Re: [Tracker] Are thumbnails from trackerd really useful?

[Jamie McCracken <jamiemcc blueyonder co uk>]

Laurent Aguerreche wrote:
> Hello,
>
> currently trackerd generates thumbnails for PDF files. I just wonder
> whether it is useful!
>
> To have this feature, trackerd calls evince (which depends on many
> components of X and GNOME...) and those calls slowdown a little bit
> trackerd.
>
> Graphical shells, like Nautilus, Konqueror or Thunar, are supposed to
> know how to make thumbnails from files, and I have already many
> generated thumbnails in ~/.thumbnails. So I think that trackerd should
> not do thumbnails and let other programs do it by themselves.
>
> Am I missing something?

Yes.

Doing it in tracker means you wont have to wait for file managers to 
thumbnail.

However:

1) thumbnails should be optional so feel free to add an option to 
disable them.

2) They dont use the freedesktop spec for thumbnails yet. This is a bug 
and a fix would be nice
http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xdg/2004-October/005067.html

3) long term plan is to add *optional* gconf facility for replacing the 
config file and getting access to all the the thumbnailers defined in 
gconf (see keys /desktop/gnome/thumbnailers in gconf-editor)

patches for any of the above is welcome :)

--
Mr Jamie McCracken
http://jamiemcc.livejournal.com/