On 8/23/07, Joe Shaw <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi, > > On 8/23/07, Kevin Kubasik <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > While I've been on something of a hiatus for a good chunk of the > > summer, I must have missed the debate/argument. > > It didn't get any coverage on this list, and I haven't seen much of a > discussion about it inside the Ubuntu community. It did get a fair > amount of coverage in the blogs though. > > > However, one feature that I have wanted to implement for ages, > > and have made several futile attempts at, is to offer object tagging > > live in the search interface. > > I am totally in favor of adding tagging to the user interface, and > this should be really easy to do -- in the user interface. > > The larger question is what is responsible for managing the tags, > where does Beagle come into play, etc. > > Tracker's greatest strength in its public perception is that it > handles tagging itself, because it's a generalized metadata store. > Personally, my feeling is that we need a dedicated desktop-wide > tagging API. I don't think this necessarily requires a daemon, and > furthermore I don't thing Beagle is the right place to do it. My > feeling is that a simple C library, maybe built on top of SQLite and > with D-Bus notifications can take care of this. Beagle would index > that data, and could also push back information about file moves, etc. > into the tag database. (Or something else could do this, like a file > monitor like gamin.) > > In any case, Beagle would index that data store just like it indexes > Nautilus metdata today in the trunk. It should be reasonably > straightforward. You *could* even implement this on top of Beagle, as > dBera mentioned elsewhere in the thread, but I don't think this is the > right approach. >
I'll agree that utilizing Beagle's Lucene based system is a complete waste/overkill. If there were to be a simple tagging library (I have thought about rewriting portions of the leaftag project and reviving it into a more realistic solution). > > Anyways, If I could get some help implementing the GUI side of it, I > > would be more than willing to hook everything up to our current > > nautilus emblem backend. The only issue right now is that Nautilus > > doesn't care what beagle has stored as emblems, so we would either > > need to push that data down to the XML nautilus speaks, dbus into > > nautilus in some way to let it know, or just write a simple nautilus > > extension. > > The biggest downside to using Nautilus for this is that it only covers > files. And there's no reason why tagging should apply only to files. > A generic tagging API would work fine with anything, since you would > reference everything by URI. > Agreed, and simple to implement. > But if you wanted to push this info back down into Nautilus, yes, some > sort of mechanism would be needed. Just poking at the XML would > require some logic in Nautilus to reload from the file whenever > something changes. Alternatively, D-Bus seems like a reasonable > approach here. But ultimately I don't think that Nautilus is the > right place for tagging. > Fair enough, _if_ leaftag (or a similarly API'ed derivative) were to be cleaned up, maintained, and made available, would that be a viable/reasonable solution? I would have no qualms about doing the revival work for leaftag if we were planning on using it. Right now, it seems to have dead-ended somewhat. > > One last thing, I do want to apologize for my lack of diligence on the > > Ubuntu front, I know that (before my absence) I was becoming something > > of the Ubuntu contact for Beagle, and I really should have at least > > caught wind that a tracker v. beagle debate was going to happen and > > notified someone, even if I couldn't address it myself. > > We really need someone to be the Ubuntu liason for Beagle, now that > Brandon has moved on. As Brian pointed out, Beagle is super broken in > Gutsy right now, and we need it fixed. If anyone on the list is an > Ubuntu developer, or knows someone who might be willing (and able... > that includes the time to do it), it would be greatly appreciated. > There's no question that Ubuntu is the most widely used desktop > distribution, so having a good Beagle experience there is key. As I mentioned in my last e-mail, for triage/desperate situations like this, I am not only willing, but completely ready to roll up a new package or add some small/tested patch. While I don't really have the time to be a full time maintainer, until someone with that kind of time steps forward, if people notify of a task that needs doing, I can ubuntufy it and put the needed steps in motion. I'll try to get a working Gusty package this weekend. It probably won't be super hot from a packaging standpoint, but if we can at least get it running reliably. > > Thanks, > Joe > -- Cheers, Kevin Kubasik http://kubasik.net/blog _______________________________________________ Dashboard-hackers mailing list Dashboard-hackers@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dashboard-hackers