Author Topic: [Suggestion] Secondary mode with execute on first unique match (Read 23305 times)

Bending_Unit · « **on:** May 10, 2014, 10:09 AM »

Hi mouser,

Farr looks pretty impressive to me. I would like to propose a feature that i hope might find an open ear here

Auto execute on first (alias) unique match.
Anyone who is using the browser Opera (up until 12.x) as his browser and knows Shift+F2 knows immediately what i am talking about.
Just in case you don´t - let me explain what i am talking about:

Opera does allow to give aliases to bookmarks. This allows you to just enter the alias in the adressbar to execute a bookmark which is pretty close to (part of) what Farr is doing currently.

However it also allows you to use a key combo (Shift+F2) to call up aliases. The difference is that you just start typing the alias and once its uniqe it will execute the alias
no matter how many letters you typed so far. No need to press enter.

[Example]
Lets say you have two keywords starting with fire: "firefox" and "firewall".

Now when you enter any of those keywords once you reach the fifth letter it will execute since its a unique match.
- "firef" would trigger firefox to be started
- "firew" would trigger the firewall to be started

Basicly my suggestion is to add a secondary input mode (e.g. activated by accessing Farr with Shift+Break instead of Break). If you call the window up this way it should just
run every alias once the name is unique.

I would come up with two ideas to store those aliases:

- keep them in a seperate list and kinda seperated from the others
- utilize what you already have and add a checkbox "allow unique instant execution" or something to the current definitions. Only if the user checks that box it will include this alias in the search of the alternate mode.

I hope this description is clear enough.

This is not about being a lazy ass (oh my ... he doesnt have to press enter to run it

) its just very comfortable if you have multiple aliases that start
with the same letters because you dont need to remember how many letters you need to type to get the one you want quickly. I guess its hard to describe it properly
if you haven´t used it yourself. Its just this little difference putting something from comfortable to very comfortable if you get what i mean.

regards and thanks for reading,
Bender

mouser · « **Reply #1 on:** May 10, 2014, 01:31 PM »

It's an interesting idea and well described.

It's closely related to an idea I *was* convinced to add, which is a way to make an alias that launches as soon as you fully type it (see here).

I am a bit hesitant about your suggestion because of the potential for FARR launching things due to typos, etc.

However, a middle ground might be an option that automatically launches a single-result alias as soon as it is typed exactly (and completely).
That would make it easier to add short aliases that launch as soon as you type them.

Bending_Unit · « **Reply #2 on:** May 10, 2014, 03:32 PM »

Fully typing is a bit awkward again since you start creating short aliases again since you want to prevent yourself from the need of typing it all.
Then you have to start remembering the short ones again and so on. I know i wouldn´t use that.

I do understand your concern about accidental launching of things. So what about the option to put them into a seperate list and really go with a second shortcut to access them.

I could also propose that someone codes a launcher with just that - since its debateable to some degree if this extends Farr or is a bit too far off. Still i would really like to use the other Farr features and this addition. However that addition is what would make me use Farr in the first place. Basicly i suggested that same feature five years ago (gosh time is moving fast) in the Excecutor forum. It didnt get in (albeit there was less if any development to that one anyway over the last years) which is fine but shortly after i stopped using Excecutor and returned to TrueLaunchbar for starting things. Which is great and all but its klicking not typing.

mouser · « **Reply #3 on:** May 10, 2014, 03:46 PM »

So, having a second list i think would be too confusing and too much work.
But adding an option that says: launch any alias result as soon as it's the only one in the results -- that i could add with relatively little difficulty. If you think that would be useful i wouldn't mind adding that.

Bending_Unit · « **Reply #4 on:** May 10, 2014, 04:14 PM »

Sounds good but that would interfere with the "normal" Farr behavior if you use the normal names as alias.

Example: i add the alias "Notepad++" to it for starting Notepad++. I would have to type it till the + because the windows own notepad would show in the search results until then.

Thats why i went for a second keyboard shortcut to invoke the Farr window where it would only do this alias matching and executing once its unique but ignore the other regular program logic you have now in place.
E.g. it would not use other search results (from folders...) except those from the alias names themselves.

