DonationCoder.com Software > Find And Run Robot

FARR and Indexing Option - Feedback Requested

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IainB:
Yes, + 1 from me - absolutely re the issue of the longevity/turnover of SI (Search/Indexing) tools in the market.    :up:

It has been a source of frustration to me that some perfectly good SI tools have been introduced into the market and then ongoing development/support gradually ceased without any real explanation as to why that happened. They fall into a class of software that has been termed "abandonware".

Two SI abandonware tools that occur to me are ADS (AltaVista Desktop Search) and GDS. From what @JavaJones and/or @Josh write, maybe Everything is about to join that class too?

One of the first to go that way - that I recall - seemed to be ADS - refer AltaVista’s Local Desktop Search Re-Emerges…

I started using the GDS ß and stuck with it during all its problems and until it became rather good. I was a bit miffed when Google informed us recently that they were going to abandon GDS, but I accepted the fact and de-installed the tool. However, when I was upgrading to Win7-64, I thought I'd give the inbuilt SI - i.e., WS (Windows Search) - a whirl and so turned on indexing for my main hard drive. It took a while for WS to build its index in the background, but once it had done that it seemed to pose no real system overhead or annoyance that I could detect - which seemed to be very different to my experience of the horror of the built-in Win XP SI.
(I sometimes wonder what difference - if any - having the new 7200rpm hard drive may have made, as opposed to having the old 5200rpm one.)

I do not easily praise Microsoft, and so, having played about with WS a fair bit by now, I think they deserve praise. I discovered that WS seems to be almost "too" good (better than GDS) - it will search everything, including stuff you may never need. After I spent some time tuning it (GDS was never able to be so easily fine-tuned), it seemed to be able to perform faultlessly. Furthermore, Microsoft has been consistent and persisted with improving its inbuilt OS SI and integrating it with its own products (e.g., Outlook, OneNote) and ensuring that it can look into common third-party archive file formats (e.g., .ZIP).

What I miss though is the ability that GDS gave to index across Gmail and also documents/files on your other PCs, giving you an index for nearly all your disparate files/data. That was something potentially very useful.

So what?
Well, experience/history would seem to indicate that desktop indexing/search providers have been able to produce some excellent stuff, but they seem to be relatively "impermanent" and cannot be relied upon indefinitely. (I don't understand why this might be.)
Thus, putting an interface or plugin to FARR to use your index/search tool of choice is a useful way of accommodating that as a fact of life.
If FARR were to have its own built-in SI tool, then that would arguably be re-inventing the wheel as far as WS goes - which is apparently a perfectly good wheel, so why bother to expend time/effort in developing and supporting a good third-party imitation?

Just my opinions/needs here:
* Personally, I don't want/need to run two SI tools simultaneously whilst one of them gets out of ß and up to speed either. It would probably be an unnecessary/avoidable system overhead, though possibly of academic interest. (I would be interested in it, at any rate.)
* I don't see the need to inadvertently or otherwise turn FARR into some kind of self-contained comprehensive GUI for the OS either. The OS already has one. FARR (and a lot of its plugins) seems to fit as a superb niche player, making up for the deficiencies/inefficiencies of that OS GUI. Windows' IS (WS) does not seem to be one of those deficiencies/inefficiencies.
* If FARR could somehow replace that ability that GDS gave (to index across Gmail and also documents/files on your other PCs, giving you an index for nearly all your disparate files/data), then I could be seriously interested. (That would be heading towards PIM nirvana for me.)     :Thmbsup:

Armando:
However... Relying on a 3rd party could mean have an indexing option rapidly with minimal efforts on mouser's part. And if the 3rd party options doen't get updated/don't work after a while (a couple years?), mouser can then develop his own indexing mechanism...
-Armando (November 12, 2011, 07:16 PM)
--- End quote ---

Isn't that exactly what happened with the Everything plugin?

- Oshyan
-JavaJones (November 12, 2011, 08:32 PM)
--- End quote ---

Not sure what you're referring to... but IMO : No... as the current "integration" with Everything hasn't been worked on by mouser but by some other developper who -- while doing a great job -- is not the main FARR coder... And might not be able to / have the incentive to work on these little details.

Otherwise, if you're referring to Everything relative abandonment... Maybe, but it seems already perfectly usable as an indexer as it is.  And in any case, Everything is not the only solution out there.


[EDIT] That said, in an ideal world, I'm all for an indexer purely developed by mouser. It's just that, given the choice, for similar performance and functionality... a) in 2 weeks b) or in a year... I'd choose the first option. :)

Armando:
I'd be very surprised if windows search got worse and not better... or if it even got abandoned. It's one very important function of windows 7.

[EDIT : just fully read IanB's post. I pretty much agree...]

phitsc:
I've made a FARR plugin to use Windows Search:

https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=18016.0

I'm not using it very often I must admit. I mean, I'm not using Windows Search very often, but when I do, I'm using it with the FARR plugin.

That said, if you have suggestions on how to improve it let me know.

Armando:
Hi Phitsc - I like the integration with farr. I think the focus should be put on that.

My only gripe is that it still crashes farr too often in my specific case (using XP sp3). I know I'm not the majority (and for those without any stability problems, I wonder why they don't use it... It's SUPER FAST). If only I knew what did it (the problem), I'd use it much more. More than "Everything" as I don't have the accentuated chars problem with Windows Search...

In any case I'll go to the other thread as this one is dedicated to farr's index.

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