unity-design team mailing list archive

["frederik.nnaji@xxxxxxxxx" <frederik.nnaji@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Jun 21, 2011 at 00:30, Jarlath Reidy <jarlathreidy@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hi Frederik,
>
>  Ayatana doesn't have this problem, we are equipped with semantic search in
>> the Dash, that solves it for us.
>
>
> This only finds files I have already used - so it is not really a search of
> any part of the filesystem, only my recently used files.
>

If that is the case, wouldn't it make more sense then to improve the Dash's
search apparatus to include also files which were recently downloaded for
example, or files which were recently created or "touched"? And then as a
consequence, there's the non-zeitgeist-based search which should be an
extension of the zeitgeist-based search, in case the relevant object is not
among the logged stuff..



>
>
> By the way, you ought to try Nautilus 3 because the sidebar is
>> arranged differently now. While you'd probably still need to select
>> File System for what you're wanting to do, there is no Computer button
>> to confuse you. Of course, the Nautilus developers aren't going to
>> make design changes to Nautilus 2; if you're going to report a design
>> bug, you ought to be using at least the latest stable version of the
>> software, if not the development version.
>>
>> Jeremy Bicha
>>
>
> I hadn't thought of that Jeremy, maybe it will be a bit clearer in Gnome 3.
> I still think that when I want to search for a file that could be anywhere
> there is a fundamental problem. At the moment, no search feature I can find
> on Natty operates centrally or encompasses all filesystems.
>

> If nautilus design is out of the hands of developers / designers here then
> it should be addressed at the unity level. I've been reading about Lenses. I
> think instead of having to add a lens to have full search functionality, the
> existing search could be improved in the following way:
>
> 1) I choose from Unity launcher to search "Files & Folders".
> 2) I type "Very Old Document.odt" (which is stored on a seperate disk
> mounted as /media/Backups with the label "Backups")
> 3) Instead of only being told "Your seach did not match any files.", you
> could in this case append the message with "Would you like to search the
> entire computer?" or "Did you mean 'Very Old Document.odt' from the disk
> labelled 'Backups'?".
>

yessurr!!
now that's what i'm talking about, the best of two worlds! the superfast
Zeitgeist engine delivers the most likely results, which are usually the
most relevant, based on Zeitgeist's well designed heuristics.
if that is insufficient, one can still manually instruct a filesystem
search.

The problem at hand has been on the table on launchpad for quite a while:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity-place-files/+bug/646724
askubuntu:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/33551/shouldnt-unitys-dashs-find-files-find-files-that-i-havent-used-yet
Have you tried that "string analyser" thingy, the other lens for searching
files?
http://www.webupd8.org/2011/05/real-files-folders-search-unity-lens.html

so i think a smart user-friendly affordance-aware design of these two lenses
merged would solve the problem to your liking.