Tracker

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 * We already provide an excellent and efficient desktop search capability for files with its own tracker-search-tool, nautilus integration and deskbar integration but will be expanding on this to include emails, chat logs and applications in the next month or two  * We already provide an excellent and efficient desktop search capability for files with its own tracker-search-tool, nautilus integration (with "Find" tool and "Tag" file option) and deskbar integration but will be expanding on this to include emails, chat logs and applications in the next month or two

Tracker is a synergy of technologies that are designed to provide a highly sophisticated, innovative and integrated desktop.

Tracker provides the following:

A nice summary of how tracker can make your desktop rock is given below :

  • Imagine downloading an mp3 file to have it automatically appear in Rhythmbox, complete with artist and track information.
  • Imagine shooting a photo on your digital camera and having it appear in f-spot, without having to be imported.
  • Like tagging? tracker lets you apply tags to files, freeing you from an endless hierarchy of folders.
  • Tracker not only allows you to search for files based upon what's inside them, but also by properties which describe them (metadata).
  • Tracker is smart. By treating files as first class objects it knows that Photos have widths, while Music files have artists. Tracker knows that Documents have authors and Videos have durations.
  • Want to find photos taken with your Nikon digital camera? no problem!.
  • Want to find all Openoffice documents created in December, with more than 10 pages, containing the word "cheese"? no problem. Tracker can do it.
  • Tracker is the glue that helps developers connect GNOME together, and the reason users will love the GNOME and Ubuntu platforms.

Tracker is written in 100% C and is designed to be both fast and efficient with your system's resources. Tracker's performance profile includes:

  • Small - <5mb RAM, great for low-end systems, and easily meets Ubuntu Feisty's RAM usage targets

  • Fast - hundreds of searches per second will not slow your computer, drain your battery or waste your system resources.
  • High-performance indexing - can index your files faster than most other indexers (especially when run with --turbo)
  • Standards compliant - tracker has a dbus interface and utilizes the FDO technologies and specs

Current Plans and integration with Gnome apps:

  • We already provide an excellent and efficient desktop search capability for files with its own tracker-search-tool, nautilus integration (with "Find" tool and "Tag" file option) and deskbar integration but will be expanding on this to include emails, chat logs and applications in the next month or two
  • We will be expanding our T-S-T GUI to provide more advanced searches using specific metadata and extensible metadata/tags
  • We will in the near future provide SLAB, tiles library and a snazzy GTKFileChooser replacement which will all exploit tracker's features including tags
  • RhythmBox already provides tracker as a plug-in but the maintainer is also keen to exploit our first class object technology and extensible metadata capability by utilizing tracker instead of its current XML database

  • Epiphany wants to use tracker's first class objects for bookmarks and history management whilst also providing searches for them
  • Deskbar applet is planning on using tracker's database for storage needs
  • Leaftag maintainer happy to use tracker as a backend for tags
  • Longer term we plan on creating our own file manager for tracker which can fully exploit tracker's full potential

Comments and Discussion

["Warbo"]: I can't wait for this to be fully integrated, and I'm currently using some external packages for tracker, nautilus and deskbar, but I have an issue to raise: How much tagging will be done automatically? The use case of the Nikon digital camera is an obvious example of automatic tagging by whatever tracker-aware photo application is used, but the incredible usefulness of this also comes with concerns about privacy, since so much information is available about a user based on their database. Maybe there should be a preference setting for this level, as some users would love to have loads of information for every file in case they need it later, but others would be concerned with privacy. For example I could imagine a lot of people getting upset at GAIM tagging a received MP3 file with the sender's IM account name. Perhaps the file manager should be given a right-click option "Disable all tagging for this file/folder" (with a confirmation dialogue)?

Tracker (last edited 2009-03-05 12:00:34 by irmik)