Re: Extending the Gnome search capabilities to be able to search in OOo files

["Curtis C. Hovey" <sinzui cox net>]

On Thu, 2004-01-29 at 15:04, Manuel Amador (Rudd-O) wrote:
> El sáb, 24-01-2004 a las 10:40, Curtis C. Hovey escribió:
> > On Sat, 2004-01-24 at 10:01, Lee Braiden wrote:
> > > > I am envisioning a plugable architecture that constructs a pipeline for
> > > > extracting and manufacturing metadata.  OO.o files would be process in
> > > > something like this:
> > > > 
> > > > src=my.swx > posix-extractor > mime-typer > 
> > > > zip > src=content.xml > markup > text-summarizer
> > > >    \
> > > >     > src=meta.xml > markup > office-meta
> > > > 
> > 
> > > I've been thinking that something like this would be great for version
> > > control, too.  XML really lends itself to being version-controlled with
> > > diff.  If we had a standard API for getting XML out of binaries, cvs
> > > and friends could suddenly take a big leap forward in terms of usefulness
> > > to modern apps :)
> > 
> > Take a look at http://www.gnome.org/~seth/storage/features.html.  Seth
> > Nickell envisioned a similar mechanism.  Smart apps would use version
> > control in place of saving documents, opting instead to mark revisions. 
> > Document collaboration would take a great leap forward.
> > 
> > The metadata Db I want to create is very compatible with Storage. 
> > Sometime in the future I image Medusa being a metadata search tool, and
> > metadata residing in Storage.
> 
> I think it would be good if things like storage and medusa could be
> pushed down the software stack, sort of "in-the-filesystem" or as a
> dependable, ubiquitous low-level service.
> 
> Please get in touch with Hans Reiser - he's working on this and perhaps
> collaboration could yield faster, better, more integrated results.

Well, low level really is a requirement, and so too is getting
Medusa/metadata db into the GNOME platform.  The solution must work on
may file systems and OSes.  That doesn't preclude making exceptions to
use a smart file system or put hooks in the kernel, but it isn't the
first priority.

In the case of ReiserFS, its got the data, but it isn't searchable. 
Worse still, apps must be altered en-mass to notice the FS and take
advantage of it.  I think it will be sometime before kernels and OSes
stop thinking about files and directories and focus on how users need to
access their data.  Consider that the Apple HFS has had metadata forever
and all the apps use it, but an indexer is still need to make Sherlock
work--EAs don't solve many problems.
-- 
__C U R T I S  C.  H O V E Y____________________
sinzui cox net
Guilty of stealing everything I am.