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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. | @palegreen: Done |
| I01 | Store settings in Xfconf | @palegreen: Done |
| I01.1 | Window size and pane position. | @palegreen: Done |
| I01.2 | Last category? | @palegreen: 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. | @palegreen: Done |
| I03 | Save successfully launched commands | @palegreen: Done |
| I04 | Simple extension framework. | @palegreen: Done |
| I04.2 | Simple editor. | @palegreen: 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. | @palegreen: Done |
| I06 | (icon) theme changes: reload cached pixbufs. | @palegreen: Done |
| I07 | Bunch of clever key combinations to speed-up navigation. | – |
| I08 | Obey show-image-on-button setting for launch button. | @palegreen: Done |
| I09 | Sort custom commands before desktop-file commands in the completion. | @palegreen: 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.
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.