Runners KCM

[Hans Chen]

Was it decided that KRunner will be used as the default search interface in
Plasma 5?

I personally still think that it's misleading to use the term "search" when
referring to KRunner.
Sure, it does search for some things, but to me it's defined by the actions
it can perform, and those are not restricted to searching.
(For example, why is "Calculator" a search plugin? Unit converter? Those
runners that let you control your audio player?)
An analogy would be Wolfram Alpha, which is used to search for information
and solutions; however, I wouldn't call it a "search site".

What I'm getting at is the following:

1. From the screenshot it looks like the dialog is located within the
Search KCM (if that's incorrect, you can safely ignore this point).
That can easily give the wrong impression, since KRunner works perfectly
fine without having Desktop Search (Baloo) enabled.

2. Instead I propose to give KRunner its own KCM module (not sure what to
call it) with the following:
- Short description of what it does (probably not possible now due to
string freeze?).
- Ability to configure the shortcut to activate it.
- List of plugins to enable/disable.

KRunner is in my opinion one of the "killer features" of Plasma Desktop and
is so good that people should use it in other workspaces/shells/desktop
environments/window managers.
Point 2 will make it easier for new people to discover the benefits of
KRunner, while clearly showing that it can be used without having Desktop
Search enabled
(many people seem to be of the opinion that the indexing takes up computer
resources for features they don't need).

Cheers,
Hans

On Fri, Jun 27, 2014 at 9:47 AM, Marco Martin <notmart at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Friday 27 June 2014 15:21:23 Vishesh Handa wrote:
> > Heys guys
> >
> > We need a KCM for the runners, and I've had one ready for sometime but it
> > requires a considerable amount of visual polish. [1] However, it's been
> > lying in another branch for too long.
> >
> > I'll merge it into master on Monday, and work on the visual improvements
> > till then. I've been in touch with the VDG group.
>
> It looks minimal, so shouldn't give too many problems i think (and is
> better
> having it not perfect than not being able to enable/disable runners)
> on that view, visual polish needed is probably more about naming of things
> than anything else
>
> > The idea is to call the KCM - "Plasma Search", and rename the Baloo one
> to
> > "Search Backend". It's not perfect, but it works.
> >
> > This will result in a minor break in string freeze.
>
> +1
>
> --
> Marco Martin
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