Search Indicators in Dolphin

[Mark]

Hi Vishesh,

I'm just going to throw in a small idea that might help the user experience.

Why don't you just do a very quick simple index first? As in the same
as you would get when you do: "find . -iname 'something'"? Or even
better, just quickly build up a list of files and use that as base
index. When users search they are very likely searching for files thus
they will get results based on the filename. It might not be as
accurate as it could be when all files are indexed, but it is likely
to show the user something rather then nothing.

Just my 5 cents :)

Regards,
Mark

On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 8:12 PM, Vishesh Handa <me at vhanda.in> wrote:
> Hey Frank
>
> I've been trying to figure out how to schedule the indexing of the files.
> Currently, it only indexes the contents of the file when idle. This
> obviously doesn't work in all cases as many users will not be leaving their
> system idle.
>
> So, when users try to search, it does not give them the correct results and
> that leads them to believe that nepomuk is not working.
>
> One way of fixing this is by always indexing the files and adding
> appropriate delays so that the user is not bothered, and that is what I am
> going to do for 4.11. However, until the indexing has been completed we
> still have the same problem.
>
> The proper way to fix this would be to have some kind of "indexing progress"
> bar which is shown to the user when they try to search.
>
> So, if the user tries to search through a folder which is marked for
> indexing and still not indexed, it will say "These files are currently being
> indexed. The search results may not be complete" and it will show a progress
> bar, and maybe even try to approximate the amount of time the indexing will
> take.
>
> Would you be okay with something like this in Dolphin? I'm imagining
> something like the KMessageWidget, but with a progress bar. [1]
>
> Also, maybe it would be nice that if the user tries to search through a
> folder which is not indexed, a message widgets appears which says that this
> folder is not indexed, and therefore searching will be slow, and then gives
> the user the option to index the folder.
>
> What do you think?
>
> [1] http://osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/mds-updating.jpg
>
> --
> Vishesh Handa