Strigi
Encyclopedia
Strigi is a desktop search
daemon
, which is operating system
-independent and desktop
-independent. Strigi was initiated by Jos van den Oever. Strigi's goals are to be fast, use a small amount of RAM, and use flexible backends and plug-ins. A benchmark as of January 2007 showed that Strigi is faster and uses less memory than other search systems, but it lacks many of their features. Like most desktop search systems, Strigi can extract information from files, such as the length of an audio clip, the contents of a document, or the resolution of a picture; plugins determine what filetypes it is capable of handling. Strigi uses its own Jstream system which allows for deep indexing of files. Strigi is accessible via Konqueror
, or by clicking on its icon
, after adding it to KDE
's Kicker
or GNOME Panel. (In GNOME
desktop, it is called the Deskbar
applet.) The graphical user interface
(GUI) is named Strigiclient.
technologies.
Strigi and NEPOMUK
are working together to help create a semantic desktop
search. NEPOMUK will allow the user to add metadata, which Strigi will be able to index for a more precise search. Developers are also considering adding Sonnet
support to Strigi to allow users to search for documents written in a specific language.
GNOME
has an optional applet to search for files using Strigi, named Deskbar. Deskbar is included in the Gnome desktop of Ubuntu
8.10, for example.
Desktop search
Desktop search is the name for the field of search tools which search the contents of a user's own computer files, rather than searching the Internet...
daemon
Daemon (computer software)
In Unix and other multitasking computer operating systems, a daemon is a computer program that runs as a background process, rather than being under the direct control of an interactive user...
, which is operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
-independent and desktop
Desktop environment
In graphical computing, a desktop environment commonly refers to a style of graphical user interface derived from the desktop metaphor that is seen on most modern personal computers. These GUIs help the user in easily accessing, configuring, and modifying many important and frequently accessed...
-independent. Strigi was initiated by Jos van den Oever. Strigi's goals are to be fast, use a small amount of RAM, and use flexible backends and plug-ins. A benchmark as of January 2007 showed that Strigi is faster and uses less memory than other search systems, but it lacks many of their features. Like most desktop search systems, Strigi can extract information from files, such as the length of an audio clip, the contents of a document, or the resolution of a picture; plugins determine what filetypes it is capable of handling. Strigi uses its own Jstream system which allows for deep indexing of files. Strigi is accessible via Konqueror
Konqueror
Not to be confused with the Conqueror web browser.Konqueror is a web browser and file manager that provides file-viewer functionality for file systems such as local files, files on a remote ftp server and files in a disk image. It is a core part of the KDE desktop environment...
, or by clicking on its icon
Icon (computing)
A computer icon is a pictogram displayed on a computer screen and used to navigate a computer system or mobile device. The icon itself is a small picture or symbol serving as a quick, intuitive representation of a software tool, function or a data file accessible on the system. It functions as an...
, after adding it to KDE
KDE
KDE is an international free software community producing an integrated set of cross-platform applications designed to run on Linux, FreeBSD, Microsoft Windows, Solaris and Mac OS X systems...
's Kicker
Kicker (KDE)
Kicker is the main panel used in K Desktop Environment 3 and earlier. It can be customized by the user. By default, it has the K Menu, a Desktop Access button, a Home button, a Konqueror button, a Kontact button, and a Help button...
or GNOME Panel. (In GNOME
GNOME
GNOME is a desktop environment and graphical user interface that runs on top of a computer operating system. It is composed entirely of free and open source software...
desktop, it is called the Deskbar
OpenTracker
OpenTracker is the open source version of the Tracker file manager for BeOS-compatible operating systems.Be Inc. developed the original Tracker for their operating system, BeOS. In 2000, prior to selling all of their assets to Palm, Inc., Be Inc. open-sourced some of their software, including Tracker...
applet.) The graphical user interface
Graphical user interface
In computing, a graphical user interface is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices with images rather than text commands. GUIs can be used in computers, hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices, household appliances and...
(GUI) is named Strigiclient.
