[packagekit] Simpler search

[Richard Hughes]

On Wed, 2008-02-13 at 14:40 -0500, Robin Norwood wrote:
> > On Wed, 2008-02-13 at 20:28 +0100, Patryk Zawadzki wrote:
> > > On Feb 13, 2008 8:24 PM, Richard Hughes <hughsient at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > On Wed, 2008-02-13 at 14:11 -0500, Robin Norwood wrote:
> > > > > What do you think about combining the name/description search
> > > > > options in the pk-application UI?  It seems unlikely that the
> > > > > user really cares whether the term he is searching for matches
> > > > > the name or the description.  Can we combine those two options,
> > > > > or have a default search option that searches by name, then
> > > > > description?
> > > >
> > > > Well, I don't think we should combine the search in the backend
> > > > (i.e. 2 methods into 1) as some clients may just want a simple
> > > > search and not want the extended search as it may require
> > > > downloading metadata.
> > > >
> > > > It might be a good idea to default to a "both" search option in
> > > > the UI that does a simple search then a detailed search on the
> > > > same query.
> > > 
> > > >From a usability POV these should really be one.
> > 
> > I'm not so sure (but up for a lively debate :-) - I often _know_ the
> > package name of something I want to install, for instance
> > "kpowersave".
> > 
> > Sometimes I'm just searching for "gokart" and want deeper searching to
> > find supertuxkart.
> 
> But sometimes the package name is less than obvious, unfortunately.
> openoffice.org comes to mind, and I know there are others I've
> personally dealt with using yum that were frustrating me.
> 
> I think the yum commandline 'yum search' does both names and
> descriptions now.  Could we do it in two passes?

Sure.

> ie, search by name, and the results start popping up in the UI.  If you
> see what you want, click, and the search is canceled.

Click and the search is canceled.... Good plan, we could do that.

>   Otherwise, wait
> a few more seconds and a description search is fired off after the name
> search is done.  All this happens in the background, and should be
> reasonably fast, though.

Totally. Let me prototype something up tonight, or if you are feeling
keen, you're welcome to have a shot. ;-)

Richard.