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About Deskbar

Buzzwords-laden Overview

The goal of DeskbarApplet is to provide an omnipresent versatile search interface. By typing search terms into the deskbar entry in your panel you are presented with the search results as you type.

Seaches are handled by a series of plugins. DeskbarApplet provides a simple interface to manage these plugins to provide you with the search results that fit your needs.

A related idea was published earlier as Auric Applet. Similar software from the GNOME family includes contact-lookup-applet, mini-commander applet (in gnome-applets), webeyes and GNOME Launch Box and the Alt-f2 dialog.

Features

Generic

  • Sits in the panel waiting for input
  • Global configurable hotkey to directly focus the entry and start typing
  • Pluggable backend architecture, allows to add custom backends in home/system dir. Allows third parties to add a backend, ie. tomboy can add a tomboy backend by installing a python script in a specified folder.
  • Sorting of backend results order is adaptable easily.
  • Ability to choose a fixed width or to expand in the panel to fill all available room
  • Intuitive history menu, to repeat frequent actions
  • Fully i18n-ed
  • Use themed icons associated with actions, to have a visual feedback

Backends

  • Simple API for backends implementors, either blocking or non-blocking.
  • Simple static backends like 'Search xx with yy' where yy can be beagle, gnome-dict, gnome-search-tool,..
  • Index .desktop files in english and locale, and allow to launch a program by typing some descriptive words, for example typing 'text' returns gedit, gvim, ... but you can also type 'editeur' in french and get the same results.
  • Launch command line applications with any arguments: 'killall evolution', 'sitecopy -uo mysite'
  • Open directories/files by typing a full path, or relative to home dir
  • Open nautilus bookmarks and computer volumes (with network places) by name
  • Send mail by typing an email address, open a webpage by typing an address
  • With evolution-data-server, type an name or address and send mails to your addressbook contacts
  • With libbeagle, show a small selection of beagle result for typed word
  • Perform google queries with typed word, and show the results in the list
  • Browser integration (epiphany, galeon, and mozilla/firefox): index the bookmarks title and url, also index the history, and smart bookmarks/search engines.
  • Gnomevfs monitoring where applicable:
    • dynamic handler installation with drag and drop, reload on modification
    • watch indexed files to detect changes, like new program installation, or new bookmarks
  • Pkg-config file to allow apps to easily install handlers to system location
Planned Features
  • Mozilla/Firefox history indexation
  • When ready, python bindings for galago, allowing integration with gaim contacts
  • Thunderbird addressbook, similar to evolution support
  • When framework is complete, support for recently used files

Requirements

Required dependencies

  • Python 2.3 or above
  • pygtk-2.6 (modules: gtk, gtk.gdk, gtk.glade, gobject)
  • gnome-python-2.10 (modules: gconf, gnome, gnome.ui, gnomevfs)
  • gnome-python-extras-2.10 (module: gnomeapplet)
  • gtk+-2.6 to compile global hotkey and icon entry
  • gnome-desktop-2.10 to compile .desktop parsing and startup notification

Optional dependencies

  • Compile time:
    • evolution-data-server-1.2, for libebook-1.2
    • beagle-0.1.3, python bindings for libbeagle
  • Run time:
    • Running beagle daemon
    • Running evolution-data-server
    • SOAPpy package to search with google soap API

Download

CVS

Deskbar-applet can be checked out with: cvs -d:pserver:anoncvs@anoncvs.gnome.org:/cvs/gnome co deskbar-applet

Tarball

Grab the source tarballs on gnome FTP server.

(You can also see our old releases on sourceforge project page.)

Distribution Packages

  • Ubuntu Breezy in the universe repository. FIXME: More debs here
  • Debian in the unstable repository
  • Fedora Core in the Extras repository
  • Mandriva(Mandrake) in the Cooker repository
  • Gentoo: There is an ebuild in BreakMyGentoo.
  • Arch Linux: There is an official package, pacman -S deskbar-applet
  • More ? Let me know !

Installation

Execute the following steps to install deskbar-applet

./configure --prefix /usr
make

Now you can either install it on your system:
sudo make install (or run make install as root)

Then you are able to add the applet through the gnome-panel applet manager.

You can also try it without installation, by running ./deskbar/deskbar-applet -w

Known issues

There are occasional lockups when beagle behaves