FCalc/FarFox Plugin Delays

[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?

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".

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.

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.

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.

[tomos]

please add a 'remove msg' feature, I accidently quoted my previous msg here instead of modified it, but I can't remove this

-d4ni (August 24, 2008, 05:05 PM)

that's funny, I have the options "Quote/Modify/Remove"

[skajfes]

I think that the problem is in those folders that are on the network drive. Try unchecking them to see if that is really the problem. On the other side, program files folder is not normally needed (in my experience at least) but if you really do need it a better solution (with farr) would be to define a modifier keyword for this folder, and for those folders on a network drive too so that they will not be searched every time but only when you really need them.

[d4ni]

please add a 'remove msg' feature, I accidently quoted my previous msg here instead of modified it, but I can't remove this

-d4ni (August 24, 2008, 05:05 PM)

that's funny, I have the options "Quote/Modify/Remove"

-tomos (August 24, 2008, 05:11 PM)

It's not funny at all, it's very sad! Anyway, I suppose you won't believe me so here's proof:

[mouser]

the forum may allow you to remove your own message iff you are the last poster.

[d4ni]

Well I am pretty sure I was the last poster at that time so something is not right. I'll use this post to test.

Nope I can't:

[jgpaiva]

Nope I can't:

-d4ni (August 27, 2008, 06:13 PM)

That's pretty strange, I suppose the forum software is random
But don't worry, just edit your post to "please remove this post", or something like that and I guarantee you it won't last long

[d4ni]

Heh yeah I noticed my other post was removed as well so I'll trust in your message-removing-skills

[Christian.Eitner]

Dear mouser,

Sorry for the late answer, but I was on a lengthy business trip.

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

-mouser (August 24, 2008, 01:00 PM)

No, the delay is still there.

Cheers,

Christian

[Christian.Eitner]

Dear 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?

-d4ni (August 24, 2008, 05:02 PM)

Well, the search order is start menus first, then file folders. If something is hidden in the file system, it's ok for me to wait a little.

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

I used to use Launchy before FARR, but the new release with the 'improved' GUI had a lot of problems. I don't care, since that was the reason I found (and fell in love with) FARR 

Cheers,

Christian

[d4ni]

I see. I just think it takes way too much time this way One more suggestion: Google/Microsoft Desktop Search. They work quite well, and can search in documents as well which is nice. Obviously they would complement, and not replace, farr. I don't use these programs myself, but that's mainly because I use FARR alot more to RUN stuff than to FIND it (I always know where stuff is that I want to run)