Re: New module proposal: tracker

[Sankar P <psankar gnome org>]

Not contributing to the core discussion.

On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 3:26 PM, Alan Cox<alan lxorguk ukuu org uk> wrote:
> I think there lies a misassumption. The actual indexing has a fairly high
> cost. The cost of extracting metadata while indexing ought to be
> relatively low in comparison. That argues that allowing stuff to plug
> into the indexing based on file type is useful. It's not really function
> creep either given the only interface the indexer needs is
>
>        - who is associated with this file type (which exists)
>        - give me your metadata for this file content

One short coming in this approach will be, It will cause a problem
where multiple applications can be associated with a file-type, over a
period of time. For instance, for .mbox files, the applications could
vary like: Evolution, Mutt, Pine, Claws, Thunderbird, etc. And it is
common among some people to switch between applications; not for email
but other applications like PDF-viewer, etc. once in few months.

All these different applications may have different interpretations
for what is a valid meta-data. For instance, Evolution will consider
any thing within ** will be metadata whereas mutt might consider
subject is the metadata etc. So every time the user switches
applications, the earlier collected meta-data might need some brushup.

In my personal biased opinion, the need for meta-data and desktop
search is over-rated. Internet is extra-ordinarily mammoth and is
impossible to reach without a search engine as you won't even know how
many sites exist. For desktop the scale of the things is less,
individual application-provided-search is enough and will satisfy the
needs of most of the users. ctags, mairix etc. can provide specialized
and more effective searching.

-- 
Sankar P
http://psankar.blogspot.com