Re: Seach everything [was Re: [Usability] New "Add to panel" dialog]

[Diego Moya <turingt gmail com>]

On 21/10/05, Eric Larson <elarson novell com> wrote:
>
> As for the beagle side of things, my hope is that whatever tool is used,
> we are able to find relationships between different elements on the
> desktop. I feel beagle can do this fwiw. Apple already does this to some
> extent with spotlight in their control panel. While I can't remember the
> details, I searched for "net" and go the network tools in addition to
> some other tool that was related. It made an impression on me because I
> would not have thought the tool was associated with the network, but
> after clicking on it, things made sense and I learned something. These
> types of relationships can be extremely helpful I think.
>

The ultimate step in this trend is nowadays been researched in
academia. The Haystack Project is a proposed solution to the problem
of uniform search on a heterogeneous information space:

http://haystack.csail.mit.edu/home.html

While the interface leaves something to be desired, the search
back-end can manage  all kinds of information, and the system
architecture provides for easy "skinning" of dedicated search
interfaces for specific tasks or content types. All modern desktops
are converging to this type of system, and the Haystack solution is
just elegant.