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9. Project Ideas for Developers

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Matthew Hockenberry edited this page Feb 26, 2024 · 1 revision

Technical Projects

There are a lots of technical projects to work on:

  • Bug hunting: Determine ideal behavior in the application, find deviations from the ideal behavior, and try to determine likely causes in the code. When you can reproduce the bug, and have a likely point of identification, you can go ahead and file an issue (https://github.com/hock/Manifest/issues). Some bugs are technical in nature--some code doing something wrong. But others might be the result of unexpected interactions or poor design decisions.
  • Code documentation: Good code is documented code. This requires understanding what the intended purpose of functions, variables, and complex segments within the codebase. We use jsdoc-style syntax to produce documentation automatically from comments in the code (see https://jsdoc.app)
  • Finishing the editor: The basic manifest editor is still not quite finished. This requires doing two things, finishing up the definitions of the json supply chain for the editor to load, and connecting the processing of that data in the Manifest viewer. The first part of this is relatively self-contained, the second part is more integrated into the main code, but is basically just a slightly altered version of the other process/importer functions--so mainly copy paste and fiddle with it.
  • Improvements to styling: Particularly for the mobile view and the print view. The mobile view style is not very functional at the moment--which isn't great since this is how most people view websites! It would be relatively easy to improve this. The print stylesheet could also be improved--unfortunately print css is still not particularly great. One alternative is to generate a dedicated print "view"--which would ideally render a static image for the map (see below).
  • Alternative visualizations: A good project is to build some alternative visualizations of the supply chain data. These have the advantage of being relatively more self-contained then other work in the codebase. The ```src/lib/js/visualize.js file handles the basic interfacing with non-spatial visualizations.

Content Projects

Manifest Curriculum

One of the most important goals for Manifest is to develop a curriculum--a set of readings, resources, guides, etc. to help faciliate doing "critical supply chain research." Probably the biggest component of this is developing a list of useful sites, databases, journals, etc. with relevant information (and documenting why that information is relevant, and how it fits into a supply chain research project)

Sample Supply Chains

There are lots of sample supply chains that it would be nice to map. Some examples might include:

  • COVID vaccine supply chains
  • Fashion / textile supply chains
  • Products with supply chain shortages (microchip shortages, etc.): cars, computers, etc.

Supply Chain Software Summaries

There is a lot of logistics software out there, and one of our smaller goals is to provide a little catalogue of this software. Writing up descriptions, talking about the features, collating images of the software, or links to useful pages, all would be great. Some examples to get started:

Except where noted, Manifest materials are made available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The Manifest database is made available under the Open Database License, with any rights in the individual contents of the database licensed under the Database Contents License. Manifest uses undelrying map imagery © MapTiler / © OpenStreetMap contributors.

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