Re: idea for new feature: ubiquity in gnome? (request for brainstorm)

[Zhang Weiwu <zhangweiwu realss com>]

Zhang Weiwu wrote:
>    6. Allow typing any console command and the selected text will be
>       used as last parameter (e.g. user type "ping") or piped in as
>       stdin (e.g. user type "sort <"). After execution, stdout is shown
>       in the bubble and also pre-selected for pasting. This makes it
>       easy to pick a price table in an email and instantly get output of
>       products less than 50 USD by typing an one-line awk script. This
>       idea would bring +100 extensions in one shot and make commandline
>       elites really fall in love with gnome.
I can think of a few useful trick of this:

    * In a text-only (no BB-code) forum, select a forum post, "menu
      key", type "fold < | sed 's/^/< /'" to get quoted message to do
      in-line reply.
    * Seeing a command "bc", select it, "menu key", type "man -t | lp "
      would cause it run "man -t bc | lp".
    * Seeing a link to the source code package, select it, "menu key",
      type "curl < | tar -C ~/code/ jxvf -" and wait for the bubble to
      finish. When it does, the source code is unpacked at the right place.
    * Select text and run "aspell", instantly turn gnome to spell-check
      capable platform. However this require interactiveness in the
      bubble which is not sure if doable.
    * Add word count feature to any text by selecting the whole article
      and do "wc <";
    * Select a whole web page and do "a2ps <" to get clean text-only
      print out;


In general there could be a lot of uses.