This is a new video available on the SkyOS homepage, showing off the new indexing service. This service (which continuously runs in the background) will examine all new or updated files on a SkyFS volume. For each file, the plugin-based Index Feeder will try to extract as much information as possible from the file. This information will then be attached to the file in the form of attributes, which makes it possible to quickly search for it by using the SkyFS Index and Live Queries. It should be noted that what is seen in the video is only the back-end controls for the indexing service; for the final release of SkyOS, the controls will be implemented system-wide within the SkyOS GUI.
SkyOS: Better than Dewey Decimal?
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Eugenia Loli
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So what has been done is merging what BeOS has had (they’re using a variant of BeFS) with what Mac OS X Spotlight does. It was bound to happen sooner or later.
Actually, this is what BeOS does too. The service (or daemon) was called “registrar”.
Oh, and also. It’s not a variant of BFS, it’s the Haiku projects implementation of BFS ported to SkyOS.
This SkyOS thing is working silently in the background and aparently when it is ready it will rule the world!
What is so new about all this indexing stuff. Isn’t this pretty much the same as slocate. I know mac’s software is better as it will parse out mp3 tags and stuff
I haven’t used it much, but don’t you have to keep running updatedb? Incremental indexing is the obvious step beyond that.
This hobby OS is looking better and better. Don’t know if I’d plunk down cash for it but it’s looking nice.
‘registrar’ merely scans the filesystem for untyped files, during prolonged idle time, setting the filetype mime attribute.
The Be filesystem can index your attributes, but there’s no real infrastructure yet to index the contents of your files, apart from domain-specific tools, like for mp3 files. The logical continuation would be to have some background process export the relevant contents of files as attributes, to allow the files to show up in fs queries. You’d want filetype-specific plugins for that, probably similar to how Spotlight does it. Also, you might want to consider the ramifications of BFS’s limit on indexing of string type attributes. Only the first 255 bytes of the attribute are indexed, IIRC.
It’s a neat and obvious idea, and complex fileformats aside, very easy to implement. It’s a shame nobody’s build anything like it for BeOS. (AFAIK) Guess we were to busy wondering what Be was/wasn’t up to.
Anyway, Go Haiku! Getting closer…
I haven’t watched the video yet, but it sounds more like Beagle ( http://www.gnome.org/projects/beagle/ )
..is help from a professional usability/GUI specialist.
To make the start button a moving target is terrible, just to name one screaming problem.
For a short technical example of how the Index Feeder works, you may take a look at the Index Feeder document at:
http://www.skyos.org/downloads/documents/SkyOS Index Feeder.pdf
This document details information on what happens behind the scenes.
Sorry about the link, want to copy and paste it.
This is the same thing Beagle does with inotify and xattr, isn’t it?
Humm, when you search with beagle you do *not* specify with different queries on what kind of file you want to search for. If I for example search for jaguar, it will search for all documents contaning the text jaguar…it will also search for links and websites that contains jaguar…and pictures…and audio etc.
With SkyOS, as you may see on the video you can query for different types of media and files.
And do not get mad about this, but both of these services may be in alpha…SkyOS does have a little bit push on that part cause, skyfs(bfs) does have the oppurtunity to queryes while beagle have to create an own solution of this.
Aint I’m right?
try this:
http://www.skyos.org/downloads/documents/SkyOS%20Index%20Fe…
The codec this uses can be downloaded here for both Windows and PC QuickTime: http://www.techsmith.com/download/ensharpendecoder.asp
arg.. for both Windows and MacOS 9/X QuickTime. 🙂
Try the latest mplayer on Linux, which should support the TechSmith TSCC codec.
Amazingly, VLC doesn’t, though. VLC usually seems to support everything known to man.. 🙂
Yep, the video work’s on the newest MPlayer, 1.0pre7 rel.
And it’s good quality!
It’s interesting how some many different groups seem to be interested in instant desktop search all of a sudden. Like there was a memo.
Pretty neat, now if it only be implementet on KDE.
This SkyOS thing is working silently in the background and aparently when it is ready it will rule the world!
SkyOS seem to progress in an unbelievable pace. However, it won’t “rule the world” unless your version of “the world” are composed of countries that does not require any form of Input Methods such as those required to enter CJK characters. ^^;
This hobby OS is looking better and better. Don’t know if I’d plunk down cash for it but it’s looking nice.
Indeed an interesting OS project. I know a lot of people mention how SkyOS “Copied” features. Well, I personally think it’s great that a (relatively) new OS
is trying to create a GUI which copies (what the creator(s) believe is” the _good_ components of other GUIs while leaving out the bad.
Now, if only they’d make a statement that the code will be Open Sourced IF the SkyOS team decides to close shop, similar to what Troll Tech does with qt.
Seems like it hehehe…
Deffo a good feature tho!