not installed apps sorting in global search

[Christian Giordano]

When performing a global search (Dash home page), the 'apps available for download' are selected alphabetically and listed alphabetically.

The proposed solution is that the 'apps available for download' are selected with relevancy and then listed alphabetically. When the 'apps available for download' category header is collapsed, the most relevant apps are listed alphabetically. When the 'apps available for download' category header is expanded, the 1st line contains the same apps (most relevant in alphabetical order) as when collapsed, and the subsequent lines contain the next most relevant apps again listed in alphabetical order. e.g.

When collapsed:

Apps Available for download
---------------------------

A app, B app, C app, D app

When expanded:

Apps Available for download
---------------------------

A app, B app, C app, D app
A app, B app, C app, D app
E app, F app, G app, H app
H app, I app, J app, J app

[Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen (kamstrup)]

Milestoning for this week so we can figure out what we want to do for maverick

[Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen (kamstrup)]

I just committed some fixes for global search in u-p-a trunk. This should improve the experience a lot.

With regards to more intelligent sorting schemes they are certainly doable, but I think they'd have too big an impact on the current codebase to ship in the Maverick cycle. But definitely something I think we should revisit for Natty.

[Christian Giordano (nuthinking)]

We would like to know the fields available (meta-data) and check together how the relevance is calculated. If I search for "do" I guess gnome-do should be the first.

[Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen (kamstrup)]

The metadata available is the same as you see in the .desktop files for your apps. So look fx. at /usr/share/applications/gedit.desktop and/or /usr/share/applications/totem.desktop.

For searching and indexing we currently use Xapian. The relevancy algorithm is BM25 described here http://xapian.org/docs/bm25.html. But note that the only place we actually use that algorithm is in the Top Results group when searching in the Files Place. Otherwise we sort apps alphabetically (as per IX spec) and files based on time.

Back to relevancy ranking in general; It must be noted that we also have a slightly harder time getting the most out of the relevancy ranking for a few reasons:

 a) We combine more than one source - the menu structure and the software-center index. *Normally* it is not even theoretically possible to do strictly correct relevancy ranking merged on two disparate source (you can apply hacks, but not correct solutions). We are in luck, however, since these two sources both comes as local Xapian indexes and Xapian comes with an API to do exactly this.

 b) We do prefix matching an not full term matching. Eg searching for 'ged' matches gedit. This is not the case in traditional searching (eg. online searches with google where you'd match only if you type 'gedit' completely)

[Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen (kamstrup)]

Retargetting for Natty since I think the current solution provides decent ranking and I don't think we can do any ground shaking changes within the Maverick scope anymore...

If you disagree please hunt me down on IRC or something :-)

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

the current situation is a confusion for me atleast. it would be better if global search did not show available apps at all if the grouping between available and installed apps is not possible for maverick.

[David Barth (dbarth)]

The "relevance" criteria is undefined, but the guidance is to use the relevancy as defined by zeitgeist + the rating from the software center for apps that haven't been used yet.

[Mark Shuttleworth (sabdfl)]

Sorry John, you'll have to restate your proposal, I read it three times
and have no idea what you mean :-)

[Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen (kamstrup)]

As an experiement I've changed the apps place to use relevancy ranking instead of alphabetic sorting for searches. When there is no search we still list alphabetically of course. Modulo stopwords[1] I think this works very well - a lot better than the current approach at least.

[1]: See fx. bug #730481

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package unity-place-applications - 0.2.36-0ubuntu1

---------------
unity-place-applications (0.2.36-0ubuntu1) natty; urgency=low

  * New upstream release.
    - Unintuative Application Matching (LP: #726711)
    - dash search does not find names with '-' (d-feet, e-mail) (LP: #729025)
    - not installed apps sorting in global search (LP: #636996)
    - Speed up searches for Installed apps (LP: #730048)
    - English printf string hard to translate (LP: #641480)
    - Disk Usage Analyzer missing from applications place (LP: #660984)
  * debian/control:
    - bump dee and libunity req. to latest and greatest
 -- Didier Roche <email address hidden> Mon, 07 Mar 2011 19:07:41 +0100

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package unity - 3.6.2-0ubuntu1

---------------
unity (3.6.2-0ubuntu1) natty; urgency=low

  * New upstream release:
    - unity-window-decorator crashed with SIGSEGV in
      g_cclosure_marshal_VOID__OBJECT() (LP: #724874)
    - blinking screen at searching "gn" (LP: #674022)
    - Top panel isn't multimonitor aware (LP: #675862)
    - Leaving fullscreen causes the launcher to rapidly appear and then
      disappear (LP: #718054)
    - migrate_favorites.py crashed with GError in __main__: Bad key or
      directory name: "/desktop/unity/launcher/favorites/app-Watch TV
      Shows.desktop/type": ` ' is an invalid character in key/directory names
      (LP: #722403)
    - does not display icons until hovered (LP: #726033)
    - Unintuative Application Matching (LP: #726711)
    - icons missing in the dash recent files and directory search returns
      (LP: #727824)
    - some result cache broke the dash search (LP: #728961)
    - Protect against conflicts with unity super keys (LP: #729166)
    - not installed apps sorting in global search (LP: #636996)
    - No 'safely remove' option is present in the unity menu when a usb disk
      is inserted (LP: #660010)
    - Dash - Implement new Dash design! (LP: #683762)
    - Expose or add missing nux functions for a11y support (LP: #701672)
    - Launcher - A single finger 'hold' on a Launcher app icon should open the
      quicklist (LP: #702486)
    - No "Search" default entry (LP: #710794)
    - Icon in Launcher should be home folder icon (LP: #721121)
    - Launcher bindings require Super to be held down to work (LP: #727580)
    - compiz crashed with SIGSEGV in nux::CairoGraphics::GetBitmap()
      (LP: #727636)
    - Unity "Lens" do not scroll to bottom (LP: #719616)
    - Double-click on panel to unmaximize only works in right half
      (LP: #725529)
    - clicking multiple time on the bfb makes the logo darker and darker
      (LP: #727146)
    - the launcher should go away if it has been open using the keyboard and
      the mouse is not moved while the cursor is on it (LP: #727746)
    - migrate_favorites.py crashed with OSError in makedirs(): [Errno 13]
      Permission denied: '/home/aquarius/.local/share/unity' (LP: #723656)
    - No feedback when unmounting busy device in Unity (LP: #730638)
 -- Didier Roche <email address hidden> Mon, 07 Mar 2011 19:10:27 +0100

[John Lea (johnlea)]

Reverted to triaged as the "apps available for download" App Lens category is missing so this could not be tested

[Neil J. Patel (njpatel)]

It's showing now and is sorted right AFAICT.