>
- Priority: <i>Medium</i>
- <br>
- Effort Level: <i>Medium</i>
- <br>
- Skill Level: <i>Low to Medium</i>
- <br>
- Likely Mentors: <i>Matt</i>
- <p>There are a number of status changes inside Tor of which the user may need
- to be informed. For example, if the user is trying to set up his Tor as a
- relay and Tor decides that its ports are not reachable from outside
- the user's network, we should alert the user. Currently, all the user
- gets is a couple of log messages in Vidalia's 'message log' window, which they
- likely never see since they don't receive a notification that something
- has gone wrong. Even if the user does actually look at the message log,
- most of the messages make little sense to the novice user.</p>
- <p>Tor has the ability to inform Vidalia of many such status
- changes, and we recently implemented support for a couple of these
- events. Still, there are many more status events which the user should
- be informed of, and we need a better UI for actually displaying them
- to the user.</p>
- <p>The goal of this project then is to design and implement a UI for
- displaying Tor status events to the user. For example, we might put a
- little badge on Vidalia's tray icon that alerts the user to new status
- events they should look at. Double-clicking the icon could bring up a
- dialog that summarizes recent status events in simple terms and maybe
- suggests a remedy for any negative events if they can be corrected by
- the user. Of course, this is just an example and one is free to
- suggest another approach.</p>
- <p>A person undertaking this project should have good UI design and layout
- skills and some C++ development experience. Previous experience with Qt and
- Qt's Designer will be very helpful, but are not required. Some
- English writing ability will also be useful, since this project will
- likely involve writing small amounts of help documentation that should
- be understandable by non-technical users. Bonus points for some graphic
- design/Photoshop fu, since we might want/need some shiny new icons too.</p>
- </li>
-
- <li>
<b>Client Mode Use Cases for Arm</b>
<br>
Priority: <i>Medium</i>
@@ -310,33 +270,6 @@
</li>
<li>
- <b>Help with independent Tor client implementations</b>
- <br>
- Priority: <i>Medium</i>
- <br>
- Effort Level: <i>High</i>
- <br>
- Skill Level: <i>Medium to High</i>
- <br>
- Likely Mentors: <i>Bruce, Nathan</i>
- <p>Others are currently working on Tor clients for Java, Android, and Maemo
- environments. The first step is to get a handle on the current state of
- the project in which you are interested in helping; <a
- href="http://github.com/brl/JTor";>Tor for Java</a>,
- <a href="https://svn.torproject.org/svn/projects/android/trunk/";>Android/Orbot</a>,
- or <a href="<page docs/N900>">Tor for Maemo</a>. Check out the
- repository and familiarize yourself
- with the source code. Further, support for requesting or even providing
- Tor hidden services would be neat, but not required.</p>
- <p>A prospective developer should be able to understand and write new Java
- code, including a Java cryptography API. Being able to read C code would be helpful,
- too. One should be willing to read the existing documentation,
- implement code based on it, and refine the documentation
- when things are underdocumented. This project is mostly about coding and
- to a small degree about design.</p>
- </li>
-
- <li>
<b>More on Orbot & Android OS-specific development</b>
<br/>
<br>
@@ -400,61 +333,32 @@
Skill Level: <i>Medium</i>
<br>
Likely Mentors: <i>Steven</i>
- <br>
+ <p>
Many users of Tor have poor-quality Internet connections, giving low
bandwidth, high latency, and high packet loss/re-ordering. User
experience is that Tor reacts badly to these conditions, but it is
difficult to improve the situation without being able to repeat the
problems in the lab.
- <br>
+ </p>
+
+ <p>
This project would be to build a simulation environment which
replicates the poor connectivity so that the effect on Tor performance
can be measured. Other components would be a testing utility to
establish what are the properties of connections available, and to
measure the effect of performance-improving modifications to Tor.
- <br>
+ </p>
+
+ <p>
The tools used would be up to the student, but dummynet (for FreeBSD)
and nistnet (for Linux) are two potential components on which this
project could be built. Students should be experienced with network
programming/debugging and TCP/IP, and preferably familiar with C and a
scripting language.
+ </p>
</li>
<li>
- <b>An Improved and More Usable Network Map in Vidalia</b>
- <br>
- Priority: <i>Low to Medium</i>
- <br>
- Effort Level: <i>Medium</i>
- <br>
- Skill Level: <i>Medium</i>
- <br>
- Likely Mentors: <i>Matt</i>
- <br>
- One of Vidalia's existing features is a network map that shows the user
- the approximate geographic location of relays in the Tor network and
- plots the paths the user's traffic takes as it is tunneled through the
- Tor network. The map is currently not very interactive and has rather
- poor graphics. Instead, we implemented KDE's Marble widget such
- that it gives us a better quality map and enables improved interactivity,
- such as allowing the user to click on individual relays or circuits to
- display additional information. We want to add the ability
- for users to click on a particular relay or a country containing one or
- more Tor exit relays and say, "I want my connections to exit
- from here."
