I fell asleep the other day and dreamt that Ubuntu Imaginary Ibex had been released. I dreamt of rating a song in Rhythmbox, and being perplexed at seeing the rating show up in Amarok. Then in my dream, I realized that all applications had suddenly stopped reinventing the search wheel by instead submitting their metadata to a central database, and performing searches through one API. I dreamt that Evolution's search box instantiated a regular search through that API, and merely filtered the matches for mail only. Amarok and Rhythmbox did the exact same thing, but filtered for music only. Suddenly search in Imaginary Ibex behaved everywhere in a consistent manner, supporting: instant results, search as you type, wildcards, regex, filtering, (where applicable:) search by content or filename, author, title, subject, access date, etc. And since everyone used one metadata database, it didn't matter whether I had rated a song or tagged a photo in application X, or Y, or directly in nautilus, the change showed up in them all because they all used the same database back end. Suddenly it didn't matter what folder I placed my music in, Rhythmbox would find it and offer to organize it. Suddenly everything made sense: ubuntu, life, the universe, and everything.

Then I woke up :(
You may say that I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us, and then search will be as one.

This has been Part 3 of the epic Search Suckage In Ubuntu Series (SSIUS). Read and vote on Part 1 and Part 2 here!

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