How to get best juice out of FARR?

[kartal]

No I do not know the answer but I was hoping that someone like mouser could give us some straight tips for increasing speed of search especially. It would be great if someone can give us the best heuristic score settings.

[d4ni]

I assume mouser's recommended heuristic score settings are the default settings, actually

[mouser]

This doesn't quite get at your question but I'm going to try to make some screencast demos in the next week or so showing all the various features of FARR.  I hope it will be a good intro to some of the things FARR can do that people don't know about.

[kartal]

Well maybe that is the main problem that is causing slow search hits that people(including myself) are reporting.  The funny thing is that Farr is sometimes very fast sometimes very slow(even sometimes searching the same item) and I myself cannot pinpoint the issue.

I assume mouser's recommended heuristic score settings are the default settings, actually

[Armando]

I'm having the same problem Kartal has : sometimes even high scored items appear afterwards (chronologically speaking) and I have to wait a fairly long time before they actually appear. I wonder if this is caused by the fact that my history list is quite long (990 items)? Is farr searching folders + history list in parallel? I've checked the history list itself and I'm not seeing anything weird (no duplicates, etc.)

[mouser]

if what you find is that trying the same search many times in a row is only ever slow the FIRST time, and not if you try it again right after, then what you are experiencing is the delay when the operating system loads the directories into cached memory.

[kartal]

My searches are 85% of the time the way Armando described, it is slow I hate indexers but seriously application launching is blazing fast with any of those


Mouse if you can give us some tips or tricks toi increase the speed of searches that would be great.

[nitrix-ud]

i am extremely concerned about speed and so far FARR is just the best, search is fast 95% of the time...

maybe you should carefully review all the search folders of yours, and check there are no remote folders
if i want to search a remote folder, i add it in the search folders BUT i add a keyword, so that it is not used when i perform a "regular" search

then to search on the remote folder, just create an dosearch alias:
dosearch nameoftheremotefolder

[kartal]

Does Farr keep history items forever even if the user limits shown history to 10-20 etc? I am talking about "max files to keep in launch history". If it does not keep them then it would be a problem. I personally keep that list short (20) so that when I invoke Farr it opens quickly.

For example what happens If I search for an item that I succesfully launched 3 months ago and never used since then? Is Farr supposed to find it right away?

[Armando]

if what you find is that trying the same search many times in a row is only ever slow the FIRST time, and not if you try it again right after, then what you are experiencing is the delay when the operating system loads the directories into cached memory.

Farr is usually fast. What happens is that even if an item is in the history list, sometimes it won't be shown right away -- even if the score is high, or even the highest in the list.

Does Farr keep history items forever even if the user limits shown history to 10-20 etc? I am talking about "max files to keep in launch history". If it does not keep them then it would be a problem. I personally keep that list short (20) so that when I invoke Farr it opens quickly.

For example what happens If I search for an item that I succesfully launched 3 months ago and never used since then? Is Farr supposed to find it right away?

In your case, Kartal, I'd say that your history list is quite (too?) short. Mine is 990... And farr opens instantly. Why would it slow it down? If your list was a bit longer it would allow farr to remember anything you previously launched and would pretty much act like an index.


PS : I don't think that my problem is not that similar to Kartal's, after all, since my history list is much longer. The delay he experiences seem to be related to a history list that's a bit too short.

[mouser]

let me try to get the new save/load options code written and then you can take a look again at startup time -- some people experience very slow startup/shutdown times due to an unusual interaction with antivirus tools.

[Armando]

I imagine that by startup/shutdown times you don't mean starting or shutting down the actual farr process... Just invoking/closing farr's window... Right?

IN my case, the "unusual interaction with antivirus tools" only affects the moment where changes are made to the ini file -- every 6 "launches" or so.

As for the times where what I'm looking for doesn't show up rapidly (even if in the history list), it doesn't seem related to that ini file saving thing... but I could be totally wrong, of course.

[mouser]

yes to all armando.

[kartal]

Well having a long history list makes Farr window a slow opener. When I have a shorter list Farr opens way quicker. Is there a way to keep history launching long but keep the showing history short?

In your case, Kartal, I'd say that your history list is quite (too?) short. Mine is 990... And farr opens instantly. Why would it slow it down? If your list was a bit longer it would allow farr to remember

[Armando]

Slow opener ? Hmmm.  It's virtually instant on my not that old (2,5 years old) computer, with a 990 items list. Do you actually mean running the whole program from scratch?  Or just showing the window (ctrl+space or whatever the shortcut key)?

[Armando]

Ok. I see what you mean.  The launching part is a bit slower (eg : when pressing enter on a selection), by a bit less than a sec. on my system. Still, I think that having more items in my history list is worth it. Don't know why it would slow farr down though, but mouser said he'd have a look at it anyways... 

[kartal]

Just showing the farr window is slightly slower. It is not a killer but there is a difference between instant pop up and slow pop up.