Topics

26

Find And Run Robot / A unified FARR / Launcher Interface Proposal

« on: February 01, 2006, 06:55 PM »

Dear All,

Mouser has suggested making a DC Launchbar app in another thread. I actually believe a seperate application is more trouble than it's worth; FARR can do that job really easily. The two apps overlap somewhat, and unification has many benefits.

My proposal is to integrate virtual groups, based on shortcuts dragged-n-dropped into a menu editor that would be part of FARR. FARR will be dockable and allow buttons to be bound to those groups and displayed on its interface. That gets you a launchbar. FARR will also be able to adaptively search as usual, including in such groups, thus leveraging its fast and efficient search in a unified manner.

The mockup show FARR as launchbar and as adaptive searcher. I've taken a slight liberty to have FARR skinned in a way currently not possible, but it does not affect the main point that integrating these two seems not only intuitive and logical, but will unify development efficiently:[attachimg=FARR+.png][/attachimg]

27

Find And Run Robot / Multithreading?

« on: November 17, 2005, 11:57 AM »

Hi mouser,

Another of my "inner workings" questions. On my slow work machine, when FARR is held up on a slow directory scan, even though I searched for only aliases the alias list does not show until the disk activity stops (this relates to a bug I posted). I wonder whether having the directory searching as a seperate thread to the main program execution would be another way to stop this pause? I assume it is quite complicated to do but I'm curious for your thoughs on it.

cheers,

28

Find And Run Robot / Window Resizing on Windows 2000 with Transparency breaks Skinning

« on: October 19, 2005, 10:48 AM »

I'm posting this as a seperate thread (it was hidden in another) to help tracking, and you asked for info whether this is still present in the latest beta V1.07.20; it is. By the way, my FARR says it is V1.07.21 — am I in a time-space continuum warp?

Original post: https://www.donation...1070.msg7090#msg7090

29

Screenshot Captor / Bug / Issue — Paste of Images Changes their Aspect Ratio

« on: October 16, 2005, 12:50 PM »

I was making a screenshot where I wanted to add together two screenshots (before/after) of a window into one screenshot. I made the first shot, then the second. I then changed canvas size of the second shot to be double the width, then selected all of the first shot, copy to clipboard, then paste into the second shot. First it didn't work, so I tried selecting, then it pasted, but not in my selection and it changed the aspect ratio of the first shot distorting it! I would like that copied images retain their aspect ratio and don't distort when being pasted as objects.

Oh, and screenshot captor rocks  btw (not having frequented this forum yet)!

30

Find And Run Robot / Feature Request V2 — Adaptive Alias Group Ordering

« on: October 16, 2005, 09:14 AM »

Nothing major, but when I trigger an alias group, the order is fixed to the order of the alias group. However what I'd like is an option to allow the order to change depending on which items are used, just as FARR does elsewhere. This obviously relates to my other general adaptive frequency-of-use history request in that the same weighting would apply here too.

31

Find And Run Robot / Feature Request V2 — Drag'n'Drop Config…

« on: October 10, 2005, 02:03 PM »

I didn't bother to install it, but reading the intro, KeyLaunch ( http://software.xfx.net/utilities/kl/ ) has a nice feature for non-techies:

You can either select the file types manually or simply drag and drop a file of the type you want to select into the File Types pane and KeyLaunch will select its type for you.

So if you want KeyLaunch to search for Adobe Acrobat files you don't have to know that these files have a .pdf extension... simply drop an Acrobat Reader document onto the File Types pane and KeyLaunch will recognize the dropped file type automatically.

Now I don't need this but it may be a nice way for general users to set up Search modifiers?

32

Find And Run Robot / Issues with ESC; trying to leave the joint fast…

« on: October 08, 2005, 04:53 PM »

Why do I have to click ESC twice to exit FARR once I started searching? This is even when it has completed a search after letter entry; I originally thought the first ESC halts the search and the second exits, but even when no search is performed ESC needs to be hit twice (first ESC highlights the text so it seems). I'd rather have ESC simply be a one-hit exit button.

Also, when I hit ESC, FARR triggers the default sound which I find annoying, can we have an option to disable the sound effects?

33

Find And Run Robot / Some Performance Questions and Suggestions

« on: October 03, 2005, 09:27 AM »

On my normal laptop I never bothered with performance as FARR was snappy enough. However on an older machine with a slower HD, I notice significant delays on startup. So I used the excellent Filemon from Sysinternals to log all file activity by FARR.

On startup, FARR seems to perform a complete scan through its specified folders. This requires ~3800 open/read/writes to be performed. This seems pointless as I have it set to show the history on startup.

Then when each letter is typed, FARR rescans everything again, another 3800 file operations per letter of the incremental search.

First off, can we stop FARR from reading the folders on startup, just read its history list. Second, some kind of directory cache would drop file access a lot and speed up the incremental search. I'm not suggesting a permanent cache, only a memory cache. It may consume some extra memory, but I believe you/Windows flush memory when FARR is hidden after a launch anywayso that would not be permanent.

34

Find And Run Robot / FARR and BBLean — some incompatibility issues

« on: September 18, 2005, 10:07 AM »

BBLean is an excellent fast and lightweight shell replacement. However I notice that when FARR is activated when running BBLean, it seems to fight for focus; on an older P-III you can see it flickering and the focus switching in and out of FARR's window for up to a second. On newer hardware it is less noticable.

http://bb4win.sourceforge.net/bblean/

Note I am using BBLean without bbLeanSkin, which is a small window title skinning engine so that is not the problem. Does anyone else run FARR and BBLean/BBWin and have similar problems?

