Do

How do I change what files are indexed? Can I change the order of actions?

Asked by immensewok

I'm currently an OS X user but I'm attempting to make the jump to Linux. Gnome-Do seems to be the best replacement for Quicksilver of all the launchers I've tried (likely because you guys realize its not just a launcher). It also appears to be the most actively developed. So, kudos all around. I really like this program. But I have some questions.

I edited ~/.do/FileItemSource.config to include "~/bin: 3" to add my web search scripts to the catalog and it worked but I don't know why it worked. What do the numbers mean?

The dictionary is nice but 90% of the time I want to run a command in a shell. Is there a way to order my actions? The default seems to be alphabetical. If there's no way to change the order, can I remove the define action?

Thanks.

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David Siegel
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Best David Siegel (djsiegel-deactivatedaccount) said : 		#1

Just to make sure you know, ~/.do/FileItemSource.config is just a temporary configuration solution. I'm sorry if you found it confusing. Here's how the file works:

~/.do/FileItemSource.config should contain lines of the form

DIRECTORY: LEVELS

Where DIRECTORY is the folder whose contents you want to index, and LEVELS is how deep you'd like it to be indexed. In Quicksilver, this is represented by a slider that goes from 1 to an infinity symbol. In your case, you're indexing ~/bin 3 levels deep; every file and folder in ~/bin is indexed, along with everything inside each folder in ~/bin, and everything inside of each folder inside of each folder in ~/bin. Get it? LEVELS can be -1 if you want to index with no depth limit (infinity). Here's my FileItemSource.config:

~: 1
~/Desktop: 1
~/Documents: -1
~/src: 1
/home: 1

This indexes every item in my home folder (Documents, Music, Desktop), every item on my desktop, ALL of Documents (e.g. ~/Documents/blah/blah/blah.odt), etc.

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David Siegel (djsiegel-deactivatedaccount) said : 		#2

"The dictionary is nice but 90% of the time I want to run a command in a shell. Is there a way to order my actions? The default seems to be alphabetical. If there's no way to change the order, can I remove the define action?"

For now, you can't disable builtin commands or item sources or change their sort order. Very soon we will weight commands and items by usage, so Run in Shell will always list before Define in your case. For the time being, you should be able to pick your command first, so bring up Do, type "run" FIRST to get the Run in Shell command in the first pane, then TAB and type your command.

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David Siegel (djsiegel-deactivatedaccount) said : 		#3

Also, I'm a former OS X user who made the jump to Linux :) Let me know if you have any questions about the Mac-to-Linux transition.

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immensewok (immensewok) said : 		#4

Thanks David Siegel, that solved my question.

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immensewok (immensewok) said : 		#5

Wonderful. Its nice to get such a useful response so quickly. Looking back, it makes perfect sense to assign a folder depth that way. I suppose I could've figured it out on my own but the folder I added doesn't have any other folders inside it so changing the numbers made no difference to my catalog.

Just out of curiosity, what's the dream for catalog control? Will there be a gui with sliders and checkboxes or do you have a better solution? If you're looking for ideas, the one thing I always wanted in QS was a master catalog count. I always tried to keep my catalog small but I never knew how small because I didn't have the patience to add up all the individual counts.

Run first, then the command. That solves the problem. Its good to see so much flexibility in the language in a 0.1 release. And its only going to get better.

This is my second attempt to hop over to Linux. The first time Open Office corrupted a bunch of my spreadsheets. Only recently did I realize that OO doesn't like macros. This time has gone more smoothly but there will always be bumps. In my case, the bumps are the point. I've reached the point where I'm tired of clicking on buttons and I want to make the computer do exactly what I want. On the Mac I learned AppleScript and some bash scripting but I didn't know where to go after that. I felt like there was an enormous divide between users and developers. On Linux I don't see any divide, just tons of support for learning the more complicated stuff. Its simply a question of how much effort I'm willing to put in.

Sorry if this isn't the appropriate place for such a long tangent. Thanks again.

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David Siegel (djsiegel-deactivatedaccount) said : 		#6

No, there's no better place for this kind of discussion!

Our goal is to have a very minimal GUI for controlling your catalog in favor of doing it for you intelligently. Quicksilver's preferences GUI is very complicated, and is definitely something we want to improve on. Maybe we can have a slider that goes from "small universe" to "large universe" (we say "universe" interchangeably with "catalog") for users who, like you, want to keep the universe size small in order to keep memory usage down and speed up.

Speaking of desktop automation, I know a lot of people are trying to do with Python and dbus what Apple did with Applescript. Maybe you can find a project like that and start contributing?