Alex Launi <[email protected]> wrote: > [...] > That's right. Rewrite. We're rewriting Do, with an entirely new > architecture.
Cool! Do's not dead. This is great... or so I thought at first. But now I have become a bit skeptical. I wonder: why did you make this move? why is it important from an engineering point of view? Is this the end of Do as we know it? And, more importantly, what is it going to bring to the end user? As far as I understand it, each and every plugin will have to be rewritten... so there are big risks. Am I mistaken on this? I don't understand the blueprints very well. Here are a two things I'd like to see in Do. I think they have been discussed before, even though I don't remember where and when. Will this rewrite make it any easier to get any of that pie-in-the-sky stuff? If not, will it bring some other goodness I'm not even thinking of? * A way to launch Do from Nautilus to do something on the selected files. While I've never used Quicksilver, this seems to be one of the feature that make it powerful. Right now, I don't use Do much to do things with files: drilling down to the wanted file is a bit annoying, and multiple selection really doesn't work well (see bugs #268295 and #320365). * An easier way to develop plugins. I guess it is not really complicated, but for simple plugins I shouldn't have to read about the internals of Do, about its "Universe", nor should I need to learn a new programming language (at least for simple tasks). I am still impressed with the way Textmate (on the mac, again I have never used it) allows extension: write a script in your favorite little language (bash, python, ruby, whatever), you can use some environment variables set up by the program, tell me what your input and output look like, and that's basically it [1]. Could this maybe inspire Do? Right now, I can easily set up a shell script as a program for Do to run, even with the custom icon, by writing a .desktop file. I can't pass arguments to it, however. If we could write a configuration file that says "present an action with this name, this description, this icon for items of standard type text or url or file or ..., this action runs this shell script, or runs this external application, with those parameters, passing the item as that parameter... and doesn't return anything/returns a filepath/a url" A lot of plugins are just running external applications any way: AptURL, Archive, EOGSlideShow, Locate... It may be very easy already to do this. If so, show me. And even if it is: could it be made easier? There are other things I'd like to see, but mainly it's just some plugins I wish I had come around to writing, so the above takes care of this. This was probably too long. My point really is: what should we expect? This is not the best time for me to start helping on an open source project, but if it seems worthwhile, I might try to give you guys a hand - even though my knowledge of C# and Do's code base is limited. Regards, Nicolas [1] If you've never used Textmate either, see http://manual.macromates.com/en/, especially http://manual.macromates.com/en/commands#commands, and the "Scope based customization" screencast on http://macromates.com/screencasts. (The beginning is less interesting but at about 7:18 you can see how adding a command works). -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "GNOME Do" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/gnome-do?hl=en.
