On 7/5/06, Alan Horkan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Sun, 11 Jun 2006, Michael Gilbert wrote: > > > Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2006 17:26:15 -0400 > > From: Michael Gilbert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > To: Matthew Paul Thomas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > Cc: Gnome usability <[email protected]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > 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 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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 > > _______________________________________________ > Usability mailing list > [email protected] > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability > -- ~Mike - Just the crazy copy cat. _______________________________________________ Usability mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
