Hi mouser and all. Some thoughts from my usage pattern's point of view. Background: I don't use FARR and Everything wholly separately and I don't use the Everything plugin for searches inside FARR. I use FARR to launch Everything windows with the search phrase intact via an alias pattern at the end of the string in FARR: Typing "ball " (two end spaces) pops up the Everything window with a search for "ball". Setup details for that:
regular expression pattern box:
^(.*)\s\s$
Results box:
Everything Search: $$1 | dolaunch C:\Program files\Everything\Everything.exe -search "$$1"
(There's some discussion in this old thread:
https://www.donation....msg213412#msg213412 )
What I like about that combination: one hotkey and one inputbox to start all searches, you can modify your goal during the process and you can make use of the different advantages of the FARR window (minimalism, large font) and the Everything window (columns, lines, complex multi file handling, like copy, execute, move and delete), depending on what choice you ended up in. I find that use more intuitive, faster and less distractive.
To explain that more I need to describe how I use FARR in three basic ways:
1. launching applications and very frequently launched files. For this use I know exactly what item I'm aiming for and I know that FARR will handle it instantly. I have a set of aliases with the "dolaunch" option for even higher speed. For example typing "ff" instantly launches Firefox. The same goes for FARR plugins and aliases that do more complex things, like using google for currency translations.
2. searching for some not so commonly used file. Such files tend to be in larger folders with a lot of images or music files in my case. FARR can then take a relatively long time searching, so I type any fragments of the filename that immediately pop into my mind and then (if the file hasn't unexpectedly shown up already) doubletab space to instantly show the search results in Everything. For example "submarine mp3 " search Everything for the Beatles track "Yellow Submarine"
3. Searches that lie somewhere between the two, where I'm not in advance clear on which of the two tools will be the quickest and where the exact search goal might get more clear while I type. When testing the alternative with two hotkeys (one for FARR, one for Everything) I sometimes found my self launching Everything and immediately realized that the search really was better suited for FARR. And vice versa. Closing one and opening the other is easy and quick but there is still something subtly disruptive about it. There's a sense that a mistake was made at a step in the process. In contrast, with my preferred use I know that I can't go wrong by popping up FARR. So there's never any hesitation or sense of mistake. The very brief time it takes to enter a phrase in the FARR inputbox is often enough for my search goal to become more focused. By the end of the string I often know if Everything will be faster and, if so, doubletap space. If in doubt then I let FARR run the search for a second more. If no match then I pass it to Everything.
Example: I want to play "yellow submarine" on guitar and first load FARR with the intention to find a txt file with guitar chords for that song. I know that I keep those files in a folder with few other files and early in the FARR search cycle so it will be displayed instantly. I start typing "submar chords". But while typing the next thought strikes: I want to simultaneously view a tutorial video with a guitarist playing the song that I have. That file is in a folder with a lot more files and will be found much quicker by Everything. So I doubletap space for an Everything search on "submar chords" which then includes both "yellow submarine chords.txt" and "yellow submarine chords youtube.mp4" in its results. The nice thing is that all my typing has been made use of. So it doesn't feel like a mistake plus a new attempt. It has the feeling of one smooth flow of actions.
I've set the FARR gui to be minimal. So searches where I'm beforehand unsure if FARR will instantly find the target but where FARR does find it are also minimally obtrusive: I get a small number of results, often with the one I want at top, in a large font in a minimal, semitransparent window. In contrast, bringing up the Everything window will lines, columns menus and buttons is more visually obtrusive. I also have FARR in a fixed position so the eyes "know" where to look even before the window pops up. In contrast, I resize and move around (maximize, restore) Everything windows a lot so have no sense of where they will show up.
I prefer this combo use to using the Everything plugin for searches within FARR because I pretty often need Everything to further filter many results by clicking to change column sort etc. in ways I find the FARR window too limited to work with (I admit I haven't tested FARR's capabilities on that front in a while, since I try to its interface minimal i.e. no columns). I also sometimes have use for an Everything window open side by side with a FARR search (e.g. dragging files from FARR to copy to some folders listed by Everything.
So to end a long post: I'm not sure if and how indexing built into FARR would be of help to me and so have no clear suggestion to give for now. I'm curious what other users will request though and also very curious to hear if others share the types of search experiences I've tried to describe here.
