[BioRuby] Google Summer of Code project ideas

[Pjotr Prins]

Another one :)

Restyling BioRuby.org

Rationale 

    BioRuby.org is a portal for getting appropriate information on Ruby-related software development to bioinformatics software developers. The current portal discourages both experienced and inexperienced software developers from digging deeper, and finding solutions to typical bioinformatics problems. 

Approach 

    We want to restyle the portal so it becomes an interactive environment, encourages people to participate and put information in, and information gets easier to find. The restyling is about web design, and programming an interactive website in Ruby, using Ruby on Rails and other tools, such as markdown, haml, sass, staticmatic, etc. Also the idea is to use existing webservices, such has github gists, rubydoc.info, e.g. example, and embed them into the site - rather than recreating all these services from scratch. We would like to create a collection of code snippets and documentation that is easy to navigate and add to. It should be even less effort than maintaining a Wiki. Also code snippets should be able to run online - and prove they are correct. The total design should also be useful for other Bio* projectcs, such as BioPerl. It is possible to get a scientific paper out of this work. 

Difficulty and needed skills 

    Affinity for web design, accessibility of information, web programming in Ruby. Perhaps Javascript and Coffeescript. 

The project requires

    Some Ruby experience, experience in web design 

Mentors 

    Raoul Bonnal, Pjotr Prins, Toshiaki Katayama (confirm) 

http://bioruby.open-bio.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code#Restyling_BioRuby.org