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Re: [Ayatana] Dash search vs Alt+F2 in 11.10



Den 22. sep. 2011 15:08, skrev Naba Kumar:
Hi,

On Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 3:14 PM, Jo-Erlend Schinstad
<joerlend.schinstad@xxxxxxxxx>  wrote:
No, they're different things. The dash searches for applications and files.
Alt+f2 is to run a command. It is case sensitive and must be exact. It would
be very confusing if the dash gained that behaviour.

If you think about it, alt-f2 came before dash-search and the main
purpose was effectively to start new applications. Applications were
considered "commands" too. I doubt many used it to run "ls -l". Now
with the dash-search unifying all - searching, launching, discovering,
why would it be more confusing to combine "commands" launch as well?
Apps launch are subset of commands launch anyways.

There are several key differences. The dash is case-insensitive and that's a good thing. Commands, on the other hand, are case sensitive. Another thing is that there is always exactly one command with one name. There can be many applications with the same abbreviation though. If you wanted to launch Realmedia, for instance, then you might type "rm". Do you really want to mix that with the rm command? The dash also supports synonyms, which is irreconcilable with commands which always are exact. You use gedit as an example. If you launch it as a command, then you have to enter exactly "gedit". You cannot use "Gedit". On the other hand, in the dash, you might want to type "text" or "editor", or in my language, Norwegian, I type "rediger". "Rediger" will show me Gedit, but also other types of editor for guitar tabs, audio, video and other things.

This is great behaviour, but you do not want to confuse this with commands, which are of a completely different nature. Alt+F2 is an "expert feature" that should not be necessary for casual users, but may sometimes be useful to advanced users.

Jo-Erlend Schinstad