Features
- SHA-1 hash for every file indexed to find duplicates
- As of July, 2007 Strigi supports indexing the contents of plain textPlain textIn computing, plain text is the contents of an ordinary sequential file readable as textual material without much processing, usually opposed to formatted text....
, PDF, MP3MP3MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...
, archives, DebianDebianDebian is a computer operating system composed of software packages released as free and open source software primarily under the GNU General Public License along with other free software licenses. Debian GNU/Linux, which includes the GNU OS tools and Linux kernel, is a popular and influential...
and RPM packages, and OASIS OpenDocumentOpenDocumentThe Open Document Format for Office Applications is an XML-based file format for representing electronic documents such as spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents....
text (odt), spreadsheet (ods) and presentation (odp) files - D-BusD-BusIn computing, D-Bus is a simple inter-process communication open-source system for software applications to communicate with one another. Heavily influenced by KDE2–3's DCOP system, D-Bus has replaced DCOP in the KDE 4 release. An implementation of D-Bus supports most POSIX operating...
and socket support for communication between the daemon and search program - Small memory footprint
- XesamXesamXesam is a specification promoted by freedesktop.org which aims to provide a unified framework for desktop search...
query language support - Very portable, currently runs on Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X and Windows
- Pluggable backend: LuceneLuceneApache Lucene is a free/open source information retrieval software library, originally created in Java by Doug Cutting. It is supported by the Apache Software Foundation and is released under the Apache Software License....
and HyperEstraier, SQLiteSQLiteSQLite is an ACID-compliant embedded relational database management system contained in a relatively small C programming library. The source code for SQLite is in the public domain and implements most of the SQL standard...
and XapianXapianXapian is an open source probabilistic information retrieval library, released under the GNU General Public License . It is a full text search engine library for programmers....
backends are being worked on - InotifyInotifyinotify is a Linux kernel subsystem that acts to extend filesystems to notice changes to the filesystem, and report those changes to applications. It replaces an earlier facility, dnotify, which had similar goals....
and synchronization to filesystem are being attempted. - Strigi's indexing can be stopped manually, and will suspend itself if running on a laptop's batteries, disk drive runs out of space, and/or runs in the background until the CPU is not busy with tasks that the computer-user is waiting on the CPU for.
Operating systems and desktops
KDE Plasma Workspaces require Strigi as core component of the new semantic desktopSemantic desktop
In computer science, the Semantic Desktop is a collective term for ideas related to changing a computer's user interface and data handling capabilities so that data is more easily shared between different applications or tasks and so that data that once could not be automatically processed by a...
technologies.
Strigi and NEPOMUK
NEPOMUK (framework)
NEPOMUK is an open-source software specification that is concerned with the development of a social semantic desktop that enriches and interconnects data from different desktop applications using semantic metadata stored as RDF...
are working together to help create a semantic desktop
Semantic desktop
In computer science, the Semantic Desktop is a collective term for ideas related to changing a computer's user interface and data handling capabilities so that data is more easily shared between different applications or tasks and so that data that once could not be automatically processed by a...
search. NEPOMUK will allow the user to add metadata, which Strigi will be able to index for a more precise search. Developers are also considering adding Sonnet
Sonnet (KDE)
In KDE Software Compilation 4, Sonnet is a multilingual spell check program. Sonnet replaces kspell2 that was created for KDE3. The two main goals for Sonnet's development were a simpler API, wider language support and performance. Notable improvements in Sonnet over kspell2 are*Automatic language...
support to Strigi to allow users to search for documents written in a specific language.
GNOME
GNOME
GNOME is a desktop environment and graphical user interface that runs on top of a computer operating system. It is composed entirely of free and open source software...
has an optional applet to search for files using Strigi, named Deskbar. Deskbar is included in the Gnome desktop of Ubuntu
Ubuntu (operating system)
Ubuntu is a computer operating system based on the Debian Linux distribution and distributed as free and open source software. It is named after the Southern African philosophy of Ubuntu...
8.10, for example.
See also
- List of desktop search engines