Re: gnome-system-log -- searching

[James Bowes <bowes cs dal ca>]

Hi,

On Wed, 2004-27-10 at 10:20 -0400, Vincent Noel wrote:
> > That's one of the features on my wishlist; a g-s-l window for each open
> > log. Then we can get all spatial and save the window size and position,
> > or something.
> 
> Well with these changes it was quite easy to add multiple-windows - I
> have attached a patch that does just that.

Vincent, you are unstoppable.

> However, gnome-system-log was written to open multiple logs in a
> single window, and to accomodate that idea it had to use
> unconventional ideas : internally, there's a list of "open logs" and
> you can switch to next log in that list using the "Switch log" menu
> option. However the list itself do not appear in the interface (except
> in the "monitor" dialog).

About the monitor function: why not just choose logs using the file
chooser? another idea would be to get rid of the tabs, and use a single
tree view, prefixing each entry with the name of the log that it is from
(this may not be a better choice, however).
Also, do logs open in the conventional way update when changes are made
to the file?

> It is very difficult to add multiple windows and keep this idea of log
> list. It means that each opened window can display any of the open
> logs, so we have to pay attention to lots of weird configurations (ie
> you have the same log open in two windows, if you close the log in one
> window, the log should disappear from the other window). The patch I
> attached seems to work but I can't be sure I have found all the weird
> things that can happen.
> 
> That's why I'd like to ask you guys, what do you think of removing the
> "switch log" option ? You would still be able to open several logs,
> but each log would have its own window, and vice-versa. The only
> difference would be that you would not be able to open several logs in
> the same window anymore.
> 

I say get rid of it. It doesn't really make sense to be able to switch
logs if you don't know what log you're switching to (as it is now).
While you're at it, you could get rid of that log list, too.

> > I don't know if it would make sense to put g-s-l in g-s-t, since the
> > current g-s-t utils tend to affect a change on the system. But I'm all
> > for getting some kinda support for getting the right access levels to
> > look at a log file, and that would be distro (and possibly per-log?)
> > dependant.
> I'll try to contact the gnome-system-tools guys to see if there's
> something we can reuse there. There's still libgnomesu, but it's not
> really official.
> 
I have no idea how libgnomesu works, but the one thing we may want to
consider is any distributions that have no root user (ie Ubuntu), and
use sudo instead. currently Ubuntu is just running the g-s-t programs
under gksudo, so we may not really have to worry about it, or worry
about it as much as g-s-t does.

Just a few more ideas about searching:
The redhat log viewer uses filtering rather than searching, ie you enter
a term in and the display of the log is replaced with entries from the
log that match your results. 

Is this something we would rather do? I prefer the idea of searching
like firefox, because then you see the context of the entry. 

However, filtering may be good to use for the monitor mode, so then it
would only update when something you are looking for in particular
appears.

> Cheers
> Vincent

-- 
James Bowes <bowes cs dal ca>