Shortcut Key For Quick File Access in Konqueror

[Marr]

Greetings,

I just joined the list after being unsuccessful at finding a solution to a 
problem with a change in the behavior of newer versions of Konqueror (when 
it's being used as a file manager, not as a web browser).

This relates to the very useful feature which allows you to start typing one 
or more keys which represent the first 'n' characters of the name of a file 
which you want to move the file browser cursor directly to. In other words, 
if I wanted to jump directly to the file whose name is 'myfile.txt', I could 
just type 'm', optionally followed by more characters ('y', 'f', etc) as 
needed to uniquely identify the file. (I don't know if there is an "official" 
or proper name for this feature, so my searches were not very successful.)

In Slackware 9.1 (KDE 3.1.4), this 'quick file access' feature worked 
regardless of how your files were sorted, which was very useful and 
intuitive, IMHO. In my case, I'm quite often sorted (inversely) by the 
"Modified' field, so that most recent files are at the top. That's when the 
'quick file access' feature is most useful because I usually know the name of 
the file I want but I can't easily find it when sorted by date/time-stamp.

I don't know exactly when it stopped working this way, but as of Slackware 
10.0 (KDE 3.2.3) [and still in Slackware 10.1 (KDE 3.3.2)], this feature has 
changed such that it now depends on how your files are sorted. In other 
words, the feature only uses the filename as the "target" if your files are 
sorted by filename. If your files are sorted by the date/time-stamp (i.e. the 
"Modified" column), then the text in the "Modified" field is the "target". 
For example, if you type 's', it jumps to the first file that was last 
modified on a Saturday or Sunday. If your files are sorted by size, then 
typing a number jumps to the first file with a size that starts with that 
number.

To me, this seems much less useful than the old way whereby the filename was 
_always_ the target of the keys you were striking, regardless of how they 
were sorted.

Although I can see the possibility that the new behavior could be useful in 
some (rare?) circumstances, I'd argue that for most cases, not using the 
filename as the target seems to somewhat defeat the purpose of having the 
feature in the first place. In other words, the only time I need the feature 
is when I'm _not_ sorting by filename, which is exactly when the feature 
_doesn't_ work! :^O

As a fellow LUG member mentioned when I asked about this, he thinks that the 
old behavior better fits the "Law of Least Surprise" (and I agree), so I'm 
rather curious -- is there anyone who finds this new behavior more useful?

More importantly, is there any chance that the old behavior could be restored 
for newer versions of KDE? 

Thanks in advance for any input/advice anyone has on this topic....

Bill Marr