Of course I am perfectly willing to change my proposal if that's what makes more sense (though I wouldn't mind taking part in some conversations with you guys about the technical solutions to Pango's limitations, since I have had my fingers into some parts of that anyway). I can always finish off my side of things later on, after SoC (if Felipe doesn't end up taking care of that as it is). Thesis time begins in May, so I should, in theory, be able to devote some time to Inkscape in the fall (I'm aiming for once a week at the minimum).
Yes, we need to have a long discussion about the technical issues in due course - I just wanted to get the administrivia out of the way first. Of course the best possible outcome for the project is if you choose to do your proposal anyway, even if you don't get accepted.
So, having said all that, it's not too late to officially change my proposal in Google. Any die-hard requests for what to do for the second half of the summer? Working on some of the issues suggested by jiho is certainly an option (and if nobody has any strong desires, this is what I will draw my ideas from). As a reminder, his list included some UI improvements to the text toolbar for example (which would certainly be worthwhile).
I have no major preferences, but one suggestion which I haven't seen elsewhere (and which is in keeping with the first half of your proposal) is to fix the other major standards-deficiency in text layout: vertical text. Specifically, the glyph-orientation-horizontal/vertical, dominant-baseline and alignment-baseline properties are not supported at all.
Richard.