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KDE Plans 'Google-like' Search Capabilities
CoolFX writes "Developers of KDE have announced plans to simplify searching for files on the open-source Linux desktop environment by adding a Google-style search feature. The next version of KDE, which will either be called 3.4 or 4, is expected to include the new search feature... Aaron Seigo, a KDE developer, said the community has already been discussing and writing code for the new search engine at the KDE Community World Summit."
Not only for KDE's but also googles? For example, will they scan inside my oowriter doc for the keywords I'm searching for? What about email? If not, I don't really see the advantage over things like find.
What exactly is a Google-like search feature? I'm assuming they mean something like Spotlight.
the spotlight is really on KDE right now.. hmm..
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Somebody wake me up when this has been integrated with various useful reiser4 plugins.
Don't tie it to KDE! Make it KDE independant!
Make it so it can be used from the command prompt. Make it so it can be used from GNOME. Make it so it can be used by other non-de X apps. Make it so it can be used by Apache, or Samba, or anything else running under UNIX.
Even better, make it compatible with Spotlight. The search API's are diagrammed at a low enough level that it might be a part of Darwin and not Aqua and thereby released as Free Software. But if it isn't, Apple is pushing Spotlight very hard and they want developers to get behind it and use it, so the specification should be pretty open and reproducable.
There is a nice whitepaper on the future of reiserfs and other filesystems for Mac* and Win* OS. The question is: at what level do you need to implement efficient search capabilities ? Filesystem ? Userspace ? Both ?
This is funny, for sure, but there's a grain of truth there. Longhorn's FS search capabilities are pretty amazing from the demos (including some hands-on time) that I've seen.
b 1.html.
Microsoft had a booth at last year's Borland Developer's Conference, and had basically built a prototype of their file system search running on top of XP. The way it works is actually pretty well described in this interview: http://www.searchengineguide.com/beal/2004/0204_a
Not rocket science, necessarily, but it was very impressive to see it working. Hopefully the KDE developers will take notes.
Keep your friends close.
Keep your enemies in a little jar on your desk.
"Searching for files is fundamentally a user interface feature"
/keyword/"unix file search"
No, programs do it too.
"What other project could it possibly go under?"
It would be nicer if it were part of the filesystem. "Everything is a file" is a powerful concept.
find
This idea, while it sounds neat, also suggests that it's trying to keep up with the Spotlight feature of OSX Tiger and Longhorn's whatever-you-call-it. I'm not at all bashing the project, but what I'm curious about is why we haven't seen Linux leading in more advanced features, stuff that would be really advanced out-of-this-world concepts that will, eventually, someday, really advance our idea of computing.
I'm sure that it's being done to some extent, I would think that if you're a Phd doing advanced windowing research, you'd want your platform to be Linux so that you can code it the way you want.
While Linux is the natural choice to use for the breakthrough concepts, I really don't know of any. While Linux has *great* technology, and is definately an OS par excellence, it feels like it's more-or-less keeping up with the Joneses, instead of leading in new ideas and technologies. It's said that everyone waits for Apple to come up with something so that it can be copied. Well, why wait for them?
Maybe there isn't as much research going on as I would think (not being in Academia), or it's more of the "faster-smaller" variety, but when the "next big thing" happens in computing, I hope it is on Linux *first*.
This is a classic case of journalists picking up on keywords (Google) and jumping on them. The article had us screaming with laughter here at akademy the KDE conference. The point is just that it is easier to find things on the web than on your desktop. Files and settings should use search because they have outgrown the heirachical setup. However this is just vapourware for now .
By the way the next version of KDE will be KDE 3.4, branching to KDE 4 when Qt 4 beta is available at the end of the year.
Transcripts from all the talks I went to are at http://conference2004.kde.org/sched-devconf.php.
Jonathan Riddell
"KDE goes for IPO selling 145,233 shares at 1059,342euro each giving KDE a higher market capitalisation than Microsoft and AOL combined."
While we're exploring pedantics, it should be noted that Googol was not a word either, until it was coined about 65 years ago as an example of a non-infinite number that was nonetheless unimaginably large.