zeitgeist team mailing list archive

[Jason Smith <jason.smith@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 2009-11-20 at 17:16 +0100, Seif Lotfy wrote:
> We will have the focus problem still running. Getting focus can only
> be done over wnck and some plugins for apps to get the focus of tabs.
> GIO could lead to our current work since we have a set of plugins for
> apps coming. Also i am interested in knowing how much info of the lets
> say mimetypes etc can we pull out of the GIO patch. Will we be able to
> know if documents were closed or stopped being used? Keep in mind:
> Applications know more about their data than GIO.

I did not mean to imply that you could not run your other stuff in
addition to GIO. I am okay with keeping (and adding to) everything you
have now. This is merely to improve what Zeitgeist can know.

Things this patch can provide you with:
- The name of the application the user launched (localized if desired)
- How to launch it
- What it was launched with
- What mime types it supports
- A description of the application (localized if desired)
- The name of the binary that was launched
- The flags the application was launched with
Probably more...

> 
> I think using GIO andd application plugins together could be a
> solution, Especially because GIO will allow us to even know when a
> user launched an app. This we dont have now. We only know if he
> launches a document.

Agreed

> 
> Although I feel it could make most of our app plugins redundant i can
> still live with it.
> One dataprovider that does all the work is a good idea.  We can just
> use the plugins to determine close and focus events and stuff that can
> not be covered by the GIO patch. 
> I need to think it through more....
> Keep up the good work guys :)
> 

Once again, I was not suggesting removing any of the things you already
have, just using this in addition to what you have.

> 
> 
> 2009/11/20 Jason Smith <jason.smith@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>         
>         On Fri, 2009-11-20 at 07:48 +0100, Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen
>         wrote:
>         > 2009/11/19 Jason Smith <jason.smith@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
>         > > Zeitgeist Developers,
>         > >
>         > > There is an amazing amount of activity surrounding the
>         happenings of
>         > > Zeitgeist. Lots of excitement going on and obviously
>         Zeitgeist will
>         > > continue to be an important part of the linux experience
>         in the coming
>         > > years. Zeitgeist has not been without issues, there have
>         been two major
>         > > ones I can think of.
>         > >
>         > > - The API is too complex
>         > > - The information quality is fairly low without lots of
>         item providers
>         > >
>         > > The API issue has been largely addressed with the 0.3
>         release and I hope
>         > > the API can be stabilized almost completely at this point.
>         The
>         > > information quality issue has also received considerable
>         attention,
>         > > however I believe more can be done.
>         >
>         > I think you are right about this, and it is basically also
>         what we
>         > agreed on in the hackfest.
>         >
>         > About the Zeitgeist API I actually think the new API is
>         pretty sound
>         > (at least InsertEvent, GetEvent, and FindEventIds - we have
>         not worked
>         > a lot on the last parts of the API). Just yesterday we
>         landed a branch
>         > of mine adding a client lib (in Python for now) on top of
>         the DBus
>         > interface. I think that it makes it pretty much as easy as
>         it gets
>         > (modulo the fact that there are no sync methods in the API,
>         only
>         > async; synchronous methods are made of evil).
>         >
>         > When we have some more experience with the client API in
>         Python I'll
>         > start on a client lib in C/GObject. It is my hope that I can
>         line it
>         > up with the inclusion of GVariant+GDBus in GLib, but I don't
>         intend to
>         > block on it if the inclusion drags out.
>         >
>         > > In short I believe the problem with Zeitgeist is it works
>         largely at the
>         > > application level. Getting individual applications to
>         provide
>         > > information to Zeitgeist, or watching applications through
>         wnck.
>         > > Instead, I believe a lot more can be achieved at the
>         toolkit level with
>         > > a relatively small patch (or perhaps set of patches) to
>         GIO and
>         > > libgnome-desktop.
>         >
>         > Indeed! I am glad you bring this up. I have been wanting to
>         go down
>         > that route myself for a while - like hooking into
>         GtkRecentManager
>         > etc. I have not looked much into it because we have been
>         busy
>         > finalizing the API though.
>         >
>         > > By patching these parts of the toolkit, we can be notified
>         easily of
>         > > every file the user intentionally opens, every
>         applications they launch,
>         > > every process they use, quickly and efficiently with very
>         little code. I
>         > > have attached a GIO patch that adds a new extension point
>         into GIO that
>         > > allows a loadable GIO Module to track all launches
>         of .desktop files.
>         > > This patch is early and should be considered beta quality,
>         however it
>         > > provides the needed interface to begin writing a GIO
>         module that will be
>         > > extremely useful to Zeitgeist. I have also included a
>         skeleton (and very
>         > > quickly written) GIO module that essentially does nothing
>         using this
>         > > extension point.
>         > >
>         > > I believe there to be good reason to look into getting
>         this patch
>         > > upstreamed, and I believe it can be done in a reasonable
>         time frame. The
>         > > benefit to Zeitgeist really could be amazing.
>         >
>         > I had a quick look at the patch and it looks pretty solid. I
>         have not
>         > found the time to take it for a test spin though.
>         >
>         > I think it could be a good idea to write down a list of
>         things we want
>         > to hook into in the lower levels to find out just how much
>         hacking we
>         > need done to get to Zeitgeist nirvana. Off the top of my
>         head I can't
>         > come up with anything more than app launching and
>         GtkRecentManager,
>         > but it needs some more thought[1]. Then there are
>         application level
>         > plugins off course, we track those on
>         >
>         https://blueprints.launchpad.net/zeitgeist/+spec/zeitgeist-external-dataproviders.
>         >
>         
>         
>         Mikkel
>         
>         With regard to your weariness to using GIO to track IO, I
>         think you are
>         very prudent. The reason I chose to hook into .desktop file
>         launches is
>         that this will also get fired when you do something like
>         double click a
>         document in nautilus since it goes out and finds the default
>         application
>         and launches it through the .desktop file. Basically this is
>         the awesome
>         side effect of getting exclusively user initiated IO.
>         
>         GtkRecentManager would be interesting but I think we should
>         push for one
>         patch at a time. After looking over my patch again I think it
>         needs a
>         quick modification to also provide a list of the uri's that
>         the .desktop
>         file was launched with. A simple oversight to be sure, but
>         still
>         something we should fix.
>         
>         I hope we can begin to push this patch for upstream inclusion
>         very very
>         soon so that we can get zeitgeist using it even sooner.
>         
>         Jason Smith <jason.smith@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>         
>         
>         
>         
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