Desktop Search Hackfest/Schedule

2008-09-06T22:35:37Z

62.66.218.144: /* Xesam compliance testing */

This page is meant as a melting pot to come up with a schedule for the [[Desktop_Search_Hackfest|Desktop Search Hackfest]], held in Berlin 18-22 September. Note that only two of these days are designated for the Desktop search hackfest.

= Agenda Meeting Log=

A log of the meeting held 04.09.2008 by most of hackfest participants is available here: http://pastebin.ca/1194108

= Session Drafts =
This sections lists all BOFs, Hack-sessions, or other gatherings drafted for the hackfest.

=== Xesam Future ===
'''Type:''' BOF

'''Duration:''' 1h

'''Description:''' Where do we go from 1.0? Apart from the already roadmapped items for Xesam 1.1 what should we look into? Paged search results, extensions to the query language, life on Mars? Mikkel will give a brief (7 min) recap of the things that has already been aired as well as a few personal ideas. After that the discussion is free.
''This BOF should be placed after the Xesam Design and Critique BOF''.

'''Attending:'''
* Mikkel Kamstrup (host)

=== Xesam Design and Critique ===
'''Type:''' BOF

'''Duration:''' 1h

'''Description:''' Voices in the community has aired dissatisfaction with the feature set and design of Xesam. We need to discuss this to get common understanding and to see if we can accomodate some of the problems. Mikkel will start out with a very brief (3-5 min) discussion on Xesam design principles. The participants will be expected to bring the bullets in form of concrete problems.

'''Attending:'''
* Mikkel Kamstrup (host)
* Jos van den Oever

=== Xesam MetadataStorage API ===
'''Type:''' BOF

'''Duration:''' 1h

'''Description:''' Xesam has long been promising to adopt a DBus interface to store and read metadata. Draft this API. There are baby steps towards this at [[http://xesam.org/main/XesamIteration2 Xesam's iteration 2 page]]

'''Attending:'''
* Mikkel Kamstrup (host)
* Anders Rune Jensen

=== Xesam Index API ===
'''Type:''' BOF

'''Duration:''' 1h

'''Description:''' Xesam has long been promising to adopt a DBus interface to the metadata of the index itself, ie retrieval of unique terms, counting of terms etc. Draft this API. There are baby steps towards this at [[http://xesam.org/main/XesamIteration2 Xesam's iteration 2 page]]

'''Attending:'''
* Mikkel Kamstrup (host)

=== Desktop Search Status report ===
'''Host:'''

'''Type:''' BOF

'''Duration:''' 1h

'''Description:''' Each search engine should quickly describe what the current status is and what their plans for the future are in 5-10 min.

'''Attending:'''
* Sebastian Pölsterl (host)
* Mikkel Kamstrup
* Anders Rune Jensen
* Jos van den Oever

=== Xesam-Gtk a Widget Set on Top of Xesam-GLib ===
'''Type:''' Hack session

'''Duration:''' 3h

'''Description:''' The purpose of this session is to design a basic set of widgets leveraging Xesam GLib to allow dead easy integration of Xesam search technologies in Gnome apps. We will start out with approx. 1h of hand waving, drawings, and discussions, and people are welcome to attend only this part. After this we fire up the laptops and get down to business.

'''Attending:'''
* Mikkel Kamstrup (host)

=== Desktop 3000 ===
'''Type:''' BOF

'''Duration:''' 1h (depending on the number of participants)

'''Description:''' Assuming we have rich, instantly searchable, metadata everywhere what cool ideas will be possible? The participants will air their far fetched crack-pot-dreams and juicy fantasies in 7 minute presentations. Mikkel will kick the session off with his ''"Do-what-I-think-Desktop"'' idea.

'''Attending:'''
* Mikkel Kamstrup (host)
* Anders Rune Jensen

=== Xesam compliance testing ===

'''Type:''' BOF

'''Duration:''' 1h (depending on the number of participants)

'''Description:''' Xesam has a relatively simple API and search language. Nevertheless, none of the implementation are complete. We need a benchmark to judge how well every client works with a large corpus of documents to index.

