DonationCoder.com Software > Find And Run Robot
FARR and Indexing Option - Feedback Requested
Nod5:
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.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=23518.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.
Armando:
Some great comments here !
@Josh : +1, Well thought. I agree with everything you said.
@Nod5 : I use a similar approach but with the "<" and ">" chars (I'm having issues with spaces)
< : triggers the everything plugin and I see results in farr
<> : launches everything with specific query
While I like this approach -- and I'm sure it could be kept -- it just doesn't feel integrated enough (plus... Everything doesn't have the sophisticated sorting algorithms farr has, etc.) and as such it can't constitute a true long term solution.
I really think farr would benefit from a tighter integration with some kind of index -- like Josh, I find that good path would be NTFS Master File Table + NTFS change journal.
Nod5:
I see the integration point. The setup I have is not so new user friendly. It is more a use I've gradually morphed into while under the influence of the power of FARR :P
Maybe a relevant question here then is: to what degree can such integration be combined with the type of separability that I try to describe as an advantage. Could FARR add ways to easily toggle between two such very distinct modes of search, and still make the experience more integrated than popping up an external window?
skajfes:
I use FARR and Everything in the same way Nod5 described. I use FARR for launching and whatnot, and when I want to search for a specific file somewhere on disk, I pass it to Everything native window using double space at the end. Here I don't need (or want) FARR's sorting and scoring algorithms and aditional features that FARR brings. I just want the files to be sorted alphabetically or by last modified date. I like Everything's option to include (or exclude) filepath from the search, and I also like the option to search using regex.
What I also like is that in Everything I can easily select multiple files, copy them etc. And the windows stays open. I don't like to keep FARR open. To me it is a tool - a starting position to open other tools. I mean, FARR is good at searching relatively small and precisely selected locations (like the start menu or my documents etc), and using aliases and plugins to easily connect me to web sites or services (google, weather, imdb....). It, however, is not a tool to search my entire hard drive, nor it is a tool for editing text, nor it is a file management tool, or even an programming IDE. I have other tools for that.
FARR is great, and it has a powefull plugin system. IMHO, that is enough. Only thing that could be worked on is improving the plugin system so that plugin search results would be included in FARR without explicitly calling a plugin, ie. let browser bookmarks be included in every search by default, or if someone wants - let some file searching tool feed the results to FARR (be it Everyting, Windows search or Locate32 or some other tool)
capitalH:
Mouser, of your three options
1) My preferred choice
2) Although probably quicker than (1) and with the ability to have realtime updates, you have to index file sizes etc separately. Also, it may have the same limitation(s) as Everything (see below)
3) Everything, great in certain aspects does not index dates, sizes etc. More importantly though (for me) is that it cannot index network drives without running on the server. Should you wish to continue with this route, I would like to still have the FARR heuristics with everything (because I can never remember if it is 7zip or 7-zip).
1) above may also help for greater meta-data indexing, which is frequently useful for filtering results (or can even be used for heuristics), as well as run with lower overhead.
Another option could be to start with (3) but with another indexer (e.g. locate32) than Everything, and then create your own indexer to replicate the locate32 index in the next version (although I am guessing that it would be easier to build your own index than to try and figure out what locate32 does), or to start with a very simple index (only filenames and paths) and extend from there.
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