Re: GNOME Software improvements

[Joaquim Rocha <jrocha endlessm com>]

Hi,

On Wed, Jul 5, 2017 at 10:18 AM, Richard Hughes <hughsient gmail com> wrote:

> -Add a way to search while viewing a category like, utilities, games, etc.
> (This is the most important one really, it is super annoying to have to go
> back to home to search.)

Why do you need this? Are the categories so big? Most people prefer to
just search for "games quake" rather than searching *within* the
category.

FWIW you can already do that. While in a category view, just start typing and you'll see the search appear. I don't think it's using the current category as a filter but as Richard said you can always add the category and other terms to the search. At least this is working in the gnome-software I got in my Fedora machine which is pretty vanilla/upstream, if Ubuntu behaves differently then please take it with them as they must have modified it (and may have their reasons for that too).

 

> -Hitting a letter on the keyboard should either navigate to packages with
> that letter or begin searching.  (either one is good)

A single letter would match a huge number of apps...

Again the search does get triggered in most views by just typing, however it does so only after three letters, the rationale being that it doesn't make sense to try matching apps with just one or two letters as there'd be too many.

Also, please realize that as Richard hinted in his replies less directly, GNOME Software as a project is not really responsible for a lot of what you (don't) see in terms of what applications get shown. It is not a package manager so it does have a certain criteria in what things to show but it's mostly up to each distro to configure what sources, apps, etc. are being shown.

By the way, regarding the categories design, there are plans for a new look: https://github.com/gnome-design-team/gnome-mockups-software/blob/master/wireframes/category-pages.png

However, GNOME Software is a complex application and we're not that many working on it, so we need to prioritize and thus some things get attention faster than others. What usually helps are concrete and constructive proposals, and with a bit of hindsight about whether those are beneficial for the majority of users or only for our very individual use-cases.

Cheers,

Joaquim Rocha