14 DAY TRIAL // Smart Scopes, a feature that was initially planned for release along with Ubuntu 13.04 (Raring Ringtail), has been delayed by another six months.
Canonical is trying to improve the search feature in Unity with the help of the "100 Scopes" project (Smart Scopes). According to the developers, the Dash would get information from a central server, on which scopes are best able to answer Dash queries, in order to make the Dash home scope maximally useful.
The team of developers in charge of Smart Scopes has even filed a Feature Freeze Exception (Ffe), in order to get their project into Ubuntu 13.04, but after careful deliberation, it has decided to postpone the release, until Ubuntu 13.10.
"After an extensive amount of work to get the feature ready, unfortunately the dash team doesn’t consider it mature enough for 13.04 — it is nearly there, but doesn’t meet the quality needs for Ubuntu. As such the team has decided not to pursue landing in in 13.04 and to instead move it to the Ubuntu 13.10 cycle where it will be developed as soon as the archive opens," stated Ubuntu Community Manager, Jono Bacon, in a blog post.
The good news is that users won't have to wait until Ubuntu 13.10 to get the features. A PPA is already in place and it will go live as soon as the team is sure about the quality of the Smart Scopes.
"We are planning to provide the feature in a PPA for Ubuntu Raring which will be always rebased on Unity shipped on Raring. It will land it as soon as we are confident enough on the feature quality in Ubuntu S," said Jona Bacon.
Unfortunately, the "100 Scopes" project would have also brought new security settings for the online search features and users would have been able to disable each scope. Until then, we'll just have to contend with a master switch.