[Bug 66896] Re: gnome-search-tool doesn't find text in ODF files

[Sebastien Bacher]

Le vendredi 27 octobre 2006 à 07:28 +0000, Wouter Hanegraaff a écrit :
> 
> Thanks for formulating the bug in another way. However, it's still a 
> bug. please reopen. As far as I'm concerned, .doc is not a text format 
> either and gnome-search-tool can still find the text in those documents.

No, it can not, or maybe with a previous version of the format. A small
example stored to win XP .doc format with oowrite does the same as
the .odt. In fact gnome-search-tool uses the grep command to search for
any string occurence and it works only if the text information is not
coded

> What you're saying is that people who want to search for text in 
> documents shouldn't be using gnome-searchtool, or ODF. Well, then the 
> search tool shouldn't be pretending that it can find text in documents, 
> because it cannot. So maybe that feature should be removed from 
> gnome-search-tool, because it doesn't work for the people it is intended 
> for.

No, what I'm saying is that the tool is not made to search text to non
"plain text" format. I agree that the interface doesn't make that clear
and is confusing and there is a bug there. It should either implement
the function, make it clear it's limited to "plain text" files or drop
the option. I'm going to reopen the bug according to that. 

Understanding every formats is really something not easy to do, it would
require having code implemented for each one (an .odt is not structured
the same way than an image which is also different from a .pdf, etc). 

> If a user is tech-savvy enough to know that ODF files are really 
> zipfiles containing xml, and that he should use zipgrep if he wants to 
> find text in a document, he wouldn't be using gnome-search-tool in the 
> first place.

Right

> One can't expect a user that uses gnome-search-tool to know the 
> technical intricacies of certain file formats. That's why we have 
> graphical applications, hiding those details. And if those applications 
> don't do what the user can reasonably expect, it's a bug.

Right too. Would you be happy with the option making it clear that it
works only on "plain text" files. I don't think that making the search
tools understanding every document formats users might be using (with
some which are probably proprietary format without documentation) is
realistic, the options are probably either to make the option clearer or
to drop it then


** Changed in: gnome-utils (Ubuntu)
   Importance: Undecided => Wishlist
       Status: Rejected => Confirmed

** Summary changed:

- gnome-search-tool doesn't find text in ODF files
+ gnome-search-tool should make clear than the "files containing text" apply to "text plain" formats only

-- 
gnome-search-tool should make clear than the "files containing text" apply to "text plain" formats only
https://launchpad.net/bugs/66896