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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Columbo ( was Re: New project )
From:       Matt Koss <koss () napri ! sk>
Date:       1999-06-06 10:09:11
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On Ne, 06 jún 1999, Bernd Gehrmann wrote:
>Some days ago I had the pleasure to play with an iMac
>in a store (the one with the name similar to KDE :)
>for a while. The most striking feature in the newer
>versions of MacOS is "Sherlock", a search machine both
>for the local file system (by various criteria or by
>full text search a la glimpse) and a meta search machine 
>for the web. Well, I immediately decided that such a 
>program is a must-have for KDE.
>
>You can get an impression of the code that I've written
>up to now from
>
>ftp://linde.physik.hu-berlin.de/pub/bernd/columbo.gif
>
>Thanks to the impressive libraries like libkio and
>libkhtmlw it's not very complex. Unfortunately, I
>don't really have the time to do much further work
>on it, and it's also not very easy to debug a web-
>centered app over a modem ;-) So it would be nice
>if others shared my enthusiasm and contributed to
>this project to make it really useful. What is mostly
>needed (apart from debugging, of course) is the 
>definition of search sites. I've tried to make my
>parser compatible with Apple's scheme, but with
>config files based on KConfig. Ideally one would
>have a config file parser that is compatible with 
>Apple's plug-in syntax 
>http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn/tn1141.html.
>(btw: how do I uncompress .hqx files?)
>
>Of course, one can let one's fantasy run wild and
>think about how Columbo could interact with other
>applications. Imagine a menu item in the mail reader
>that allows to search the archives of the mailing list!
>Or a menu item in the news reader that initiates a
>search on dejanews... Or an extension to the address-
>book that queries an email search engine.

Hi,

it's good to see that somebody has a time for this project.

I was going to do something similar.
My original idea was to put this search stuff into libkio and it would be called
from any program.
I have already started some work in libkio, but it's not finished yet 'cause I
didn't have much time for that.

I have contacted autor of kzilla.
Kzilla was originally meant to be a program in style of Go!zilla, but author so
far implemented only ftp search.
He even rewrote a search part into a perl script, because, as he told me, the
definitions for search sites change so rapidly, that the perl script was the
only way to go.
I don't know how you see it, but if you can make a C++ code flexible enough, we
could stick with it ( I didn't like an idea of calling a perl script through a
filter ). But if you come to the same conclusion as him, we could still use and
update a perl script.

So far I have to ideas :

1. Put  all search stuff into libkio. Your Columbo program would then call the
   library functions and display the information.
   My Caitoo would call also the library and display the information
   differently.

   For Caitoo I need an ftp search feature, but I need a different display
   window ( at least I think so ), because I need to have a display sorted by
   speed of connection to the server. For that I also want to put pinging into
   libkio.

2. Other idea could be to make a Columbo into CORBA server, and Caitoo ( as
    well as konqueror would use it for doing a search.
   Columbo display window would then need to be somehow redesigned, so that
   it could serach also for files and not only text.
   It should also have an additional column for showing a speed.

So please drop me a line and I could cooperate with you on solving this
feature, that will be surely useful for everybody.

I would even suggest to make Columbo a general search program that would also
search on the local disk ( the same thing as Sherlock does ).

      Regards

			Matt


-- 
Matej Koss	e-mail: koss@napri.sk
Kosice		 ICQ# : 19344305
Slovakia

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