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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.

Completed: 0%
Assignee: Nick
Difficulty: Hard

Implement Modes

It will have 2 modes:

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

Simple Extensions

It should be fairly easy add new “helpers” for users, by using an extension dialog, like the Thunar custom actions.

  • Match by expression:
    • “b <searchstring>” to search in Bing ^_^.
    • match email and webaddress locations.
  • Provide alternative 'launchers' that will showup in a menu while you type a string.
    • Open “%s” in the terminal
    • Open “%s” in webbrowser.

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.

Discussion Points

  • Do we want this to run as a daemon in the background, which xfrun4 does currently. If implemented properly, the instances can all share the same data set and everything will feel more responsive. On the other hand, more data is loaded then xfrun4 did, so it might be more memory hungry. Probably the sanest way is to provides a dbus service (like terminal) and the 2nd instance will spawn from the running one. Then we can always make it optional to keep a daemon running.