What's falling through the application usage cracks
Owen Taylor
tracking system also records usage of window class names that it can't
match to any known application. I took a look this morning at the top 40
or so such window class names and tried to identify the applications for
them, and why they weren't in the database.
The big picture seems to be that
* The most commonly used applications are already in our application
database - the most used application here, Tomboy, would have been
tied with the GIMP at position #20 in the overall rankings.
* But "tail" of rarely used applications includes a lot of things
not in our database.
Number of applications in our database: 837
Number of those applications with recorded usage: 109
Number of distinct unmatched window classes: 173
That 173 number is high, because it includes:
Non-applications; the application database intentionally doesn't
include configuration dialogs, desktop elements, and things like
that.
Applications in the database where the WM class isn't right; the
WM classes in the database are mostly just gotten by upper-casing
the first letter of the application executable name, so WM classes
like:
XTerm, /usr/lib/tomboy/Tomboy.exe, Seamonkey-bin, etc.
need manual fixups.
But even so, there probably are a good 100 applications that someone
used since last Thursday that aren't in the database at all.
- Owen
Here is the data for all unmatched WM classes with at least 4 usages:
Closed source
=============
11 Skype
7 Googleearth-bin
6 Opera
5 Acroread
4 sun-plugin-navig-motif-Plugin
(Sun browser plugin, also not an app)
Not packaged in Fedora
======================
17 /usr/lib/tomboy/Tomboy.exe
16 MPlayer
7 Apport-gtk
(Ubuntu crash report tool)
4 Gnome-btdownload
4 xine
4 com-limegroup-gnutella-gui-Main
(Limewire)
Bad wm class data
=================
16 Evolution-2.8
11 Amarokapp
8 /usr/lib/banshee/banshee.exe
8 Mozilla-thunderbird-bin
8 XTerm
6 Evolution-2.10
5 GQview
5 wesnoth
Unidentifiable / junk wm class
==============================
18 OpenOffice.org 2.0
16 frame
13 SWT
4 dialog
4 Soffice.bin
4 .
Unknown
=======
13 Search
8 Update-manager
5 Control-center
Not apps (Things intentionally excluded)
========
105 Mugshot
53 Gnome-panel
20 ClockApplet
8 Gnome-keyring-ask
7 Nautilus-cd-burner
6 Krb5-auth-dialog
8 Gweather
8 Metacity-dialog
7 Deskbar-applet
6 Gnome-ssh-askpass
6 Stickynotes_applet
6 Yelp
6 Wine
5 Gnome-panel-screenshot
5 Gnome-keyboard-properties
4 Nm-applet
Havoc Pennington
Owen Taylor wrote:
> Unidentifiable / junk wm class
> ==============================
> 16 frame
> 13 SWT
> 4 dialog
> 4 .
>
Sheesh, impressively broken... what sets the wm class to "." I wonder.
Havoc
Michel Salim
On Mar 5, 1:05 pm, Owen Taylor <otay...@redhat.com> wrote:
> Unidentifiable / junk wm class
> ==============================
> 18 OpenOffice.org 2.0
> 16 frame
> 13 SWT
> 4 dialog
> 4 Soffice.bin
> 4 .
>
I'm sure I'm misunderstanding something here, but what's
unidentifiable about "OpenOffice.org 2.0" and "Soffice.bin"? Unless
you want to categorize the individual components (Writer, Impress,
etc.)
> Unknown
> =======
> 13 Search
> 8 Update-manager
> 5 Control-center
The GNOME control center?
Regards,
--
Michel
Owen Taylor
>
>
> On Mar 5, 1:05 pm, Owen Taylor <otay...@redhat.com> wrote:
>
> > Unidentifiable / junk wm class
> > ==============================
> > 18 OpenOffice.org 2.0
> > 16 frame
> > 13 SWT
> > 4 dialog
> > 4 Soffice.bin
> > 4 .
> >
> I'm sure I'm misunderstanding something here, but what's
> unidentifiable about "OpenOffice.org 2.0" and "Soffice.bin"? Unless
> you want to categorize the individual components (Writer, Impress,
> etc.)
By unidentifiable, I meant "can not be categorized to a particular
application" instead of "no idea whatsoever what this is"
Writer, Impress, etc are distinct applications - they appear as separate
toplevel windows, they have different menu items, etc.
Since they all have the same window classes, we categorize them as
individual apps by looking at window titles, (A set of window title
regular expressions is downloaded to the client to avoid leaking the
names of your documents to the server.)
In the current data, Writer, Calc, and Impress are the three top office
apps at overall rank 16, 20, and 28. (Draw limps in at overall rank 128,
Base at 169, and Math at 280)
That's much more interesting to me than if we just know that
OpenOffice.org had an overall rank of, say, 12.
The above window classes just show "something implemented using the
OpenOffice.org framework" - sort of like "SWT" as a window class;
they could be:
- Some OpenOffice.org window that we don't categorize (help
browser, for example)
- Versions of OpenOffice that don't conform to the title
patterns currently in the database
('.*OpenOffice.org Writer', etc)
> > Unknown
> > =======
> > 13 Search
> > 8 Update-manager
> > 5 Control-center
> The GNOME control center?
No idea. That's why I listed it as unknown. :-) We don't ship any
variant of the GNOME control center/panel shell with Fedora so I
couldn't check the window class of that. (xprop | grep WM_CLASS)
- Owen
Michel Salim
> > > Unknown
> > > =======
> > > 13 Search
> > > 8 Update-manager
> > > 5 Control-center
> > The GNOME control center?
>
> No idea. That's why I listed it as unknown. :-) We don't ship any
> variant of the GNOME control center/panel shell with Fedora so I
> couldn't check the window class of that. (xprop | grep WM_CLASS)
>
GNOME control center on previous stable releases), it just does not
appear in the menus.
I ran gnome-control-center and grepped its WM_CLASS, it's actually
this:
WM_CLASS(STRING) = "GNOME Control Center", "GNOME Control Center"
So I guess it must be something else.
--
Michel
> - Owen
Travis Watkins
> Unknown
> =======
> 13 Search
> 8 Update-manager
> 5 Control-center
"Search" is beagle-search, "Update-manager" is Ubuntu's system update
tool. At least the second one should be excluded.
Also, I'm betting the "Control-center" one is pre-2.18's control
center. So you could exclude that one too.