The more i think about it the more obvious it becomes to me that this is really a separate thing to not interfere with other things. For example - regardless the way you implement it - you might not want this on all aliases. So a general option for this behavior (yes/no) would not work out i guess. So back to the suggestion from my initial post adding a checkbox per alias to include this alias for this new functionality or not.

Will send you a pm parallel to this posting.

mouser · « **Reply #5 on:** May 10, 2014, 05:37 PM »

One way it could be done is to use a modifier in the search like "+autolaunch" that means to launch the result when there is only one.
You can already restrict results to only show alias matches by adding "+alias".

So then you can configure in the FARR hotkeys, a hotkey that will start the search box with:
"+alias +launchone "
and then just start typing and it would only show alias results and launch as soon as the results were narrowed down to only one result.

Bending_Unit · « **Reply #6 on:** May 11, 2014, 05:46 AM »

That sounds right about perfect

mouser · « **Reply #7 on:** May 11, 2014, 01:56 PM »

Ok, that I can add -- especially since it doesn't require any additional options checkboxes.

mouser · « **Reply #8 on:** May 11, 2014, 06:35 PM »

Try: https://www.donation...RunRobotPortable.zip
or https://www.donation...AndRunRobotSetup.exe

And add +launchone to your search.

Bending_Unit · « **Reply #9 on:** May 12, 2014, 02:29 PM »

Hi, thank you.

This is pretty weird. I was about to write its working but now it doesn´t anymore.

I was testing with the portable version and added +alias +launchone to it. I created one alias "firefox" and with fi i had two results, once i typed the r it went down to one and firefox started.
But it did that exactly once. Since then i need to type the full word firefox until it launches.

I unpacked the download into a new folder, made sure there was no old process of Farr still running and tried again - same result - had to type the full word despite having only one result after the first 3 letters.

I will check this at my workplace pc tomorrow and post back.

mouser · « **Reply #10 on:** May 12, 2014, 03:02 PM »

im getting similar behavior, looks like i didnt nail this one.. back to work for me.. stay tuned.

mouser · « **Reply #11 on:** May 12, 2014, 03:10 PM »

Try redownloading the new alpha version i think i fixed it.

Rennes007 · « **Reply #12 on:** May 13, 2014, 09:28 AM »

Interesting, but what if you want to execute a program that has a lower score than Farr's first priority?
Lets say I want to run notepad and not notepad++ which is FARR's first result.

mouser · « **Reply #13 on:** May 13, 2014, 09:35 AM »

You can always launch any result you want by hitting the specific number (or alt+# depending on your configuration), double clicking, arrowing down, etc. this specific request is about launching something when there is only one result.

Bending_Unit · « **Reply #14 on:** May 13, 2014, 04:59 PM »

Ah ... this looks much better. Yesterday after the testing i actually started doubting myself that i had seen it working in the first place.

This modified version does it correct now.

This brings up another question for me:
Is there any way i can limit my searchresults further to a specific alias group for example with the options that are currently there?
(Question came up after i accidently ran one of the other included aliases)

I could think of a dirty workaround by naming my aliases with a prefix like e.g. "(ax)" so
the alias firefox would be named "(ax)firefox", an alias "filemanager" would be named "(ax)filemanager" and so on.

Then i would define the hotkey as "+alias +launchone (ax)" and could get what i want but i doesn´t really look too good.

Could i filter against the text "(ax)" for example in which case i could add it at the end of every alias i use for autoexecution?

[attachthumb=#1][/attachthumb]

Then there are the other options that would create work ...

