Re: Idea: show potential apps in the search

[Robert Park <rbpark exolucere ca>]

On Tue, Apr 12, 2011 at 7:59 AM, Florian Müllner <fmuellner gnome org> wrote:
> Low on the priority list. It's also a bit more complex than it may seem
> at first sight, as for now search is synchronous (and you really really
> don't want to block on package-kit, which is ... a bit on the slow
> side ;-) )

Well, that's why there should be a static cache, perhaps updated only
weekly. Store a simple list in a text file somewhere, couldn't
possibly be any slower to load than a pile of .desktop files as is
done currently. That way you don't have to query PackageKit every time
the user searches something.

The only real challenge that I see here is making sure that the list
of available applications are actually graphical applications. It
would be a pretty terrible user experience if various terminal
utilities or daemons were exposed in this manner, and then users tried
to install them, and then can't figure out why "nothing happens" (that
they can see) when they launch the icon. I guess you'd have to check
if the package contains a .desktop file.

-- 
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