35

FARR Plugins and Aliases / NirCmd Setup, a guide of sorts

« on: September 10, 2005, 09:51 AM »

OK, here is a preliminary guide to use NirCmd. The most complex part really is the Regex, because we want to be able to optionally specify options, but not be forced to. So here is the regex:

[Select]

cmd(?:\s|)([^\s]*)(?:\s|)([^\s]*)(?:\s|)([^\s]*)(?:\s|)([^\s]*)

Don't get too scared! This is basically just composed of two sections repeated 4 times:

[Select]

(?:\s|)

The "?:" simply stops anything captured being used by FARR in the $$# bits. "\s" means white space (like a space or tab) and "|" means or, and as there is nothing after it it means "or nothing". In English that chunk means match one whitespace or nothing, but don't capture it. We want to be able to match nothing because we may just want to type in "cmd" without anything else.

[Select]

([^\s]*)

The "[^\s]" means any character EXCEPT a whitespace, and the * means 0 or more of the previous characters. So this means match 0 or more characters as long as they are not whitespaces. As we dont use "?:", then these will get captured into $$1, $$2, $$3 and $$4 for each of these blocks.

This pairing is repeated 4 times to give us the chance to put in up to 4 variables to NirCmd. OK, here are some commands (change c:\windows\ to wherever you put nircmd.exe):

[Select]

screensaver | c:\windows\nircmd.exe screensaver
lock PC | c:\windows\nircmd.exe lockws
monitor (on/off/low) $$1 | c:\windows\nircmd.exe monitor $$1
setres (width) (height) (depth) $$1 $$2 $$3 | c:\windows\nircmd.exe setdisplay $$1 $$2 $$3
changevol(+#/-#) $$1 | c:\windows\nircmd.exe changesysvolume $$1
mute (0/1) $$1 | c:\windows\nircmd.exe mutesysvolume $$1
reboot | c:\windows\nircmd.exe qboxcom "Do you want to reboot ?" "question" exitwin reboot
raise (window) $$1 | c:\windows\nircmd.exe win activate stitle "$$1" $$2
settop (window) (0/1) $$1 $$2 | c:\windows\nircmd.exe win settopmost stitle "$$1" $$2
compliment $$1 | c:\windows\nircmd.exe infobox "Wow $$1, you're really great!"

Now you'll notice some commands don't need any additional input, yet others do. In this scheme when you activate FARR, you first type "cmd" to activate the group, now typing in additional info will start to fill out the fields for the various options.

One important point is you need to turn off digit keys for launching as it will interfere with several nircmd's (see below as I could get digit escaping to work)

So an example:

cmd 1 F6 - mutes volume
cmd 0 F6 - unmutes volume
cmd mouser (then click compliment as it is after F9) - compliments mouser!

Please add your own NirCmd's to this thread.

to mouser:
I had a couple of problems: 1st although c:\windows\ is in my system path, FARR did not find nircmd.exe there; shouldn't FARR look for apps in the system path? 2nd was that I tried using \1 to escape numbers so I didn't need to turn off digit launching - however typing in the "\" seems to stop the group from working - the titles all get removed and numbers keys then stop working...

36

Find And Run Robot / Feature Request V2 — Adaptive History...

« on: September 04, 2005, 05:15 AM »

The history does not count the number of times a particular item has been selected. So if I have two shortcuts to launch the same application but with different options, and run both they have more or less the same scores. Now if I start using one more than the other, the scores don't change as both are in the history. Only by manually editing the history can I increase the weighting of one.

I would like the history to adapt to how many times an item was opened, that way the history can auto-tune more accurately track the user's choices.

37

Find And Run Robot / Feature Request V2 — Task Control

« on: September 04, 2005, 05:09 AM »

It would be very neat if FARR could (optionally) include the running applications in the Search list. Sometimes ALT+TAB is quite slow as it is a linear task switcher (and task bar requires a mouse move). FARR could be used to easily switch to any running app by progressive find of its title...

38

Find And Run Robot / Feature Request: Super Context...

« on: August 29, 2005, 01:03 PM »

First off FRR is excellent. I've been looking for something ever since I was blown away by seeing QuickSilver on a friends Mac.

Now, what makes QuickSilver utterly revolutionary is the context system. FFR has added support for the context menu, but it seems it needs to be clicked, thus making the purpose of a super-fast keyboard launcher not so fast or so "keyboard"!

This screenshot shows QuickSilver (QS) at work. The user has found a file, presses <tab> and can now search for contextual tasks to perform on that file. In this case move the file to another folder:
http://quicksilver.b...reenshots/Bezel2.gif

Here, QS has found an Illustrator file, the user <tab>s to the actions field and chooses to email the file; on the Mac the address book entries then pop up!
http://quicksilver.b...reenshots/Bezel6.gif

Now I don't believe we could get something quite so elegant on Windows, but even a more basic context system would make FRR unique and powerful in the Windows world.

I see two options for development. First is to somehow allow the contents of the windows context menu to be accessible by FRR. This puts the burden of the contextual items at Windows doorstep, FRR just packages those items in a keyboard driven search system as it does already. Does windows make this info available?

Second is to make some hard-coded "actions" and just present that list letting the history and scoring mechanisms of FRR to do the work. This could of course be made more elegant and smart as needed.

Of course the UI to present the contextual items needs to be thought out. I suppose splitting the results window in two panes and letting <tab> select the result pane item then move to the context pane would be fairly trivial to set up using the Windows UI elements. Of course QS has a Zen like elegance all to itself, but as long as functionality is there, the wonderful Zen aesthetics of QS can wait!