Re: Proposed module: tracker

[Jamie McCracken <jamiemcc blueyonder co uk>]

Iain * wrote:
> On 1/11/07, John Stowers <john stowers lists gmail com> wrote:
>
> > This is the second time the bonobo comparison has been made.
> >
> > Developers got excited about bonobo - users thought they were monkeys.
> > What we have here is a HEAP of excited users screaming for desktop
> > search. I dont think the two situations can be compared at all.
>
> The comparison is valid because we're doing the same with tracker as
> we did with bonobo: Searching for places we can put Tracker before we
> know what we want or need: "We want desktop search" is a rather
> general statement that says nothing about requirements.
>
> I'm not saying that desktop search is a bad thing and that no-one
> wants it. I'm just saying "How do we know Tracker is the correct
> solution?"
>
> I think I'm going round in circles here, so I'll stop.
>
> On another point entirely, why was tracker support not added to
> gnome-search-tool? Why was there a need for it to be forked into
> tracker-search-tool? With a patch to g-s-t you wouldnt need to be in a
> place where this unknown program was replacing a well used, and
> well-tested one.

95% of the same well tested code is still there. We forked G-S-T so we 
could add more facilities like the search snippets which were more 
appropriate to an indexer. We will also be adding support for non-files 
soon (like emails) and that would not be appropriate for G-S-T either.

The bonobo issue is a red herring - we are not proposing tracker for the 
platform. Bonobo was, as you rightly say, imposed on the platform 
without much thought. There is nothing in common here with tracker.

We are proposing a big improvement to G-S-T in exactly the same way that 
Tomboy was a big improvement over sticky notes - really it is no different!

--
Mr Jamie McCracken
http://jamiemcc.livejournal.com/