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xfce4-appfinder 4.10 Roadmap

The idea is to merge the current appfinder and xfrun4 into 1 application that can do it all; but better. To get this working in a fast way a number of custom tree- and list-models need to be written that all work with the same data, which is all loaded in threads and inserted in idles, to keep the interface responsive.

See the design page for more information.

Completed: 0%
Assignee: Nick
Difficulty: Hard

Status

The IDs are prefixed with A for Appearance, B for Behavior and I for Implementation. The status cells are color coded:

  • a white background means the feature is not implemented yet,
  • a green background means the feature is supported,
  • a orange background means the feature is being worked on,
  • a grey background means the feature is partially working but is not developed any further.
ID Description nick/xfrun4-merge
B01 Open exo-desktop-item-edit? Some lousy menu editor replacement?
B02 Items not visible on start in expanded mode. Done
I01 Store settings in Xfconf Done
I01.1 Window size and pane position. Done
I01.2 Last category? Done
I02 Investigate dbus daemon, profiling shows a lot of time is spend in starting Gtk (theme/style) and Garcon item loading, two things we can easily avoid with a daemon. Done
I03 Save successfully launched commands Done
I04 Simple extension framework. Done
I04.2 Simple editor. Done
I04.3 Support custom icons.
I04.4 Do we need this in expanded view as well, like Jannis' idea? The entry only acts as search field, so we need to change it's behavior too then.
I05 Garcon menu reloading support. Done
I06 (icon) theme changes: reload cached pixbufs. Done
I07 Bunch of clever key combinations to speed-up navigation.
I08 Obey show-image-on-button setting for launch button. Done
I09 Sort custom commands before desktop-file commands in the completion. Done
I10 xfrun4 script for easy migration in 4.8, make xfce4-appfinder expand by default.

Implement Modes

It will have 2 modes:

  • Quick run dialog: like with xfrun4, but also includes the known desktop files + command history.
  • Finder dialog: to show the complete appfinder, like in 4.8 (with applications and their categories) but also the command history.

It will therefore also install 2 desktop files: “Run Program…” (for in the toplevel menu) and “Application Finder” that spawns the window in expanded mode.

Custom Actions

A bit like the Thunar custom actions, it is also possible to parse commands you type in the launch entry. It has 2 modes to match commands:

  • Match by prefix. This allows to add !bang like launcher.
  • Match by regular expression. This way complex launchers can be created to match for example email addresses (to launch a mail reader).

Other Ideas

  • Ctrl+Enter: launch the command in a terminal.
  • Provide script for xfrun4 and keep the xfrun4 desktop file so users can switch easily.
  • See also Jannis' ideas and the replies to his post.
  • Panel plugin that can do the same as the Alt+F2 dialog (which will also obsolete the verve plugin). Might be a good alternative to searching in the applications menu.
  • Do not store commands that failed to execute.