Re: [Usability] search is not easy to find aka "a few minutes with gnome virgins"

["michael chang" <thenewme91 gmail com>]

On 7/5/06, Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie> wrote:
> On Sun, 11 Jun 2006, Michael Gilbert wrote:
>
> > Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2006 17:26:15 -0400
> > From: Michael Gilbert <michael s gilbert gmail com>
> > To: Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt myrealbox com>
> > Cc: Gnome usability <usability gnome org>, 371882 bugs debian org
> > Subject: Re: [Usability] search is not easy to find aka "a few minutes
> >     with gnome virgins"
> >
> > hello Matthew, thank you for looking further into these issues.
> >
> > On 6/9/06, Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt myrealbox com> wrote:
> > > Hardly surprising: a file search definitely isn't a "place". It's not
> > > an application either, but at least "Applications" looks vaguely like a
> > > Start menu.
> >
> > the best solution is probably an item called something like "File
> > Finder" placed in either "Applications" or "Applications -> System
> > Tools."  my gut tells me system tools is better, but that menu is
> > already quite cluttered.
> >
> > > The default should be to  search everything you can access, just like in
> > > Web search engines,
> >
> > agreed.
>
> I would agree too but the problem with that is how horribly slow a full
> search would be on most systems.  The tool was designed with the intention
> of search for user files (documents) which the developers would have
> expected to find in the users home folder, if perhaps the search checked
> $HOME first and then the rest of the system it might provide be a good
> balance.
>
> If I understand the original message correctly the underlying task you
> want to achieve is "searching for available programs" and specifically to
> do that using the existing find tool so that even programs which have not
> been correctly listed in the menus could also be discovered.  So perhaps
> the tool could be modified to better allow it to search for programs, to
> offer options for that specific task.  In that case too searching the
> whole system would not be as efficient as searching in a few specific
> places first could improve the search.

What about starting with an "intelligent" search by searching the
apropos/mandb databases (if any) and/or man + bin + sbin directories
in addition to files in the home folder?

(I would imagine searching for libraries and kernel modules under /lib
would be beyond the scope of the user at this level anyways.)

I don't know about other systems, but I know Debian uses a 'mandb'
system to cache the lists of man pages for searches. (That said, you'd
have to also make updating said cache easily accessable; although it
doesn't take more than a few minutes on a Debian system even under a
PII 233 MHz.)

Of course, then there's the fact that some systems store apps under
/opt, whereas others don't even have that directory. Hmm...

> Sincerely
>
> Alan Horkan
>
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--
~Mike
- Just the crazy copy cat.