[Desktop12.04-Topic] Deeper Zeitgeist integration. Installation of datasources for default applications etc

[Manish Sinha]

On Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 11:54 AM, Didier Roche <didrocks at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> Yeah, this seem a right goal, it's part of things I tracked, but wasn't
> considered a priority last cycle with all the other changes coming. Now,
> it's maybe time to integrate them.

Sounds good.

> Now some questions:
> - do you have automatic testsuite for them, running on different versions of
> upstream projects?

Not right now, but I can create them. I can create them for atleast those
apps which are default in Ubuntu

> - how do oyu work with firefox in particular, where we update the released
> version through release life? We generally avoid shipping plugins for this
> reason.

Our old version of firefox datasource was using XUL/binary components. After
 the horror, of  it breaking every cycle, Mark Tully ported it to js-ctypes.
js-ctypes was introduced in Firefox 4.0. So, an upgrade won't break it.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/js-ctypes
http://starkravingfinkle.org/blog/2007/09/hello-js-ctypes-goodbye-binary-components/

Mark Tully also has also created an internet/web lens which can use
the events of
firefox and thunderbird.

> - can you elaborate on one of the major flaw of zeitgeist which seems a
> bigger priority to me: when you plug an usb key, or have a windows/ubuntu
> partition, as zeitgeist isn't a indexer, we can't see them in the file lens
> in particularly. I know that Seif has a script for that, but it doesn't seem
> to be suited for indexing and Mikkel has some concerns about it. Can we put
> that on the table as one of the priority for Precise?

Yes, that script is present in activity-log-manager (the version is
not released).
I was working on it and found that the current version was pretty
slow. Probably
some tricks can be undertaken to make it index only upto a specific depth.

The other option can be that file-lens can use a hybrid of zeitgeist for usage,
relevancy and all usage based recommendation and hook to "locate" unix
tool for searching. Correct me, if I am wrong, but locate does keep indexing
files? Right?

>
>> My proposal does not start and end with datasources. We should
>> also include activity-log-manager in the default install. This
>> application is a privacy and history manager. You can blacklist
>> applications, set zeitgeist in incognito mode, erase history etc.
>>
> We discussed that this cycle already, and I think that it should really be
> integrated in gnome-control-center rather than having another capplet. Do
> you think it's possible?

Yes. It is possible. I never worked on gnome-control-center, but it is
possible.
The first release was created in hurry to check how much options we can
provide to the user.
The current codebase of activity-log-manager is in python. Does
gnome-control-center have it's components/plugs (or whatever they call it)
written in python?

-
Manish