Alt-F2 Ideas

[Apoorva Sharma <appi2012 gmail com>]

Gnome-Shell aims to revolutionize the concept of the desktop. One place that has not been modernized, and indeed currently is a devolution from gnome 2 is the Alt-F2 dialog. 

Consider the question "What is the purpose of the Alt-F2 dialog?"

One plausible answer would be to quickly launch applications and run commands. In Gnome-Shell, this has no purpose for the average user, since one can quickly launch an app by pressing super and then typing.

Since launching applications can be more easily handled by the overlay, the current Alt-F2 is unnecessary. However, the idea of a quickly accessible, keyboard operated dialog presents several opportunities.

What Gnome-Shell should implement to the Alt-F2 Dialog should be something very similar to Gnome-Do. I know that Do is written in mono, and that it would be best to keep it out of a base gnome install, but I do think that what the app achieves is very useful. Thus, I think Gnome-Shell developers should use Gnome-Do as a model for the Alt-F2 Dialog.

The Dialog should have the following abilities:

• Launching applications
• Running commands (To keep functionality for current Alt-F2 users)
• Searching the web
• Finding a file/folder
• Opening files/folders with an application of choice.
• Most importantly, extensibility.
  

Since Gnome-Do can do all of these things, I think one plausible solution could be porting Do's backend to C or Python or _javascript_, etc., and integrate that backend to a new Alt-F2 dialog.

However, I understand that this might not be that easy to do. Perhaps writing a new backend would be easier.

In any case, I do believe that the Alt-F2 dialog needs to be revamped.