Krunner, Kickoff and Nepomuk krunner

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Monday 10 November 2008, Daniel Winter wrote:
> Hi,
>
> with the inclusion of the nepomuk search krunner i started to use krunner
> even more (to search for files, pictures, music). And now I have a few
> questions, issues where you most probaly are already aware of.  I just want
> to here your thoughts and the reasons and plans on those.
>
> - First, krunner in kickoff:
>
> There is the search bar in kickoff. Is there a reason why  it is not using
> krunner to get the results?

it predates useful KRunner stuff; all it really needs is to use 
Plasma::RunnerManager to gets its results instead of its own code.

> - Second, visulization of the results in krunner:
>
> Yeah, it really looks nice. But I think it has some usablity issues. Some
> of them get more problematic as the result set gets bigger.
>
> A boring simple list with an Icon in front of each result (optinaly grouped
> by type or runner plugin) would be much more usable.

not really. this just produces new kinds of annoyances (having used krunner 
extesively when we did have a list .....)

what you're running into is that you can't see all the text that would be 
useful to make a decision on visual scan. it doesn't help that the icons 
returned by the nepomuk runner aren't exactly descriptive (and the rankings it 
assigns them seem to be .. wonky?)

i'm sure there are better answers than a "boring simple list".

> - Third: Hidden features in krunner:
>
> For a lot of krunners you have to read the source to find out how to use
> them.
>
> Wouldn't a short explantion in the Info page of the plugin selection dialog
> help?

yes, the need documentation. which means defining how that documentation is 
delivered and then showing it in the UI somewhere. iow, more work.

unfortunately, for whatever reason, krunner receives the least attention of 
all the plasma technologies from people.

> And I have still no clue what the different colors of the results means.

welcome to the wonderful world of no documentation. not that the colours are 
really important; i thought we'd even gotten rid of them...

but yeah, you've simply come upon two things in plasma that few people care to 
work on: krunner and kickoff. huzzah.

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
humru othro a kohnu se
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

KDE core developer sponsored by Qt Software

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