'''Attending:'''
* Jos van den Oever (host)
* Mikkel Kamstrup

= Schedule =

== Days Before the Official Program ==

== Day 1 : Saturday 20th ==

== Day 2 : Sunday 21st ==

== Day(s) After the Official Program ==

Desktop Search Hackfest

2008-09-04T18:55:14Z

62.66.218.144: /* Concrete Coding Tasks */

= Other Pages of Interest =

* [[Talk:Desktop_Search_Hackfest|Discussion page]]
* [[Desktop_Search_Hackfest/Schedule|Schedule draft]]

= Event description =

[COMPLETE]

Hackfest around the Desktop Search and Metadata handling topic. Currently there are many partial solutions to the problem, so a hackfest could help to share some code, define lines to the projects and steal the good points of other projects :P

== Proposed dates ==

* After [[Maemo Summit 2008]] (September 19-20th + weekend)
** I would like to propose holding the actual hackfest on 20-21st Sept. Even though this gives a one-day overlap with the Maemo summit. This should also leave Monday as a scheduled wrap-up day.
* In Berlin

= Participants =
* Name (Project / Location)
* Ben van Klinken (CLucene/NL) mailinglist
* Jos van den Oever (Strigi/NL) mailinglist
* Jamie McCracken (Tracker/Turks&Caicos,Carribean) mailinglist
* Sebastian Trueg (Nepomuk/Germany) self covered trip + own accomondation mailinglist
* Lukas Lipka (Beagle-Dashboard/Slovakia) mailinglist
* Kevin Kubasik (Beagle/USA) mailinglist
* Kevin Ottens (KDE Plasma search / France/Toulouse) mailinglist
* Martyn Russel (Tracker/UK) covered trip + stay mailinglist
* Carlos Garnacho (Tracker/Spain) covered trip + stay mailinglist
* Philip van Hoof (Tracker/Belgium) covered trip + stay mailinglist
* Urho Konttori (Tracker/Finland) covered trip + stay mailinglist
* Ivan Frade (Tracker/Finland) covered trip + stay mailinglist
* Mikael Ottela (Tracker/Finland) covered trip + stay mailinglist
* Mikkel Kamstrup (Xesam/Denmark) mailinglist
* Evgeny Egorochkin (Xesam/Ukraine) mailinglist
* Sebastian Pölsterl (Deskbar-Applet/Germany) mailinglist
* Ben Martin (libferris/Australia) mailinglist
* Shivakumar Manishankar (Tracker tester)
* Anders Rune Jensen (Nemo/Denmark) mailinglist?

fabrice.colin (Pinot) was invited, is on mailinglist, but won't make it.

Michael Albinus (Xesam, Emacs, Debian) would like to attend the Ontology Workshop. He is on the Xesam mailing list on FDO. He should be notified ASAP when we know when the ontology workshop will be held. He lives in Berlin.

== Expected Arrivals ==
'''VERY IMPORTANT - NEEDED FOR FINDING ACCOMMODATION'''
=== Thursday 18 ===
'''Preferred day for arrivals, this way you have the whole Friday for warming up and attend the Maemo Summit.'''

* Ben van Klinken (Haarlem/NL: any time - booking himself)
* Urho Konttori (Helsinki 20:00+ - Urho group booking)
* Ivan Frade (Helsinki 18:00+ - Urho group booking)
* Philip van Hoof (Brussels/Eindhoven 18:00+ - Urho group booking)
* Martyn Russell (London 18:00+ - Urho group booking)
* Carlos Garnacho (Madrid 18:00+ - Urho group booking)
* Mikael Ottela (Helsinki 18:00+ - Urho group booking)
* Jamie McCracken (via New york 15:00+ - Urho group booking)
* Sebastian Pölsterl (from Munich, no preferred time - booking himself)
* Lukas Lipka (Bratislava 18:00+ - Quim group, booking requested to travel agent)
* Jos van den Oever (from Hengelo, arrive at 17.08 - Quim group, booking requested to travel agent)
* Kevin Ottens - Quim group, booking requested to travel agent
* Evgeny Egorochkin (Xesam/Ukraine - Quim group, booking requested to travel agent)
* Ben Martin (libferris/Australia - Quim group, booking requested to travel agent) (date to be confirmed)
* Anders Rune Jensen (unknown time and location)

=== Friday 19 ===
* Kevin Kubasik (from SLC Int'l- Quim group, booking requested to travel agent) Can leave 9pm on thursday
* Mikkel Kamstrup (Xesam/Denmark) (Copenhagen, 15:15)

=== Saturday 20 ===

== Expected Departures ==
'''VERY IMPORTANT - NEEDED FOR FINDING ACCOMMODATION'''

