[kde-linux] baloo_file_extractor - huge disk usage?

[Duncan]

Mark Knecht posted on Thu, 13 Aug 2015 17:24:21 -0700 as excerpted:

> In that regard there are two packages that use the flag, dolphin &
> gwenview. Depending on how things go tomorrow just having disabled it
> I'll give rebuilding those two a try.

I use both apps, and as I said, have USE=-semantic-desktop, so I can tell 
you what the effect is.  In dolphin, there's an extra tab in the 
properties dialog with semantic-desktop, that's not there (it used to be 
there but empty, now it seems it's not there at all) without it.  Since 
it's not there I don't remember what it was named, but it had additional 
"meta" information about the file, for instance on images, the exif, etc 
information included in the file, like what camera was used and its 
settings, what image-editing software was used, etc.  Similarly for media 
files, it would contain info on codecs used, id3 tag info like artist/
album/etc on mp3s, etc.

In gwenview it's the same general info, presented IIRC (again, I've had 
semantic-desktop off long enough the details of what it was like with it 
on are getting blurry) on the meta-information side-panel tab.

Back in kde3, this sort of information was made available without 
semantic-desktop, which kde3 didn't have (IIRC it got the info using 
filetype specific kioslaves back then), but with kde4, they migrated all 
that functionality to semantic-desktop, meaning you have a choice between 
indexing it all and accepting the negatives for doing so whether you want 
to or not, or not having that information exposed at all; there's no 
choice to have it available when curious, but not actually indexed.

So now if you still want to have the information available and/or 
separately indexed, you can use alternative (often gtk-based, sometimes 
separate non-kde qt-based) apps not tied to kde and its semantic-desktop.

In kde-frameworks/5 (which I've tried but which was still kwin-crash-
looping last I did so; I need to try again...) they've supposedly made 
things a lot more modular, so I'm hopeful it'll continue to be possible 
to build dolphin, gwenview, etc, without semantic-desktop support, tho 
I'm not sure.  What would be /real/ nice would be if the reading and 
display of this info was modularly separate from the indexing, in kde5, 
making the information display available again, as it was in kde3, 
without having to deal with the indexing cruft, but I'll be satisfied if 
it simply doesn't require it.  If it requires it, then... it'll be a lot 
easier for me to leave kde behind entirely with the kde4 -> kde5 
transition than it was with the botched kde3 -> kde4 transition, as it 
and stuff like the akonadified kmail, etc, have me off of the nearly 
complete kde standardization I had in the kde3 era, and I'm using 
primarily just the kde4 plasma core desktop, these days.  Plasma/kwin/
superkaramba would indeed be a hassle to replace and suitably configure 
the replacement, but the plasma upgrade would be about the same for that 
one, and replacing the other two should it be necessary shouldn't be 
anything like as difficult as what I've already replaced during the life 
of kde4.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman