[Digikam-devel] Search UI

[Marcel Wiesweg]

> > and these problems:
> > - discoverability: imagine a combo box with 45 entries.
>
> Why not? Big combo boxes are routinely used on the web eg to
> select country or language in many forms.

(Which I usually dont like, but that's personal opinion)

>
> I like  interface for creation of smart playlists in Amarok. In fact
> this is slightly refined version of current advanced search dialog in
> digiKam (sorry, looks like my current build of digiKam is broken so
> cannot draw precise comparison). The only real drawback is lack of
> choosing AND, OR, NOT in Amarok version. Amarok has 23 items in
> combobox. It looks very simple but allows for quite complex searches
> (playlists are basically searches).

Yes it looks very simple, and is slick and fast if you know what you want.
I like the language to describe the AND/OR grouping, and I like how concise 
the dialog is.
There are some points I dont like:
When you start is up, everything is disabled. You need to check a checkbox 
first to be able to enter data.
You dont see at first glance what you can do, it does not show you what it has 
to offer.

> > My thoughts currently go into these directions:
> > - present all useful search options at one glance, in the style of web
> > search engines' advanced search page
> > For standard users, this gives a well-known kind of interface, shows the
> > options that we offer.
>
> Standard users will use this really rarely and one page with multiple
> options can be quite intimidating.
>
> Believe me, I know. In work we have custom database application. Queries
> tool is awful.  Developer thought it will be convenient to provide as
> far as possible options on one page to make searches. Only after I came
> to work in this department and show how this work they started to use it
> - still very reluctantly and use only small subset of options.
>
> Also advanced search in browsers is very verbose and take much space.
> Fitting this into 800x600 dialog required by KDE HIG will be hard.

I am not planning a crowded dialog with a huge number of checkbox, labels and 
combo boxes all around the place. That looks really intimidating.

>
> Note also that eg Google advanced search isn't really powerful. I can
> search for site in particular language (English) but only in one of two
> languages (Polish or English).

What I like about the Google Advanced search is mostly the layout:
Three columns, well aligned, a title on the left, a detailed label, then the 
data entry.
Even the two combo boxes "Only/Don't" already disturb the layout in my eyes.

>
> Returning to length of comboboxes. To make them shorter you could split
> searching in three major areas:
>
> - File properties (filename, ...)
> - Photography properties (aperture, shutter speed, ISO, ...)
> - Metadata properties (tags, caption, date, ...)

I have these grouping:
- Filename, Album, Tags
- Picture Properties (dates, rating, size, format,...)
- Caption, comment, title (comment, author, headline, title)
- Photograph information (make, model, aperture, ...)
- Geographic position (Which I will not implement in the first version, but 
needs to be kept in mind.)
- Copyright information (later)
- other IPTC Core fields (later)

>
> This would also correspond with data presentation in digiKam. But it
> would also make complex searches interface *very* complex.

The current paradigm is: No search field in the beginning; add one by one.

The other end is: Show all fields at once.

Solutions in between, of which I have thought, include:

Show a well selected subsets of options, grouped as above, and allow to add 
more.
Show the first two groups of options, and allow to unhide the other groups.



>
> I would really recommend looking at Amarok dialog and playing with it.
>
> > - for advanced users, there must be all possibilities of constructing
> > complex queries: allow to combine several such groups of search options
> > (even building subgroups?)
>
> Well, IMO for advanced users best tool would be some kind of query
> dialect (a la Google) in searches "command line" with parenthesis and
> keywords like AND, OR, NOT.
>
> m.