- <br>
- This project will first involve getting familiar with Vidalia
- and the Marble widget's API. One will then integrate the widget
- into Vidalia and customize Marble to be better suited for our application,
- such as making circuits clickable, storing cached map data in Vidalia's
- own data directory, and customizing some of the widget's dialogs.
- <br>
- A person undertaking this project should have good C++ development
- experience. Previous experience with Qt and CMake is helpful, but not
- required.
- </li>
-
- <li>
<b>Torbutton equivalent for Thunderbird</b>
<br>
Priority: <i>Medium</i>
@@ -464,12 +368,13 @@
Skill Level: <i>High</i>
<br>
Likely Mentors: <i>Mike</i>
- <br>
+ <p>
We're hearing from an increasing number of users that they want to use
Thunderbird with Tor. However, there are plenty of application-level
concerns, for example, by default Thunderbird will put your hostname in
the outgoing mail that it sends. At some point we should start a new
push to build a Thunderbird extension similar to Torbutton.
+ </p>
</li>
<li>
@@ -482,32 +387,40 @@
Skill Level: <i>Medium</i>
<br>
Likely Mentors: <i>Erinn, Peter</i>
- <br>
+ <p>
Vidalia currently doesn't play nicely with Tor on Linux and Unix platforms.
Currently, on Debian and Ubuntu, there is a configuration mechanism which
allows Vidalia to override Tor's ability to start on boot (by sourcing
<code>/etc/default/tor.vidalia</code> which sets <code>RUN_DAEMON=no</code> at the user's
request), but full implementation of <a href="<gitblob>doc/spec/control-spec.txt">ControlPort</a>
communication is still required.
- <br>
+ </p>
+
+ <p>
A better solution on Linux and Unix platforms would be to use Tor's
ControlSocket, which allows Vidalia to talk to Tor via a Unix domain socket,
and could possibly be enabled by default in Tor's distribution packages.
Vidalia can then authenticate to Tor using filesystem-based (cookie)
authentication if the user running Vidalia is also in the distribution-specific
tor group.
- <br>
+ </p>
+
+ <p>
This project will first involve adding support for Tor's ControlSocket to
Vidalia. The student will then develop and test this support on various
distributions to make sure it behaves in a predictable and consistent manner on
all of them.
- <br>
+ </p>
+
+ <p>
The next challenge would be to find an intuitive and usable way for Vidalia to be
able to change Tor's configuration (torrc) even though it is located in
<code>/etc/tor/torrc</code> and thus immutable. In Debian and Ubuntu we handle
this with the aforementioned <code>/etc/default/tor.vidalia</code> but this
- functionality could (or should) be less distribution-specific.
- <br>
+ functionality could (or should) be less distribution-specific.
+ </p>
+
+ <p>
The best idea we've come up with so far is to feed Tor a new configuration via
the ControlSocket when Vidalia starts, but that's bad because if the user is not
using the latest Debian/Ubuntu packages, they may not have disabled Tor's
@@ -516,10 +429,13 @@
write out a temporary torrc file and ask the user to manually move it to
<code>/etc/tor/torrc</code>, but that's bad because users shouldn't have to
mess with files directly.
- <br>
+ </p>
+
+ <p>
A person undertaking this project should have prior knowledge of various Linux
distributions and their packaging mechanisms as well as some C++ development
experience. Previous experience with Qt is helpful, but not required.
+ </p>
</li>
@@ -533,11 +449,12 @@
Skill Level: <i>Low to Medium</i>
<br>
Likely Mentors: <i>Andrew</i>
- <br>
+ <p>
Especially the browser bundle, ideally amongst our target demographic.
That would help a lot in knowing what needs to be done in terms of bug
fixes or new features. We get this informally at the moment, but a more
structured process would be better.
+ </p>
</li>
<li>
@@ -549,8 +466,8 @@
<br>
Skill Level: <i>Medium to High</i>
<br>
- Likely Mentors: <i>Sebastian, Weasel, Roger</i>
- <br>
+ Likely Mentors: <i>Sebastian, Peter, Roger</i>
+ <p>
The world needs an authenticating irc proxy. As we're periodically
reminded from the Penny Arcade web comic, "Internet user + anonymity =
jerk". With respect to websites we're actually doing ok, since websites
@@ -574,6 +491,7 @@
layer that requires the users to authenticate. Some work on this has
begun by other volunteers, see their progress at <a
href="http://github.com/anonirc/orc";>http://github.com/anonirc/orc</a>.
+ </p>
</li>
<li>
@@ -586,7 +504,7 @@
Skill Level: <i>Medium</i>
<br>
Likely Mentors: <i>?</i>
- <br>
+ <p>
<a href="http://code.google.com/p/torsocks/";>Torsocks</a> and <a
href="http://code.google.com/p/dsocks/";>dsocks</a> are wrappers that will
run applications, intercept their outgoing network connections, and push
@@ -603,9 +521,118 @@
dsocks is installed, and call them appropriately. This probably means
unifying their interfaces, and might involve sharing code between them
or discarding one entirely.
