[maemo-developers] GSoC2010 global search application proposal discussion

[From: Shapeshifter]

Dear Maemo developers,

now that Maemo has been accepted as a mentoring organization for GSoC 
2010, I'd like to ask about joining the action. I've been pondering on 
what project to look into, as quite a few of them interest me (including 
porting Remmina, the Ebook reader idea and an idea of my own, which 
revolves around recovering data from your device if it gets stolen and 
getting a GPS lock upon sending it an SMS or similar things), but I 
think I'll settle for the "Global Search Application" Project.
What is it about? I'll just rephrase the proposal from the project ideas 
page and then share my ideas on how to implement and present it:

== Global Search Application
An application which indexes local files and content and supports 
searching for files and content in a convenient and appealing fashion as 
well as opening results in their respective application.

== Thoughts about presentation and implementation
The search application should respond quickly and present results in an 
appealing fashion while the user is typing - possibly supported by 
thumbnails - and should open them in the appropriate application if 
possible. It should also include searching for contacts (including 
contact fields, e.g. jabber nicknames and such), SMS, emails and other 
content commonly stored on the device. Indexing shouldn't waste battery 
life or impact performance while the user is actively using the device.

While looking around for clues, I've seen that this idea has been around 
for a while with lots of discussions happening around the 2008 Maemo 
summit ( https://wiki.maemo.org/Desktop_Search_Hackfest ). Solutions 
discussed included Strigi, Beagle and Xesam, but it seems like there 
hasn't been a final product of sorts. I myself have been thinking about 
adapting some more streamlined solutions like locate (updatedb), and 
building around those. Quite interesting for such a device would be 
rlocate because it's small, fast and will know about file changes, but 
that needs it's own kernel module which might not be feasable for the 
platform. If using one of these, there'a also another component needed 
for indexing file content, and of course there need to be special 
components for accessing the maemo-specific data like contacts and so 
on. There's definitely lots of way we could do this, and the preferred 
method would need to be found.

Concrete tasks would include collecting the existing bits and pieces, 
choosing the grounds to build upon, writing or adapting, porting and 
packaging a backend indexer, writing a frontend, preferrably as a 
widget, and conduction reliability and speed tests.

== About myself
My name is Carol Alexandru and I'm studying Computer Sciences at the 
University of Zurich, Switzerland (UZH) in the 4th semester. I've been a 
Linux user for around 5 years and have lots of experience regarding the 
CLI and the underlying mechanisms of Linux. During my study I've 
acquired skills in modeling, project planning and of course programming 
- the usual stuff. I'm highly motivated to work for the community and to 
write open source software. I've been working on a larger project of my 
own (creating a multi-user music streaming server, which I have not yet 
released; It needs a few finishing touches) and lots of minor hacks and 
tools, mostly for the CLI. I'm also the author of the "Alarmed" Qt/CLI 
wrapper around alarmd/libalarm for Maemo 5 ( 
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=46594 ). Now, I *love* Python but 
I also know the more common languages like C/C++. During my spare time, 
I like to just hack small scripts'n'stuff, maintain our student clubs 
servers and infrastructure and have a couple of beers with friends. And 
of course I've got an N900 ;-)
Regarding other commitments during summer, I need to pass a few crucial 
exams in the first half of June. Apart from that, I'm 100% available.

== Contact info
I'm always on IRC in irc.freenode.net#maemo, nickname "Shapeshifter", 
and of course you can reach me through this email address: 
shapeshifter at archlinux.us.

So, I know it's a bit early for a "full-blown" application, as the 
period starts on March 28th, so please consider this an expression of my 
interest. :-)
I'd really like for possible mentors on this to get in touch with me to 
discuss details and see if this is a project fitting into Maemo and if 
I'm the right person for the job. I think quite a few people would like 
the idea and profit from such an application.

Thanks for your time.

Regards,
Carol Alexandru