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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."
Just as long as they don't call it Koogle.
What exactly is a Google-like search feature? I'm assuming they mean something like Spotlight.
I'm wondering why they're saying it's 'Google like'. Do they just mean 'search engine like', and got caught up in the brand name (like they do with the iPod so frequently)? Or is there something about it comparable only to a Google technique?
It's a whole system, the Google/InterNet/Authors... you can't have parts of it standing alone.
--Mike--
Please somebody tell me that they will cooperate with the Beagle project on this and don't reinvent the wheel yet again. It would be a real pain in the ass to have too indexes wasting your hd space which basically do the same thing.
What I would like to see, is the speed of google, adapted for the user. The web metaphor justifies going to a text-box, and hitting Enter, but I'm not willing to do that just to look into a page. That's why incremental search is so successful. Maybe it would be nice to implement better metodologies, that have already been proposed. Just because the Google interface is good for the web, it doesn't mean it's good for the local machine. Maybe it would be nice to go to one of the sources of recent improvements (incremental searching) and implement what he suggests, in its full form.
from Jef Raskin's
The Humane Interface
Part II: WHAT INTERFACES SHOULD HAVE
A useful starting set of solutions to the problems outlined above includes
* A better text search methodology, effective both within a local document or system and with respect to extremely large data spaces such as the web
* A method of eliminating all modal aspects of the basic human-machine interface, a method that is readily learned by newcomers and which is habituating
* An improved navigation method, as applicable to finding your way around within a picture or memo as within a collection of images, documents, or networks; a method which makes use of inborn and learned human navigational skills
* A set of detail improvements to some existing mechanisms that make them consistent with the goals and principles of the rest of the design.
Better text searching requires that the search be extremely fast (the next instance appears within human reaction time), interactive at the typed character (or spoken morpheme) level, and not based on dialog box interaction. You should be able to change the pattern (what you are seeking an instance of) at any time, including during a search. The results should be shown in context and not as a list of documents or sites. A search mechanism that is sufficiently fast and powerful also can serve as a cursor positioning mechanism in text. Such a cursor positioning tool can be significantly faster than graphical pointing devices and can unify local and internetworked information retrieval.
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Well, maybe KDE is not the right project to do that, and I should shut up and help with the project Jef Raskin himself has started, and is slowly being developed, The Humane Environment .
Oh, this wouldn't be run on pigeons. KDE is of course working on PenguinRank, in which a flock of penguins (volunteers, naturally) would run the analysis. Although one technical difficulty will be in maintaining the cooling systems necessary to keep the penguins at a comfortably temperature.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
Duke Nukem: now with Google-style weapons lookup!
Norton Antivirus: Now with Google-style virus lookup!
AutoCad 2005: Now with Google-style component lookup!
Crazy world. Next thing you know they'll be hooking up lava-lamps to build machines.
The article in N&T is based on ideas by Scott Wheeler (and Till Adam, and Aaron Seigo and others). See Beyond Hierarchical Data: Search and Meta Data as Fundamental Interface Elements, Scotts lecture on query-based interfaces at aKademy.
"Google like" here means just "searching", but the result will in fact be more like WinFS than Google in that it is using file data and file metadata to index and find things. Interface-wise expect more quicksearch bars like the one in Kmail 1.7 (KDE 3.3.0, Till Adam) and JuK (Scott Wheeler).
See also a Blog entry of mine (german language) in the same vein.