Bug 159463

Summary: [WISH]: New window button: "Google for [GUI-element]"
Product: [I don't know] kde Reporter: Markus Torstensson <markus>
Component: generalAssignee: Unassigned bugs mailing-list <unassigned-bugs>
Status: RESOLVED INTENTIONAL    
Severity: wishlist CC: bobseasier, nate
Priority: NOR    
Version: unspecified   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: openSUSE   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Markus Torstensson 2008-03-17 14:34:02 UTC 
Version:            (using KDE 4.0.2)
Installed from:    SuSE RPMs
OS:                Linux

Some programs implement the "questionmark button" (resides beside close/maximize/minimize buttons) for getting help on the various GUI-elements in the program. I propose a new "get help" button that googles the item you click at. It's a little more complicated than it sounds, please continue read the details.

For example:

Let's say I use a complex program, like Krita, and there is something somewhere I don't understand. I then press the "google for help", and then the graphical element I'm intrested about. This brings up the default webbrowser searching for help on the subject clicked.

You might wonder why I can't do this manually. Mainly because most of the GUI is translated (which, of couse, is a good thing) and when I want to search I have to guess the english original term to search for.
If I just stick to the translation I probably miss most of the searchhits which may have been intresting for me. Switching to another translation just to be able to know what to search for might be a bit cumbersome.

I have some ideas about the actual implementation also:
* Create a central option pane for controlling how this feature work. For example, should yahoo or google be used? how should the searchstring be composed? which language to do search in?
* There should be a common way to adress a GUI-element. Every time I gives some advice on a forum about how a program works I can write which element(s) the help concerns. This will make it alot easier to find help on a subject.

Feedback would be nice :)
Comment 1 Jordi Polo 2008-04-21 13:33:05 UTC 
Are you talking about text or other kind of elements also?
Comment 2 Markus Torstensson 2008-04-21 22:16:26 UTC 
I envision the "google button" to work much like the "question mark button", but in a simpler way (seen from the developers perspective). I've some limited experience with GUI programming, and most GUI elements have some kind of text property. Can't it be used to generate a search string? In that case there are no need for changing the programw. The KDE classes adds the feature, and it just "works".

A more direct answer to you question... buttons and text, but other elements would be nice to. Since I have no experience with Qt/Kde programming I don't know what's possible to do.

By the way... ignore the part about "a common way to adress GUI-element". It's confused (and not nessesary).
Comment 3 Nate Graham 2020-09-28 23:28:21 UTC 
I think this is actually quite a cool idea.  Unfortunately it would certainly suffer the same fate as the "What's This" system: lack of universal support dooming it to failure. There is no universal way for something to read targeted text in a GUI app. So we could implement support for it, but it wouldn't work for GNOME apps, or Electron apps, and so on.

Sadly I think this dooms the effort. it's well-meaning, but unfortunately not implementable given the diverse/fragmented state of the the Linux ecosystem.
Comment 4 Nate Graham 2020-09-28 23:28:42 UTC 
*** Bug 146573 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***