[Ayatana] RFC: How to handle wine apps in Unity?

[Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen <mikkel.kamstrup@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

I am thinking through bug 
https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity-lens-applications/+bug/753276 
"Currently no way to find wine apps in dash other than searching them 
from search bar", and I think it would be helpful with some good 
suggestions on the matter.

Disclaimer: I am not gonna be the one who makes the final call on the 
solution, that will be up to the design team. This is just a brain storm.

Problem statement: Wine likes to install apps in a deeply nested 
hierarchy of folders (because that's like it works on Windows, I 
assume). Behold this beauty for instance 
https://launchpadlibrarian.net/71484404/looks-bad-in-unity.png. This 
maps poorly to the Unity UX because the apps lens uses a flat system for 
the filters. Factoring in that the Wine launchers are named generically 
because they are assumed to be read in the context of the entire path to 
their location, we start getting hits on "README" and "Uninstall" and 
suchlikes in Unity. Eeek! ;-) It'll be helpful if you read the bug 
report as well.

Implementing nested browsing of folders in the apps lens is the obvious 
solution, but that also breaks horribly with the current user 
experience. So the question is not "how can we make it like it was in 
Gnome2", but  "how can we get the best UX with the Unity UI language?".

Pasting my own (only) idea from the bug: ... to not include Wine apps in 
the apps lens, but write a dedicated lens for Wine apps. Each app could 
then live in its' own category, bundling all related launchers in that 
category. Living in a dedicated lens gives much more wiggle room for 
custom layout and interactions. It still doesn't entirely solve the 
problem in the global dash search though, where you'd end up with hits 
in the odd launchers...

Cheers,
Mikkel