Hello everyone!

My name is Dmitry and I'm writing here because I've found a proposal to
rewrite Catalyst in Gentoo GSoC-2013 Ideas page[1]. I know that application
period hasn't started yet, but I already think that I'd like to take up
this job. However I've found that before posting application I must perform
some actions:

1. Use the tools that you will use in your project to make changes to code.
2. Participate in our development community.
3. Give us your contact info and working hours.

I'd like to begin from the second question, i.e. I'd like to introduce
myself. I'm Russian student, who studies programming for three years
already, though it's rather hobby than education. My speciality is
classical philology and now I'm studying colloquial Latin and read
classical authors in Italy. My interest to programming began when I've
started to use Linux. It happened more than three years ago; I've begun
with bash and Python, now I'm trying to explore C++, though I've begun to
study it only two or three months ago and didn't have explored it so deep
to tell that I know C++ (though I certainly already know some basics).

Last year I've first time participated in GSoC with FSF and rewritten
gnulib-tool huge shell script in Python to make it more portable and
flexible[2]. I've successfully finished this work and decided to help
gnulib-developers even in the future[3]. However, since I was missed to
Italy for a long time to study Latin, I couldn't continue work so
intensively like before (though even in Italy I've really never stoped
working). Recently I've published a new version of gnulib-tool, which seems
to be more easy to use and also better organized than the older one[4].
I've finished it some days ago (it also probably was a good exercise in
Python) and will now develop this version (thus I've created a separated
repository). There is a small (yet?) discussion in gnulib-tool list[5]
about this update, though my mentor (Bruno Haible) didn't respond yet (but
other gnulib developer has already written an answer). I'm planning to
continue this work.

Some other things were written before gnulib reimplementation. Some time
before I've written a small Russian-Latin dictionary (which in fact was my
first work in Python) for my cathedra and all people studying classical
philology[6]. However, now I think that it needs reimplementation too
(since I see that it could have been implemented better and also see some
things which I could add like morphological parser from Perseus site[7] to
explain word forms). For some time I've been creating some portability
layers[8] between Python and Python3, but now I don't think it is necessary
since I feel that the time to migrate to Python3 has probably already come.
The last thing that I was working around is flex/yacc parsers generation
and implementation for some classes in C++ (this work was initially begun
to understand C++ better, but I think that it can be in future something
more than just exercise); this work is also located in my github
repositories[9].

If you think that my candidature may be considered, I'd like to ask some
questions.
As you've already understand, I've been used git for some time already.
During the previous GSoC I intensively used git to work with code, though I
can't say that I'm really experienced person (i.e. git push, git pull,
diff, patch were enough for my previous project). However, I'm not sure it
is enough. The other question is that it is really hard to find some
project which uses python and emit patch to it to pass requirements. Could
you advice a good bug, please? :-)

If you think I have a chance, I can even answer the third question (about
work hours, contacts, etc.). :-)

Looking forward to your answers!

P.S. Thanks for being so patience to read such a long letter till the end!

[1] http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code/2013/Ideas#Catalyst
[2] http://www.gnu.org/software/soc-projects/ideas-2012.html#gnulib
[3] https://github.com/ghostmansd/gnulib-python
[4] https://github.com/ghostmansd/pygnulib
[5] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnulib/2013-04/msg00037.html
[6] http://sourceforge.net/projects/quirinus
[7] http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph
[8] https://github.com/ghostmansd/gnupython
[9] https://github.com/ghostmansd/quirinus

-- 
With best regards,
Dmitry Selyutin

E-mail: ghostmansd@gmail.com
Phone: +7(985)334-07-70