=== Sunday 21 ===

=== Monday 22 ===
* Urho Konttori
* Ivan Frade
* Philip van Hoof
* Martyn Russell
* Carlos Garnacho
* Mikael Ottela
* Sebastian Pölsterl (Returning to Munich between 18:00 and 22:00)
* Kevin Kubasik (Returning to Washington Dulles)
* Lukas Lipka
* Ben van Klinken
* Kevin Ottens
* Mikkel Kamstrup (Xesam/Denmark) (Returning to Copenhagen, departure 20:55)
* Anders Rune Jensen

=== Tuesday 23 ===
'''Monday night is the last one covered by the Hackfest sponsorship. Feel free staying until Tuesday making the most of your trip.'''

* Jamie McCracken
* Jos van den Oever
* Ben Martin
* Evgeny Egorochkin (Xesam/Ukraine)
* Ben Martin (libferris/Australia) (date to be confirmed)

= Proposed items to work =

== Concrete Coding Tasks ==

This task should be ordered/organized in the [[Desktop_Search_Hackfest/Schedule | schedule]] page.

* Xesam integration in file chooser and Nautilus. Possibly use xesam-glib

* Specify a DBus specification for thumbnailers

* Create language bindings for xesam-glib (specifically Vala, C#, and Python) for xesam-glib and use these achieve

** a deskbar module
** a Gnome Do add-in
** Gnome launch box extension
*** Sebastian has mentioned that he would like to work on Python and C# bindings for xesam-glib as well as a Deskbar module

* Create/draft a xesam-gtk library with widgets empowered by xesam-glib

* Create a small server that exposes the Xesam search engine over Avahi (probably over http). This is correlated with the "Xesam over alternative protocols BOF".

* Create a common metadata test corpus

* Create a common metadata unit test suite for the most common file types

** Improve current extractors (all engines). Prepare a huge database of creative commons contents with a lot of metadata, including corrupted files before the hack meeting. Prepare an automated script to check if we are extracting the interesting information from the files (showing information like "extraced the expected information in 90% of the mp3, incomplete information in 9%, crashed in 1% of them"). We can even organize a small competition with a modest prize.

* Time ordering / searching optimized model for tracker

* Category optimized database model for tracker

* Document Xesam ontology
** See [[Desktop_Search_Hackfest/XesamOntology|Xesam Ontology BOF and Hackfest page]]
=== Beagle Coding Task Ideas ===
* Beagle-Xeasm work, we will have almost everyone involved in this spec available too us, so lets work on getting our compatibility 100%
** Gnome-Do plugin. I want a solid beagle plugin for Gnome-Do, should be a super-quick codeup (Preferably over xesam!)
* Dashboard. I have a million and one ideas working for this, but the core of it would hopefully be getting some unified means of generating clue packets/context. I am thinking that utilizing screenreader api's to get working windows/text could be very helpful here.
** Work towards functional/usable/stable UI. Maybe even alpha demo?
* Beagle Client Optimization. We still do the whole XML serializing and deserializing thing... Look into Dbus/Protocol Buffers to increase performance
** This could increase the beagle-xesam performance considerably, and has the potential to fix Dashboard bottlenecks as well.

== BOF Sessions ==
* There are several metadata-heavy technologies emerging. Soylent, People, Online Desktop/Desktop Data Model, Xesam, and others. Can we somehow work more together? They all appear to take slightly different approaches.

* How to share metadata between engines when it's not stored in the file itself (say... tags)

* How to share extractors between the engines. (How many code to read id3 is out there?)

* A shared way to harvest metadata and register metadata extractors or sources. This is also relevant for Xesam.

* Dashboard? Why has the idea that everybody loved never landed on consumer desktops? How can we make it real. What technical solutions do we need in place?

* While it is pretty hype to talk about desktop search and even write lots of code for it, why is it not more integrated in the desktop than it is? A big reason is of course the quality of the search engine. I can think of a lot of other reasons though (feel the teaser!).

* Xesam over alternative protocols. Keywords: http/REST, Avahi, Bluetooth, XMLRPC, Soap, Plain ol' socket.

* How can we integrate pervasive searching capabilities in the current Gnome desktop (ie. without changing the desktop interaction model)

* How can we create a whole new user interface based on metadata and instant searches. Ie possibly breaking totally with the standard interaction model of the desktop. One possible starting point:

** "do-what-I-think-desktop" The basic premise is "the user should not need to even touch the computer. It should just do the expected/desired in all circumstances without user interaction". Then see how far we can go with statistical analysis of historic user actions and rich metadata - and then accept that we can not achieve the end goal, but still get as close as possible.

