Search Indicators in Dolphin

[Vishesh Handa]

Hey Mark


On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 11:52 PM, Mark <markg85 at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.
>

That's exactly what we do.

We first index the filename, mimetype and modification time. This way
simple searching and the "Videos", "Audio" and other options work, and so
does the "timeline". In fact currently this basic indexing always runs even
when you're on battery.

You can manually pause/resume it though.


> 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
>



-- 
Vishesh Handa
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