Convincing Lunduke: Scopes

Side note:

Keep trying to convince me that Scope are awesome. I’m finding it really helpful in figuring out Canonical’s plans here. Not super psyched about Scopes at the moment (as you can probably tell)… but trying to use them and keep an open mind.

Use the Scopes Luke. :smile:

1 Like

Not all things expose RSS feeds. I agree, for RSS content, an RSS reader is better. Scopes expose multiple types of content though and provide tools and features to consume them.

I think… sorta, yeah. Your points have merit; I would basically agree that “launch my comics app” on Android is probably, if anything, a bit faster than “switch to my comics scope” on Ubuntu. However, one of the things I do quite a bit is a sort of quick scan to see “what’s going on”. On Ubuntu, that’s just swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe – the same gesture and I’m scrolling through Ubuntu news, my emails, Untappd checkins, etc. On Android (well, actually, on iOS because that’s what I’ve got) it’s “find app on home screen, go into it, exit back to home screen, find next app on home screen, exit back to home screen, find next app…”, and that feels way clunkier. If you know you want one thing, and you know where it is, then opening its app on Android is probably easier than opening its scope on Ubuntu. (Although opening its app on Ubuntu is the same amount of time; apps are the front page of the Dash.) And, I shall say again, aggregation: “find a particular song” (which I do a lot, when my daughter says “can you play Some Bullshit Modern Song by Ke£ha”) is way faster on Ubuntu because it’s “pull up Dash bottom edge, pick Music, enter song, see where it’s available, play it”, and elsewhere it’s a lot slower because it’s “open app 1 (youtube), enter song, oh it’s not there, back to home screen, open app 2 (grooveshark), enter song, oh it’s not there, back to home screen…”

I think the Google Now comparison is apposite, here, again. If I know that I want the Liverpool football result, I would normally open my LFC football results app to get it; I would not open Google Now and then scroll down and look for the result. Similarly I think with scopes…

So it’s kind of like the difference between…

A) having a cable TV subscription, not knowing what you want to watch, and just channel surfing for a while…

and

B) Knowing you want to watch a specific show and launching Netflix.

Is there a web comic you know of that doesn’t provide a feed like this? :smile:

Kinda, I suppose, although am not convinced by that analogy (Netflix allows browsing, etc). But I sorta see what you’re aiming at. I think I’m starting to conceive of scopes as “lightweight apps”, which people have said before, but I think that the mistake that’s been made is that people hear that as being “they have a lightweight UI” or “they are lightweight in terms of file size”, which are techie things that nobody real cares about. What scopes are, I think, is lightweight in attention – they’re easy to browse through and expose stuff you care about without a lot of cognitive load required to get it. (Google Now is similar, here, I reckon.)

Here is an article about Scopes: http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2015/01/ubuntu-phone-bq-photo-scopes-details

Order of the stick doesn’t as far as I can tell. If you are into tabletop roll playing it’s an amazing comic. If it does have an official one, I haven’t found it. Not that I’d use it anyways, can’t remember the last time I actually looked for an rss feed.

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots.rss

1 Like

This comparison is interesting because you picked one of the few things that are actually an aggregated system already. If I understand this correctly, and I’m not sure I do, aggregated scopes are kind of a RSS for everything.

I have a folder that’s called Social on my phone, and it has apps for Telegram, Twitter, SMS and so forth. I have another folder called Sound that has apps for podcasting, mp3s. And another for video (Netflix, HBO Nordic +++) and one for Files (Dropbox, Box.com, local files +++)

Since the underlying data is thematically the same, these could be 4 scopes: messages, sound, video and files - and thereby reducing my 16-20 apps to 4 scopes.

But I don’t see the benefit of single service scopes yet.

See how many things are wrong in this http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-31148661

I’ve counted a few.

I am also not very convinced.

On my Android device I have two screens one for Google Now and second for my apps. Google Now is suppose to provide me with all the aggregated content in an immediate fashion in a single screen.

If Scopes are pre-made screens then that would mean all my content is segregated and there is a good chance that I will never visit a lot of screens/scopes.

Where does Scopes get its data from? Is it processed on the device and unique for each individual user?

Would using Scopes mean I will have to paint myself brown? If Scopes are Ubuntu only then I will have to use everything Ubuntu which I clearly don’t and wouldn’t. Are Scopes available for KDE, Android, iOS, and Web?

Data mining is a hard problem. Google with its army of computer science and mathematics PhDs and tonnes of data have clearly not mastered it. When I moved from US to India, YouTube, Play Store, etc. they all started showing me regional Indian content. I was quite perplexed with the choice Google made for me there. I highly doubt other folks could process data better than Google.

While Dilbert has an RSS feed, it’s a “we updated, come take a look” one, as is Girls With Slingshots, Evil Inc, and a few others. In my RSS reader, I separate comics with picture feeds, and comics with picture links. Oh, and NSFW ones, so I don’t get in trouble for looking at them at work :slight_smile:

Mine’s due in a couple of weeks.

I’ll do a review after I have a go.

2 Likes

Stoked.

Like Intents on Android (and iOS8) ?

Er, no, not really. Intents are like a universal sending mechanism, where scopes are like a universal collection mechanism.

More like the difference between a twitter client and an rss reader, but for everything.

I think.

Or perhaps a better way to explain it… Intents say “I want to do this thing, who can do it for me” scopes say “I’ll render anything you send me in this format”.