KItemListKeyboardSearchManager and QApplication::keyboardInputInterval()

[Peter Penz]

On 03/27/2012 08:15 PM, Frank Reininghaus wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> in Dolphin, when you press a letter on the keyboard (like "a"),  the
> first file with a name starting with that letter will be the new
> current item. If you then press "b", the first file whose name starts
> with "ab" will be the new current item, and so on.
[...]
> I see two possible solutions at
> the moment:
>
> 1. Replace the use of QApplication::keyboardInputInterval() in
> KItemListKeyboardSearchManager by some longer interval.
>
> 2. Maybe better: don't consider a keyboard search as finished when a
> hardcoded time interval has passed, but when the user presses a
> non-letter key to change the current item or when a mouse button is
> pressed.
>
> Any thoughts about this?

Hm, I'm a little bit skeptical regarding 2: Personally I use the feature 
only by pressing one key. As soon as I need to search something like 
"abc*" I use the filter-bar, so going for 2. would require an additional 
keypress for me and then I don't see a big benefit anymore in comparison 
to the filter-bar...

What I had in mind is to show a kind of preview of the typed letters in 
the e.g. upper-right corner including a kind of "timeout-line" that 
indicates when the pressed keys get reset.

E.g. if someone presses 'a' + 'b' within the interval the following 
preview is shown (sorry for the bad ASCII-art):
  +--------+
  |   ab   |
  | ====== |
  +--------+

The === represents the "timeout-line" and it decreases when no key is 
pressed:

  +--------+
  |   ab   |
  | ====   |
  +--------+

  +--------+
  |   ab   |
  | =      |
  +--------+

If the "timeout-line" is 0, the preview disappears and typing a new 
afterwards (e.g. 'x') will result in:

  +--------+
  |   x    |
  | ====== |
  +--------+

So currently I'd tend to go for 1 and increase the timeout, but also 
enable a kind of preview with this "timout-line" to give a visual hint 
for the user.

Is just a basic idea and I'm not sure whether it works well, but I think 
it would be worth trying it (is of course a lot more work ;-)).

Best regards,
Peter

>
> Best regards,
> Frank