Re: Module Proposal: Zeitgeist

[Allan Day <allanpday gmail com>]

Seif Lotfy <seif lotfy com> wrote:
...
> There are 3 issues in discussion or in development where Zeitgeist
> integration is reaching a halt due to the uncertainty of where Zeitgeist
> stands:
>
> Epiphany (Web): There has long been discussions on how to deploy Zeitgeist
> as a backend for Web. Web needed to rethink its history problem. It ended up
> with developing an SQLite based history backend. Right now we are discussing
> replacing this backend with Zeitgeist, since Zeitgeist can do everything the
> SQLite backend can. plus we can add new features to Web that make use of
> Zeitgeist's Full-Text-Search capabilities for "searching" via the uri bar.

We don't have a design for browser history search in Web yet [1].

> Folks: I added some new properties to the individuals class in folks
> (currently in review). Now I could give more detail and allow the Contacts
> app to sort individuals by recency/frequency of interaction. The telepathy
> backend for this feature needs Zeitgeist. The Telepathy backend can provide
> even more info such as "Show me all files sent to X or recevied from X"
> (same goes for URIs). This feature was requested by Garrett LeSage from the
> GNOME Design team.

That was considered in the Contacts design process, but it was decided
that it wasn't appropriate/useful.

> Clocks: The clocks app is designed by the GNOME designers. It is still more
> or less a prototype I am working on alongside Emily Gonyer. We wanted to
> make use of Zeitgeist in storing "Alarms" as a type of "scheduled event", it
> sounds like shoehorning but it is not. I am just hesitant because I myself
> as a GNOME member do not want to use a technology or force integrate it
> without GNOME agreeing of the usage of Zeitgeist.

It might help for you to elaborate why Zeitgeist is needed there.
Clocks is intended to be a really simple application.

> As I see also there is some ideas going around for the searching via Shell.
> I agree that every application should be able to provide it search results
> to shell (aggregated search). I think Zeitgeist could fit in there nicely to
> sort the aggregated results globally according to recency or frequency.

There are some designs in development for shell search [2], and these
have implications for how we want search results to be returned within
individual applications. I don't have the expertise to comment on
which technologies are required to implement those.

As mentioned previously in this thread, I'd expect to see a specific
feature proposal for 3.6, rather than a module proposal. A new feature
might require new dependencies, of course (which you might have to justify, I
guess). You could certainly propose Clocks as a feature for 3.6...

Allan

[1] https://live.gnome.org/Design/Apps/Web#Tentative_Design
[2] https://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Design/Whiteboards/Search