+ </p>
</li>
<li>
+ <b>Tor Controller Status Event Interface for Vidalia</b>
+ <br>
+ Priority: <i>Medium</i>
+ <br>
+ Effort Level: <i>Medium</i>
+ <br>
+ Skill Level: <i>Low to Medium</i>
+ <br>
+ Likely Mentors: <i>TomÃs?</i>
+ <p>There are a number of status changes inside Tor of which the user may need
+ to be informed. For example, if the user is trying to set up his Tor as a
+ relay and Tor decides that its ports are not reachable from outside
+ the user's network, we should alert the user. Currently, all the user
+ gets is a couple of log messages in Vidalia's 'message log' window, which they
+ likely never see since they don't receive a notification that something
+ has gone wrong. Even if the user does actually look at the message log,
+ most of the messages make little sense to the novice user.</p>
+ <p>Tor has the ability to inform Vidalia of many such status
+ changes, and we recently implemented support for a couple of these
+ events. Still, there are many more status events which the user should
+ be informed of, and we need a better UI for actually displaying them
+ to the user.</p>
+ <p>The goal of this project then is to design and implement a UI for
+ displaying Tor status events to the user. For example, we might put a
+ little badge on Vidalia's tray icon that alerts the user to new status
+ events they should look at. Double-clicking the icon could bring up a
+ dialog that summarizes recent status events in simple terms and maybe
+ suggests a remedy for any negative events if they can be corrected by
+ the user. Of course, this is just an example and one is free to
+ suggest another approach.</p>
+ <p>A person undertaking this project should have good UI design and layout
+ skills and some C++ development experience. Previous experience with Qt and
+ Qt's Designer will be very helpful, but are not required. Some
+ English writing ability will also be useful, since this project will
+ likely involve writing small amounts of help documentation that should
+ be understandable by non-technical users. Bonus points for some graphic
+ design/Photoshop fu, since we might want/need some shiny new icons too.</p>
+ </li>
+
+ <li>
+ <b>An Improved and More Usable Network Map in Vidalia</b>
+ <br>
+ Priority: <i>Low to Medium</i>
+ <br>
+ Effort Level: <i>Medium</i>
+ <br>
+ Skill Level: <i>Medium</i>
+ <br>
+ Likely Mentors: <i>TomÃs?</i>
+ <p>
+ One of Vidalia's existing features is a network map that shows the user
+ the approximate geographic location of relays in the Tor network and
+ plots the paths the user's traffic takes as it is tunneled through the
+ Tor network. The map is currently not very interactive and has rather
+ poor graphics. Instead, we implemented KDE's Marble widget such
+ that it gives us a better quality map and enables improved interactivity,
+ such as allowing the user to click on individual relays or circuits to
+ display additional information. We want to add the ability
+ for users to click on a particular relay or a country containing one or
+ more Tor exit relays and say, "I want my connections to exit
+ from here."
+ </p>
+
+ <p>
+ This project will first involve getting familiar with Vidalia
+ and the Marble widget's API. One will then integrate the widget
+ into Vidalia and customize Marble to be better suited for our application,
+ such as making circuits clickable, storing cached map data in Vidalia's
+ own data directory, and customizing some of the widget's dialogs.
+ </p>
+
+ <p>
+ A person undertaking this project should have good C++ development
+ experience. Previous experience with Qt and CMake is helpful, but not
+ required.
+ </p>
+ </li>
+
+ <!--
+ <li>
+ <b>Help with independent Tor client implementations</b>
+ <br>
+ Priority: <i>Medium</i>
+ <br>
+ Effort Level: <i>High</i>
+ <br>
+ Skill Level: <i>Medium to High</i>
+ <br>
+ Likely Mentors: <i>Bruce, Nathan</i>
+ <p>Others are currently working on Tor clients for Java, Android, and Maemo
+ environments. The first step is to get a handle on the current state of
+ the project in which you are interested in helping; <a
+ href="http://github.com/brl/JTor";>Tor for Java</a>,
+ <a href="https://svn.torproject.org/svn/projects/android/trunk/";>Android/Orbot</a>,
+ or <a href="<page docs/N900>">Tor for Maemo</a>. Check out the
+ repository and familiarize yourself
+ with the source code. Further, support for requesting or even providing
+ Tor hidden services would be neat, but not required.</p>
+ <p>A prospective developer should be able to understand and write new Java
+ code, including a Java cryptography API. Being able to read C code would be helpful,
+ too. One should be willing to read the existing documentation,
+ implement code based on it, and refine the documentation
+ when things are underdocumented. This project is mostly about coding and
+ to a small degree about design.</p>
+ </li>
+ -->
+
+ <li>
<b>Bring up new ideas!</b>
<br>
Don't like any of these? Look at the <a