'[kde-doc-english] Nepomuk - Baloo (Desktop Search) Transition and missing User information'

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List:       kde-doc-english
Subject:    [kde-doc-english] Nepomuk - Baloo (Desktop Search) Transition and missing User information
From:       Burkhard =?ISO-8859-1?Q?L=FCck?= <lueck () hube-lueck ! de>
Date:       2014-04-18 19:22:34
Message-ID: 2751315.cvOJYSm53J () parodia
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Hi,

first time I saw the new Baloo KCM Desktop Search I was really surprised 
compared with the Nepomuk KCM (3 Tabs, lot of options).

I had a lot of questions how indexing works + what is indexed and assumed the 
typical KDE User familiar with the Nepomuk KCM would have similar questions.
So I filed a BR https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=332030 > one moth ago, but 
got no response.

Reading some discussions about this topic (transition nepomuk -> baloo) I 
noticed a lot of user questions about this issue.

So I started to collect some infos from Vishesh#s Blog, mailing list threads, 
and community.kde.org/Baloo.
This info collection is attached (no valid docbook article).

What do you think, does it make sense to write a docbook article with answers 
to the basic and most important user questions from these info collection?

If yes, can anyone help doing this to file a RR for baloo?

Thanks 

-- 
Burkhard Lück

["index.docbook" (index.docbook)]

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//KDE//DTD DocBook XML V4.2-Based Variant V1.1//EN"
"dtd/kdex.dtd" [
<!ENTITY % addindex "IGNORE">
<!ENTITY % English "INCLUDE" > <!-- change language only here -->
]>

<article id="baloo" lang="&language;">
<articleinfo>
<title>Desktop Search</title>

<authorgroup>
<author><firstname>Sebastian</firstname><surname>Trueg</surname><email>trueg@kde.org</email></author>
 <!-- TRANS:ROLES_OF_TRANSLATORS -->
</authorgroup>

<date>2014-04-18</date>
<releaseinfo>&kde; 4.13</releaseinfo>

<keywordset>
<keyword>KDE</keyword>
<keyword>KControl</keyword>
<keyword>baloo</keyword>
<keyword>desktop search</keyword>
</keywordset>
</articleinfo>

<sect1 id="introduction">
<title>Introduction</title>

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=332030

Baloo is a metadata and search framework which is a successor to the Nepomuk 
project. It primarily provides -

* An API for searching
* A way of storing relations between entities
* File indexing
* Email and Contact Indexing
* timeline kioslave

http://community.kde.org/Baloo:

Migrating data from Nepomuk to Baloo 
Nepomuk was used to store the tags, ratings, and user comments in Files. This data \
can be migrated by running the nepomukbaloomigrator. There is no continuous \
synchronization between Baloo and Nepomuk. Nepomuk was also used to store indexed \
information about Files, Emails and Contacts. Baloo shall reindex this information \
directly from the source.  [
Running Nepomuk and Baloo together 
Nepomuk and Baloo can both coexist without issues. However, it may not be the best \
idea to run both of them on the same system as they both would then be indexing your \
files, emails and other data and taxing the system heavily, populating their \
databases.  Tags, ratings and comments will be not be synchronized between Nepomuk \
and Baloo after the initial migration.

The majority of Nepomuk applications just rely on its tags, ratings and comments \
features. Baloo offers a simple asynchronous API for modifying that file metadata. \
This metadata is now stored with the extended attributes of the file instead of \
storing it in a separate database.

Dolphin, GwenView, 

http://vhanda.in/blog/2014/04/desktop-search-configuration:

The old module was built on top of Nepomuk and it explicitly mentions that on the \
top. While "Nepomuk" was a decently known brand within the KDE Community, a normal \
user cannot be expected to know what it is. It also presented a plethora of options \
in order to disable and enable Nepomuk, the File Indexer (used to say Strigi) and the \
PIM indexing. It also provides ways to control the indexing and labels to show what \
exactly is going on. With the new module we have removed all of these options. The \
user should not need to know about the project called "Baloo", and indexing is an \
internal implementation detail in order to make searches faster. It doesn't need to \
be broadcasted. Additionally now that we're so much faster, we can no longer afford \
to inform the user about each file. We often indexing hundreds of files per second. \
Plus, the files are indexed in multiple stages. The old module's primary function was \
to control what is indexed. This was done in another tab 

This allowed the user to set which types and mimetypes of files should be indexed, \
control the list of regular expressions which should be matched against the filename, \
and control the list of directories which should be indexed, and which should not.

We now index your HOME directory by default and allow you to black list certain \
directories which you may not want to appear in the search results

The custom regular expression and mimetype filtering has been removed. We believe \
that it wasn't something an average user would know or care about. Also, we don't \
think anyone should need to micro-optimize the indexer to such a level

This current release does not fully support removable media. By default all removable \
media are not indexed. You can however remove them if the blacklist in order to index \
them.

There is no explicit "Enable/Disable" button any more. We would like to promote the \
use of searching and feel that Baloo should never get in the users way. However, we \
are smart about it and IF you add your HOME directory to the list of "excluded \
folders", Baloo will switch itself off since it no longer has anything to index

This new KCM does remove a large number of options, but we considered those to \
potential optimizations from the Nepomuk days when we were not that performant. Baloo \
does still support most of these options, they just have sane defaults and are no \
longer exposed.

Vishesh Handa in thread Systems Settings - Desktop Search on kde-devel@kde.org

Here is how it currently works -

* By default your HOME directory is indexed, and all other external mounts are 
are excluded.

* The UI will show the list of all excluded mounts and excluded folders that 
have been manually added.

So if you want some external mount to be indexed, just remove it from the 
blacklist.

> 
> will it be possible to run KDE without baloo enabled?
> 

Yes. You can go to System Settings -> Desktop Search -> Exclude Folders, and 
add your $HOME directory over there.

Otherwise you can also edit the baloofilerc file and add the following -

[Basic Settings]
Indexing-Enabled=false

~/.kde/share/config$/baloofilerc

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=333020 No way to index directories off root via \
UI

Editing the ~/.kde/share/config/baloofilerc file and adding:

  "folders[$e]=/data2/,$HOME/"

will give the desired results.

</sect1>

</article>

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