Re: GSOC Idea

[Tobias Mueller <tobiasmue gnome org>]

Hi!

On 15.03.2013 05:15, Rajath Shashidhara wrote:
> I aspire to participate in this year's Google Summer of Code.
Cool!
> I propose the idea of making a new intelligent and interactive terminal emulator
> with rich GUI features. These are some of the improvements that I
> propose to replace the current gnome-terminal:
Hm. My feeling is that in order to replace gnome-terminal you have to
come up with with very appealing new module.
So to be very clear: You plan to create a new terminal emulator, not
build upon gnome-terminal?

I'm curious: Do you have any code yet? (It's of course not mandatory,
but it'd be interesting to see prototyped code)

> 2. Flags associated with various terminal commands are shown as a
> checkbox group with a brief description about the use of each flag:
>
>                     It reduces the effort in finding out the various
>                     flags associated with a command on man page and then
>                     executing the code. When a command is typed the flag
>                     list automatically can be pops up a checklist and
>                     recently used flags are automatically checked.
Cool idea. But where would you get the flags from? As far as I know one
cannot ask any program to give its arguments in a structured manner :-\
It'd be interesting though if every program supported, say, --arguments
which could be used for automatically completing your commands. But...
we're far from that.
If you intend to do that manually, then it'd be nice to have an easy way
of updating the information. The more automation, to better. But my
spontaneous feeling is that it'd be best to parse shell completion files.


> 4. Intelligent selection of files with auto-correct feature:
>
>                 A filebrowser is shown in the side-bar when typing a
>                 file name in a command to guide the user in selecting
>                 the correct file. By chance, the typed file is not found
>                 at the given location, the terminal produces a list of
>                 best matches to the file in the nearby locations or
>                 files of similar name.
The shells I know to also try to give you that feature more or less. Do
you intend your work to be integrated with a shell? It's been some time
that I looked at the "Friendly shell", fish. From the things that I
remember I think there might be some common ground to your proposal and
their object.

>          6.
>
>             Search manual pages for a particular keyword:
>
> A particular word can be searched from the 'man' pages for all the
> available commands/a particular command. This way the user can find the
> commands related to a particular keyword.
You mean something like "apropos"?

> 7. Warning dialogs:
>
> dialogs to alert the user a file is being deleted/super user permission
> is required to execute a particular program/any other
> alert/warning/error issued by the terminal. This makes the terminal more
> interactive.
Interesting. I can how see the deletion part can be implemented using
function interposing, but I'm not sure how "any other alert" will be caught.

> These are a few additions which I suggest to make terminal
> user-friendly. Please suggest your views and suggestions about my idea.
You have some cool ideas and some that I don't find so cool and lack a
rationale for my taste. My advice is to concentrate on a few ideas only.
You proposed eight. My prediction is that you won't be able to get
everything done in the SoC period. Having these ideas is very good and
they should be included in you proposal, but if I would review your
proposal, I would expect there a clear "to be delivered" section and a
"pie in the sky ideas" section.

Thanks for bouncing off your idea here!
  Tobi