kio-locate something for KDE ?

[Michael Schuerig]

On Monday 16 December 2002 09:46, Marc Mutz wrote:

> I think there is an end to what should be implemented as a KIOslave.

Why?

> Locate doesn't seem to fit here, because a typical locate run will
> return matches from different directories (you'd get away with ls if
> it didn't).

So, then the decision seems to be one between purity and usefulness.
I started out with the kio-locate as just a trivial proof of concept. 
Now I'm actually using it myself -- something I didn't really expect. A 
kio slave is unobtrusive, if you don't know about it or don't want to 
use it, it doesn't get in the way. It gets it's power by being so 
well-integrated with KDE.

My original intention was to add locate-functionality to kfind. When I 
looked at kfind I found it was kio for listing files (I had assumed it 
was a front-end to find). So, I thought, I'll have to implement a 
kio-slave around locate. After doing that, I looked at kfind again, and 
to my surprise found that there was nothing left to be done. Amazingly, 
it just worked.

> Every other KIOslave I know only ever lists a single directory level
> (yes, even the info:// and man:// slaves do).

Agreed. I even grant that kio-locate abuses the semantics of listDir. 
For the sake of cleaner semantics, my suggestion is to add a 
query-method to KIO::SlaveInterface. I can't say, though, by what kind 
of URLs it should be triggered.

> So how do you want to
> present the search results in Konq?

> 3. Show a single directory where each file's name is the
> corresponding match's absolute path.
>
> Judging from the screenshots on appsy, it seems to do (3). Is that
> right? I think that's breaking filemanager semantics. Why doesn't it
> create a html page instead, as other slaves do?

Yes, it would be breaking filemanager semantics, if there was an 
expectation to see a single directory. The point of not creating a html 
page is that this wouldn't nearly be as useful. For a html page I can't 
open a properties dialog for a link, can't "Open with..." it, can't use 
it in kfind.

So, while I agree with you from a purity POV, I tend to think that 
usefulness trumps purity.

Michael

-- 
Michael Schuerig                  If at first you don't succeed...
mailto:schuerig at acm.org           try, try again.
http://www.schuerig.de/michael/   --Jerome Morrow, "Gattaca"