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FCalc/FarFox Plugin Delays

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Christian.Eitner:
Hi,

I use the FCalc plugin very often. What I experience is a rather disturbing 3-5 second delay when invoking it, i.e., summoning up FARR, typing rapidly 'fc ' (with trailing blank). The delay occurs _before_ the blank is displayed, FARR reports 'Searching [my start menu path]'.

The same delay is here with the FarFox plugin (again before the blank is displayed, results are shown immediately afterwards). It does not occur with the AltTab or Uninstall plugins.

I tried to set the score for the plugins to an insanely high value, but that did not change anything.

I should mention that I'm almost always networked.

Is there a reason for these delays? I wish they could be shortened, since they somehow interrupt the 'rushed' feeling of my workflows... :-)

Thanks for your consideration,

Christian

mouser:
well i can certainly see why the delay would interrupt your workflow, it would drive me crazy.

there should not be any delay associated with fc -- it works instantly here.

the delay could be caused by:
farr being unloaded from memory (this should cause a delay in farr waking up from tray not from calling fc)
some kind of network link searching issue (like farr is trying to query a resource on a network)
some kind of antivirus scanning issue

let's try to narrow the problem down.

first, let's only deal with FC since it's much more straightforward.

if you bring up farr, and then type the letter f, do you see the f appear and is it searching, or does farr appear to be hung?
and then can you confirm that the delay before fcalc showing is only after you hit the space after fc?
i'm trying to get a feeling for when the delay occurs even if you type really slowly and give farr a chance to fully "wake up".

try temporarily enabling the option for "Show search subdir details in status bar (slow!)" on the Display Options tab, see if it tells you anything more useful in the statusbar while you type fc.

another thing to try would be go to Keyboard Interface tab and fill in a value for the "Optional prefix character" in the Keyboard Interface tab.  use something like $ and then to call fc you would type $fc.  this would stop any normal default searching as you type $fc.. so it might give us a hint about whether the problem was a delay caused by searching your disk.

if you find one of these things eliminates the delay, make sure you try it again your old way to confirm the delay is still here, because for a variety of reasons it may be illusory and the delay may dissapear just because farr is loaded in memory and/or a network share is cached and/or an antivirus is done its scan.  that's what can make this tricky to find because it can go away on its own.

Christian.Eitner:
Dear mouser,

if you bring up farr, and then type the letter f, do you see the f appear and is it searching, or does farr appear to be hung?

--- End quote ---

The 'f' appears and FARR starts searching: All Users Start Menu, Progam Files, etc.

and then can you confirm that the delay before fcalc showing is only after you hit the space after fc?
i'm trying to get a feeling for when the delay occurs even if you type really slowly and give farr a chance to fully "wake up".

--- End quote ---

Hmm, no. If I let FARR search only for 'f', then FCalc comes up after hitting 'c' immediately.

try temporarily enabling the option for "Show search subdir details in status bar (slow!)" on the Display Options tab, see if it tells you anything more useful in the statusbar while you type fc.

--- End quote ---

It tells about searching the All Users' or my Start Menu.

another thing to try would be go to Keyboard Interface tab and fill in a value for the "Optional prefix character" in the Keyboard Interface tab.  use something like $ and then to call fc you would type $fc.  this would stop any normal default searching as you type $fc.. so it might give us a hint about whether the problem was a delay caused by searching your disk.

--- End quote ---

No speed-up to be noticed here.

But then... I disabled my network adapter (wireless internet at home). And FCalc came up immediately. Well, that's something!

I've attached a screenshot of my search directory setup. Some of those dirs reside on a network drive, which (now, at home) is disconnected, but for which offline file caching has been activated in Windows.



Hope this helps in diagnosing.

Thanks,

Christian

mouser:
if you uncheck those folders, does the problem go away?

d4ni:
On a side note, why did you add all those folders to your search folders? Doesn't it make farr very slow, as it has to search %programfiles% and %windir% all the time? Shortcuts to programs should be placed in the start menu, which should be searched, but why the %programfiles% folder itself?

It might be better for your to use a launcher which does index files, not search all folders during keystrokes, like Launchy.

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