* Discuss the Xesam Metadata Storage spec. It is slated to be included in the post 1.0 release of Xesam, but there is very little concrete written down or agreed upon. This can seriously use a lot of discussion. It has ramifications into Soylent and desktop-data-model as well, probably others too.

* Gnome and Nepomuk? Hitherto Gnome and Nepomuk has not really been related at all. Even though Xesam and Nepomuk has its disagreements we are also trying to collaborate. Should Gnome do more, what steps would be necessary to utilize Nepomuk technologies in Gnome?

* Semantic Gnome?

* Smarter Searching in Gnome: Keyword matching is cool, but user data is becoming more and more massive, Terabyte desktops are not unheard of. Thousands of e-mails and documents need a better ranking system.

* Xesam Ontology review and discussion. This should be very, very, high priority if you ask me. Preferably lead by Evgeny. A very good follow-up to this would be to make it continue into an ontology-documentation hackparty --[[User:kamstrup|kamstrup]] 09:53, 3 August 2008 (UTC).
** See [[Desktop_Search_Hackfest/XesamOntology|Xesam Ontology BOF and Hackfest page]]

* Xesam Roadmap to 1.0. Set deadline for 1.0. Outline items needing to be addressed. Who does what. Etc.

* Xesam post 1.0, a BOF about Xesam's future. Xesam 1.1 features - fx. index metadata (term count), metadata storage api, see [[http://xesam.org/main/XesamIteration2]]. Xesam 2.0?

== Meta ==
* It would be great to have RC3 of the Xesam Search spec ready at least a week or two ahead of this. It is likely to contain some (minor) API-breaks. Probably an updated xesam-glib to go with it too.

* Given an updated Xesam spec it would be great to have all servers updated to the latest spec and have easy-to-set-up trunks or branches. The point is that a hack fest should not be spent with everybody trying to set up a privately circulated branch of MyGreatSearchEngine.

= Organization ToDo =
Steps we need to make in order to bring this forward.

* Coordination team
** A list of people easy to CC and decide fast on pure organizational stuff e.g. money, people, places. Proposal: Urho Konttori (link with Maemo Summit organization), Vincent Untz (GNOME Foundation), Xesam rep, Tracker rep & Beagle rep. Ideally a local rep too but let's not wait for this to start moving forward.--[[User:qgil|qgil]] 08:13, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
*** I think you can add me as the Xesam rep. Unless someone else with a fairly neutral Xesam background want to step up? --[[User:kamstrup|kamstrup]] 22:31, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
* Define dates
** Proposal: September 19 & 20 WarmUp, people can attend to the Maemo Summit and start the discussions e.g. at a project level. 21 & 22 Official Desktop Search Hackfest. Some might want to have an After Hours (?).--[[User:qgil|qgil]] 08:13, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
** It would be more convenient for me if it was 20-21 Sept. This of course overlaps with the Maemo summit. Then monday could be used as a more "official wrap up day" where people could collect the result and hack on those things that we agreed on during the "official" days. Also keeping a single WarmUp day should be fine I believe --[[User:kamstrup|kamstrup]] 22:31, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
* Define people
** I need the list of people to be sponsored asap to arrange travel and know for sure what is needed for accommodation.--[[User:qgil|qgil]] 08:13, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
* Infrastructure required
** One workspace room with wlan. Anything else? For instance, a projector or not? --[[User:qgil|qgil]] 08:13, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
*** Probably more than one workspace. Some people can work in xesam while other people hack/discuss other topics. --[[User:ifrade|ifrade]] 13:49, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
* Program
** Flexible of course, but good to have confirmed in advanced a mission, achievable and specific objectives and a reference schedule.
*** I'll try to organize a list of goals and tasks. We can use that to check the success of the hackfest. --[[User:ifrade|ifrade]] 13:49, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
*** We should make a list of people who are willing to be BOF-responsible, and what BOFs they would like to be responsible for --[[User:kamstrup|kamstrup]] 22:36, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
* Marketing & press
** The World needs to know, before and after! How?
*** At least blogging of the people there. Publicity in planet.gnome/planet.kde --[[User:ifrade|ifrade]] 13:49, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
Anything else? Add it to the list.

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Desktop Search Hackfest/Schedule

Desktop Search Hackfest