New software idea, helping users find preferred applications.

[Erik Parmann]

Charley Ramm wrote:

> I like this. Lets do it.
>
> 1. How should it store the recommendations? Would a text file be 
> suitable?
> 2. How does HAL work? Would it need to be changed, or could it be 
> extended somehow from the original?
> 3. I have never written a useful program before. ha ha ha. But I would 
> like to, and where better to start?
> 4. err, I'm sure there's more. Many many more.
>
Thanks, it is nice to hear that someone like my idea.
1-3: I am not a programmer, so I am maybe not the one best suited to 
answer these. I was kind of hoping that someone with development and 
programming skills liked the idea, and helped it to fly. But I can 
answer what I think:
When you think about what tasks Bill will do, it is not very CPU 
intensive (I think, not much calculations at least), but it will have to 
search through the list of hardwaredevices and filetypes. I don't think 
Python would be a bad choice, and from what I hear it is a easy language 
to create bug-free software with.
Writing the software itself would probably not be a lot of work, I even 
think it would be possible to create a prototype in bash. It just have 
to take a argument, search through the list, call the packagemanager and 
return the software name. But offcourse, that is just to show the basic, 
for the real software one would chose a "real language".
The real work is to
1) Create the database (that is, chose what software to do for what task).
2) Modify HAL and the GUI  to call Bill.
Letting the database be a text file (XML) has the advantage that it is 
easy to modify. If it later becomes a bottleneck we could make the 
default database as a real database but having the option of letting the 
distro-specific database as a XML file.
I was also thinking that one do different things with the same filetype. 
Maybe you want to edit it, or just view it. That demands different 
software. So the database should have a way of saying what the software 
is best to. I think the best way to do that is to make some basic 
actions, like edit and view, and then have it registered in the database 
what the software is best to. And then it is the software calling for 
Bill who must call for the editor or viewer. This gives the option of 
having a light and extensible distro/GUI. Imagine right clicking on a 
jpg, and having the option to view and edit. But the edit is kind of 
faded out. So when you click on it  you get a small window telling you 
that Gimp is the best tool for that job, and you can install it. So then 
you install it, and the edit button is no longer faded out. Power 
without bloat, because you only install the software when you actually 
need it :)
I don't know how it is best to solve nr2. Maybe first create a solid 
framework, with a good GUI and solid plugins for several 
packagemanagers, and then ask HAL/GUI developers to do the modifications 
themself. Offcourse, if some ubuntu developers are interested, I think 
some of them work with Gnome.
More comments, ideas and developers who want to adopt a software are wanted.
Erik Parmann.
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