Version: gideon cvs snapshot 20030727 (using KDE KDE 3.1.1a) Installed from: RedHat RPMs Compiler: gcc 3.2 -O5 -march=cray OS: I Don't Know The part explorer is supposed to help to list the available services, but it is only helpful for those who already know what they are looking for. For example, I have tried to list the services that provide a shell component, to embed a konsole in my application. I have tried "*", "terminal", "console", "konsole", "k*" but nothing appeared. In addition the error window ("No service found matching the criteria!") frustrated so much that I even gave up trying !! Later I have found that "text/html" could actually list something, but I have not found the terminal component yet. I strongly suggest to change the behaviour of this dialog. The search should accept at least wildcards ("*", "*text*") and common regular expressions. Otherwise, remove this feature since it only bloats the "Tools" menu and it is not really useful for the users.
Part-explorer is only a front-end to the KTrader class (http://developer.kde.org/documentation/library/3.1-api/classref/kio/KTrader.html) and so it has its same features (and limits ;): that is the "Type" field _must_ be filled and "Costraints" is optional. On the latter you can specify (obviously) stricter conditions for your search. In example: Type = KDevelop/Plugin Costraints = 'kdev' ~ DesktopEntryName will return all registered KDevelop's plugins having the substring 'kdev' in its DesktopEntryName field. Refer to http://developer.kde.org/documentation/library/kdeqt/tradersyntax.html for more info about KTrader's queries syntax. So if you want to search for some sub-string in any service' property than it will probably not do the job for you; but if you need to perform queries on services you already own some info (the service type) than it can help you. If you find KTrader useful, then partexplorer is (probably) useful.
This is exactly what I criticize - this dialog is useless except if you know what you are looking for ! And when you know what you are looking for you don't use it at all. And when you don't know what a (k)part is ... There is no help button !! It does not even encourage the user to go and learn more about it. I think that it is better to have features in gideon that are guaranteed to be useful and to work rather than have 5-6 additional features that will only confuse more the normal users and that will be used only by very few experts. (usability problem)
I'm changing this to "wishlist". It could be argued that a user wouldn't even load the plugin unless he/she knew what KTrader does, but the Part Explorer dialog could quite obviously need some whatsthis-help..
I've added some WhatsThis to the several control (press ctrl+f1 by default to acttivate them). Is it better than before now, isn't it? :-)
I don't think that more than What is This popups are needed for now: if one want to perform KTrader queries that he should know what KTrader is ;-)