- extend the +alias parameter to allow naming which alias lists to search through

[attachthumb=#2][/attachthumb]

However this would get clumpsy fast if a user would want to name more then one list of aliases

Another option would be to actually make this accessible per alias

[attachthumb=#3][/attachthumb]

However i guess i am just to blind to find a way with the tools already at my hand.

mouser · « **Reply #15 on:** May 13, 2014, 05:08 PM »

Ill try to read this more carefully and reply in a bit, but a quick note:
you can make a regex alias that lets you type one thing and searches as if you typed something else.
you do this by using "dosearch" as the result of the alias.

in this way you could make an alias where you type "mysearch blah"
and it acted like you typed "+alias +launchone blah"

mouser · « **Reply #16 on:** May 13, 2014, 09:52 PM »

Another option is you could make ONE alias (group) called "ax"
and put firefox and all your other common programs in that alias as results.

then you would type:

+alias +launchone ax firef...

the only thing to remember in that case is that just type "firef.." alone will NOT find the firefox entry you create.. only typing the name of the parent alias group would show the results contained in it.

Nod5 · « **Reply #17 on:** May 14, 2014, 05:06 PM »

Bending_Unit, here is a sample alias that let you type fff in FARR to launch firefox immediately.
Go to options > alias > alias/keywords/groups > myaliases.alias
Click add new
In the keyword/trigger field type firefox
Under Regular Expression Pattern, enter

[Select]

^fff$

In the results box, enter

[Select]

dolaunch C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe

I find aliases that use repetition of a single key quick to type and easy to memorize. If you like me want this immediate launch only for a few programs/folders then it won't take much time to set it up.

Bending_Unit · « **Reply #18 on:** June 15, 2014, 04:17 AM »

I find aliases that use repetition of a single key quick to type and easy to memorize. If you like me want this immediate launch only for a few programs/folders then it won't take much time to set it up.

Hi Nod,

thank you for your suggestion. In the long run i will have a lot of shortcuts in there so this one letter way won´t work for me.
I know the program names and don´t want to think about which shortcut it was.

regards,
Bender

Bending_Unit · « **Reply #19 on:** June 15, 2014, 04:28 AM »

Another option is you could make ONE alias (group) called "ax"
and put firefox and all your other common programs in that alias as results.

then you would type:

+alias +launchone ax firef...

the only thing to remember in that case is that just type "firef.." alone will NOT find the firefox entry you create.. only typing the name of the parent alias group would show the results contained in it.
-mouser (May 13, 2014, 09:52 PM)

Hi Mouser,

sorry was absent for work for a while. So this is quite a late reply. Appologies for that.

This last suggestion seems to work for me. I tested it before i left and there was an issue which i don´t remember just now.

One thing i am not sure about is: it does only execute after the second letter of the unique match for some reason.

I will attach the description as a screenshot

mouser · « **Reply #20 on:** June 15, 2014, 07:58 AM »

You've got the default non-contiguous matching enabled, so "Filemanager" is matching against fir.
You could turn off non-contiguous matching if you wanted to stop that.

From your example it seems like i should probably add an additional option for disabling non-contiguous matching just for aliases -- since that seems like something people might want to be able to do.

Bending_Unit · « **Reply #21 on:** June 15, 2014, 09:07 AM »

Thanks. Thats does it..

However now i found what feels wrong for me before i left.

If i only type m in the above example it will execute the filemanager. I guess thats because m is only present in that word Filemanager.
However if i press o which is only present in firefox it does nothing. So that explanation doesn´t really hold up.

Actually i don´t want that behavior anyway. Can i force matching to start at character 1? Because otherwise typos at letter one might fire something i don´t want at all.
This gets more unlikely if you mistype at a later character so thats not a concern anymore.

I see there is "Leftmost Match Bonus" in the manual. I guess i am looking for something like a "Leftmost not match penalty" i could set like -10000.

Bending_Unit · « **Reply #22 on:** June 22, 2014, 12:36 PM »

Hi Mouser,

quick question: is my assumption above correct that i cannot "force" Farr to respect the first letter within the current feature set of the programm?

regards,
bender

mouser · « **Reply #23 on:** June 22, 2014, 02:37 PM »

Yeah, there's currently no way to force it to match the first letter -- though that's an interesting idea..

Bending_Unit · « **Reply #24 on:** March 26, 2015, 04:46 PM »

Since you were recently mentioning further releases ... any chance something along the lines of that force matching the first letter(s) might sneak in there?

Yeah, there's currently no way to force it to match the first letter -- though that's an interesting idea..
-mouser (June 22, 2014, 02:37 PM)