[Xesam] suggestions from fosscamp

[Jos van den Oever]

Hello all,

Yesterday I blogged [1] about attending FOSSCamp. For the list I'd
like to go into a bit more detail about two points I mentioned there.
I'd like to do a small initial discussion on this topics and if we
would like to start working on any of these, go to a separate on them.

common index file format

Distributions want to install preindexed files such as documentation.
All programs that implement Xesam would ideally implement support for
one common format. Such a format may be heavily optimized for reading
only and there should be a mechanism to tell the indexer about the
presence of the index.
For this to become a reality we need to look at what we need in such a
file format. I want to avoid mentioning any technicalities but focus
on requirements. Here's what I think such a format would need, please
add more requirements.
 - cross platform
 - optimized for reading (we're talking about read-only files)
 - small indexes
 - good support for the full xesam search language features
 - good performance for many small indexes so distros can do
fine-grained distribution


management interface

To make Xesam attractive for program authors, we need an API that the
allows applications to ensure that particular files are indexed. This
means that e.g. Amarok could tell the indexer 'index the title and
artist for all mp3 files on the system' or 'use this index that my
application provides'.
Do you think we could agree on designing an API for doing these things.

To close, some nice news from the people I talk to. The people seem
keen on using Xesam, not Tracker, Strigi or Beagle. They are not
bothered by being limited to the features in the spec but would like
the standardization process to go forward to add more. It is clear
that people like the choice which they get by being able to choose one
of a few standard compliant programs.

So lets keep moving,
Jos





[1] http://kdedevelopers.org/node/3465