On Jan 16, 2009, at 2:10 AM, Nick Roberts wrote:

> Daniel Clemente writes:
>>
>>
>> Hi,
>>  I think this is a very good opportunity to tackle the big projects  
>> which
>>  have been around for a long time and which would improve Emacs
>>  considerably.
>>
>>
>>  As examples:
>>
>> 1. Integrate CEDET into Emacs
>> -----------------------------
>>  This will ease support for other languages and integrate features  
>> like
>>  code completion, syntax checking, project handling, ... Some other  
>> tools
>>  like JDEE (Java support) or ECB could also be included.
>>
>>
>> 2. Good multithreading support for Emacs
>> ----------------------------------------
>>  This is much wanted, specially for background processes like  
>> checking
>>  mail. It is necessary to profit from multicore processors, very  
>> common
>>  nowadays.  There were already attempts to do this.
>> ...
>
>
> One SoC project involves a student working for about about twelve  
> weeks.  I'm
> not sure how much progress they could make with these tasks in this  
> time.  I
> would think it is better to have smaller clearly defined ones.
>
> -- 
> Nick                                           http://www.inet.net.nz/~nickrob

As a student who participated in GSoC last year, I'd be thrilled to do  
work on Emacs.

Personally, as far as more-accomplishable tasks go, I'd recommend  
having a couple geared towards bringing various ports (namely the  
Cocoa one) up to feature parity with the others (namely the Gtk one).  
These would go a long way towards improving Emacs while being simple  
enough to work on to be accomplished within the 12-week limit.