Show most used applications even when no input

[duarm]

Thanks for working on albert!

Basically what rofi does. Currently, if I open albert and input nothing, it just stays there waiting for input and nothing is shown.

The behaviour I would like is: If I open albert, if nothing was typed, it shows n of my most opened programs by default, n being the Displayed Items config option.

knowing my most launched program is my message app, I can quickly open it by pressing ALBERT_HOTKEY + Enter, since I know it will be selected at the top.

[idkCpp]

While I'm almost certain, that manuel is not going to go such a "edge-casey" way, a more general idea of showing the generally most used items (even if they are not applications) or maybe some "empty query items" which plugins can provide in case there is no query may be interesting. Just throwing it in there...

[ManuelSchneid3r]

I am going to turn this one into a discussion since atm the state as is is a design decision. This is a pretty high level request. Think of its details.

Most plugins work like filters. They have their set of items and filter them according your query. A lot of plugins handle queries global or triggered, the same way. GlobalQueryHandlers match/filter and score in ::handleQuery(…). This is basically the method a plugin dev provides. GlobalQueryHandler inherits the (exclusive or triggered) QueryHandler which also has a handleQuery(…) (different signature though, so a distinct method). If the plugin dev does not explicitly define a different triggered behavior by overriding this method, the default behavior is to call GlobalQueryHandler::handleQuery(…) and return the items sorted. As such you can run any global query handler as a tiggered query handler as well. Now the fun part: since triggered query handlers can handle emtpy queries, which as a filter match every item, they return all items. this is quite nice imho, at least for debugging. Try it: tigger applications (note the space). (i mapped the trigger to apps)

this would also be quite nice for global queries right? well it depends. if you are like me and have like your recurring 15k items this would work out well. if you are that dude that neurotically has to abuse systems you have like 1.5mln items. the inital global empty query returning every item would probably take seconds. not that cool.

"why so much items then?" you may ask. because the MRU/history is applied after the filter stage. plugins have no clue of history. they just match/filter (and score for global handlers. well theres the "lazy" IndexQueryHandler doing nothing but thats another story) their items. i.e. at the point you want to decide which items to show all items have already been created, which is pretty expensive.

Thats why the empty query in a global query does nothing atm.

JFYI

[ManuelSchneid3r]

Theres the run empty query option now, but it still depends on the extesions if it returns all items.

[duarm]

Thank you