DESKTOP FRIEND If You Have Given up Hope of Ever Finding Your Way Around the Mess of Data on Your Desktop, a Desktop Search Engine Can Help You Penetrate the Gloom

LINUXUSER KTools: Beagle Helpers

Desktop searching with Beagle on KDE DESKTOP FRIEND If you have given up hope of ever finding your way around the mess of data on your desktop, a desktop search engine can help you penetrate the gloom. Kerry and KBeaglebar bring the Beagle engine to the KDE

desktop. BY FRANK WIEDUWILT

he Beagle [1] desktop search tool slots into the KDE Kicker and presents a creates an index of files on local box where users can enter search keys at Tdrives, letting the user search for the press of a key or button. KBeagle- information more quickly. The program, bar’s author plans to integrate the tool which was written in Mono [2], uses the with yaBI [6] at a later stage. KBeaglebar Gtk Sharp (Gtk#) interface, a .NET li- requires a recent Mono version (1.1.10 brary for binding to the Gtk+ GUI Tool- or newer), the most recent version of kit. On the KDE desktop, two programs Beagle you can find (0.2.1 or newer), have risen to the challenge of improving and KDE Version 3.4 or newer. the usability of Beagle: KBeaglebar [3] and Kerry Beagle [4]. Installation Beagle is starting to appear in more The application is easy to set up if you Linux distributions, so your version of already have a working Beagle installa- Linux might already have Beagle. If not, tion. To set up Kbeaglebar, unpack the Figure 1: KBeaglebar showing the search see the September 2005 issue of Linux source code archive from [3] by entering results in a menu. Magazine [5] for more on setting up tar -xjvf kbeaglebar-0.4.0.tar.bz2, change Mono and Beagle. Mono is quite exten- directory to kbeaglebar, and type ./con- select Add to Panel | Applet | Beagle KDE sive and needs a large number of librar- figure to create the Makefiles required Bar. This command puts a Beagle search ies. If you do not have the current Mono for the build. Then type make to start button in the panel. You can then press version, expect a lengthy download ses- compiling and, when this completes, [Ctrl]+[Alt]+[Space] to open the search sion. give the su -c "make install" command key input box. and provide the root password KBeaglebar when prompted to do so. Search and Find The KBeagle- At this stage, the pro- When you type a search key in the input bar applet gram is still hidden box, Beagle starts to search for docu- away. To enable ments that contain the search key. KBea- it, right click an glebar gives you the search results in the empty space in form of a menu (Figure 1). If a program the Kicker, and is linked to the file type, you can just click on the search result to load the file. Paul Avai - Fotolia By default the program just gives you five files or programs that contain the search key. The settings allow up to nine matches. As this is a fairly low number, it makes sense to define the search key as precisely as possible. KBeaglebar simply hands search keys to Beagle, thus supporting the special formating that Beagle uses to restrict the search or exclude specific terms. Customizing KBeaglebar The program does not offer much in the line of configuration options. To use the

78 ISSUE 70 SEPTEMBER 2006 WWW.LINUX - MAGAZINE.COM KTools: Beagle Helpers LINUXUSER

KDE desktop envi- below it (Figure 2). The program shows ronment. Kerry re- you preview images of known file types. quires KDE version You can use the Within: list to the 3.4 or newer and right of the input box to restrict the the most recent ver- search to specific file types, such as sion of Beagle you HTML pages or text documents. Clicking can find (version on More results loads the remaining 0.2.1 or newer). matches in the program window. Right Unless you have clicking the search results pops up a the current Open- context menu where you can select how Suse 10.1, or the to sort the search results. beta version of the Just like Kbeaglebar, Kerry adds an imminent Ubuntu icon to the kicker. Right clicking the Linux 6.06 release, Kerry icon opens a menu that lets you you will have no re-access the last five searches (Figure alternative but to 3), and the program’s configuration dia- build the applica- log is also accessible via the menu by se- tion from the lecting Configure Kerry (Figure 4). source code. The On the first tab in the configuration Figure 2: The main Kerry window gives you a handy overview of the program proved to dialog, you can specify the keyboard search results. be a bit intractable: shortcut for opening the search window on Mandriva 2006, and the order in which Kerry displays available options, click the arrow to the we had to update to KDE 3.5 to complete the results. The Start search and index- left of the Kbeaglebar icon in the panel the build, and on Ubuntu 5.10, we had ing services automatically option auto- and select Configure Beagle KDE Bar… to install a new version of Mono and a matically launches Beagle at the start of from the menu. new version of Beagle. Kerry refused to a KDE session. The Maximum number of A three-tab dialog appears. You can run with the Mono version provided by results displayed option allows you to use the first tab to configure the key- the Ubuntu backport sources. customize the result overview, just like board shortcut for launching the search After negotiating these obstacles, un- with KBeaglebar. Kerry, however, does window. The second tab lets you set the pack the kerry-0.1.tar.bz2 archive by typ- not apply an upper limit. menu width for the search results and ing tar -xjvf kerry-0.1.tar.bz2, change to specify the number of matches you want the new kerry directory, and type ./con- Conclusions KBeaglebar to display. figure. Then give the make command to Beagle facilitates access to files stored The third tab in the configuration dia- launch into the build, and finally type su locally. KBeaglebar and Kerry give you log has a button for launching the Bea- -c "make install." seamless KDE integration and facilitate gle-control program, which you can use Typing kerry & in a terminal emulation access to the stored index. However, to customize Beagle. The software dis- window opens the main window of the KBeaglebar sacrifices this advantage by plays the index status and lets you spec- program. You can use the upper text box restricting the maximum number of ify which directories you want Beagle to to type a search key or search keys, and search results to nine. create an index for. the results are displayed in the box Kerry is the clear winner with its clear- cut search result overview and filtering Kerry support. Kerry also offers more flexible The second front-end for Beagle, Kerry, configuration options and gives you a originates from the Suse labs and was preview of the files it finds. ■ first released with Suse Linux 10.1. Now, the KDE development team has picked INFO up the tool and integrated it with the [1] Beagle: http:// www. beagle-project. org [2] Mono: http:// www. go-mono. com [3] KBeaglebar: http:// www. kde-apps. org/ content/ show. php?content=35781 [4] Kerry: http:// en. opensuse. org/ Kerry [5] “Sniffer Dog: The Beagle Desktop Search Engine,” by Tim Schurmann; Linux Magazine; September, 2005: http:// www. linux-magazine. com/ issue/ 58/ Beagle_Search_Tool. pdf Figure 4: Kerry lets users automatically Figure 3: The Kerry context menu lets you launch the Beagle search engine when they [6] yaBI: http:// www. kde-apps. org/ content/ show. php?content=33222 access the last five searches. open a KDE session.