Re: Desktop Search Hackfest

["D Bera" <dbera web gmail com>]

Hi Kevin,

> 1) General status update (anything super-pertinent)
> 2) Key TODO's
> 3) Things we want/need from the community (specifically Gnome/FDO)
>
> Now I have my opinions and ideas, but want to make sure that as much
> of the projects opinions/ideas/needs are represented in Berlin.

KDE already has a different infrastructure (nepomuk) in place and some
nepomuk people might also be there. For Gnome, there isnt any final
solution yet. It should be seen that nothing should happen which
benefits rules out beagle from either of the two major DEs.

One important thing that should be finalised sooner than later is a
metadata store. Currently there are several independent possibilities
- some of the applications have their own specific store and there are
some generic ones. The next version of xesam spec is supposed to lay
down the rules of the game. I personally feel the goals of a metadata
store and a search/index infrastructure is different. Beagle does not
encourage using itself for metadata storage and would rather use a DE
wide, generic purpose store. But come what may, beagle needs access to
a store; so any progress on that front will be encouraging.

Status/TODO wise ... I dont think there is any major feature worth
discussing. There are small issues like - enabling nautlis to select
the file in a folder, asking the PDF program to open the file and
highlight a word, asking the browser to open a file and highlight it
... these are subtle things but drastically improve the experience.
Search should not cause a break in the workflow.

There is always scope for improvement in beagle e.g. the C API needs
to be updated to match BeagleClient (I dont remember right now, but I
think there were some API changes which werent moved to libbeagle).
Adding bindings for other languages e.g. ruby or js. Currently
wildcard query is only supported for text searches but not for
property searches so fix that. Rewriting/optimizing the file system
backend is always on the radar. Making the index-helper robust so that
bad files cannot choke it. (*)

Good luck on the meet and keep us posted.

- dBera

(*) Some of these are on my TODO list for a long time now ... ahem,
but I still feel I am on a vacation though I am physically back in
Boston :-)

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------
Debajyoti Bera @ http://dtecht.blogspot.com
beagle / KDE fan
Mandriva / Inspiron-1100 user