[KPhotoAlbum] Idea for quick search feature

[Shawn Willden]

Disclaimer:  This wasn't my idea, it came from someone else on the list, but I liked it and want to implement it.  I'm looking for feedback from the list to help answer the following questions, plus any other general comments/criticisms/flames, etc.:

Does the basic idea make sense?
Do you think it's a bad idea to provide yet another search mechanism?
Will the different behavior of the search bar in category list vs other views be confusing to users?
Can you think of any useful refinements?
Do you have any suggestions for implementation, especially related to how to make it fast?

I'd like to enable the search bar even when not in a category list view.  At present it's disabled in the "home" view and in the thumbnail view, but I think it should work all of the time, acting as a filter that searches all tags, labels, descriptions, dates, folders, filenames, etc.

From the home view (does that view have another name?), typing anything into the seach bar should reduce the image counts displayed on the "Show Thumbnails" line and the date bar, and probably also reduce the category counts to those that include images that match.  Viewing thumbnails should show the narrowed list, obviously, and search bar filtering should be in addition to filtering done by drilling down through categories and filtering by date bar selections.

From the thumbnail view, typing into the search bar should filter the thumbnails displayed.

As I said above, I'd like this search filter to search on everything.  For example, if I type "adam" into the search bar, I want my result set to include any images with:

Any tag including "adam", for any category
A description containing "adam"
A label containing "adam"
A folder name containing "adam"
A file name containing "adam"

I'd also like this to apply to dates or pieces of dates.  So if I type "June" the result set should include all images with a tag, description, label or pathname including June, plus all images with dates in the month of June or with date ranges that span the month of June.  Month names will need to be localized, and I guess abbreviations should also be allowed.

Perhaps at some point we might want to allow boolean specifiers, grouping, etc. of search words, but for now I think I'd just interpret mutliple words as an implicit AND.  So "adam june 2006" would find images that:

Contain "adam" in some tag, description, label, folder or filename; AND
Contain "june" in some tag, description, label, folder, filename or date; AND
Contain "2006" in some tag, description, label, folder, filename or date.

I think that should be fairly intuitive to users who can read it as "find pictures of adam in june 2006".  The very broad nature of the search might mean that they get a few images in the results that surprise them, but I think that's okay.

All comments appreciated,

	Shawn.
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