Re: Proposing Tracker for inclusion into GNOME 2.18

["Nigel Tao" <nigeltao gnome org>]

First, keep up the good work with Tracker - it's an exciting project!


> >>>         * The scope of Tracker isn't clear.  Is the point to be fast
> >>>         search for files, or for all the user's data?  To what end has
> >>>         Tracker achieved its goal?
> >> It should be clear - to be the best
> >
> > To be the best what?  This is exactly my point.  Is the idea to index
> > everything or is the idea to index some subset?  Is the idea to store
> > all application data, or specific metadata?  Part of the problem here I
> > think is that it isn't clear to people how we use Tracker to improve our
> > desktop experience.
>
> To be the best first class object database, indexer and search tool.

To take up Joe's point, "best" is a word with no information content -
every software project wants to be "the best", even "extreme crack
like WinFS".  Comparing the two, what parts of the mythical WinFS does
tracker NOT aim to do?  Feature-wise, not "remain vaporware".  :-)

At some point of any interesting software design, there will have to
be a trade-off, such as memory for CPU for disk, or comprehensiveness
for quality, or search result precision for recall, or ease of
third-party plug-in development for execution efficiency, or
"everything is in a fast database" for "I can fall back on grep and
vimacs when I need to", or whatever else.  I admire the tinymail
project because it is explicitly and deliberately targeting low-memory
environments.  This does mean (IIUC) that it can't do Evolution-style
virtual folders.  Tinymail is "the best" for a particular, focused
problem, and "the suck" for a different problem.

This sense of specifics is what I think questions like  "index
everything or ... index some subset?" and "store all application data,
or specific metadata?" are trying to get at.

Once again, keep up the good work.
Nigel.