[REQ] for an incremental navigation func as in emacs/firefox

[wc96]

I always want to head to different folders yet don't want to look through the trees to get to them. If we can have an incremental search function implemented like firefox for folders inside Tree pane would make navigating extremely fast: It would be something like the following ...

1. a single backslash brings up a small open window to input the search string as in firefox Quick Find feature.
2. then as you type the folders inside Tree pane will be searched and matched ones hilighted, as soon as you found the right folder just like in Firefox, simply type a [return]. And a new tab is created with the correct folder destination.
3. Tree panel is of course reset back to normal.

I always use this in firefox to get to links I want, as soon as the right link is found I just hit [return] it goes there. It has to be the quickest way to navigate a system. The same in Emacs 21.x. This would be a killer feature to have in XY since I haven't seen it implemented else where.

[admin]

Where in firefox you enter that single backslash?

[wc96]

my bad, it's forward slash, as in "/" (usually with my right pinky, easy to reach). You enter just at the page. And a small Quick Find window will appear in the lower left corner. start typing the text for a link on page for example. Say you go to www.ubuntu.com, type the first few letters of 'philosophy' and the link to it will hilight then just with your pinky press [Enter], it jumps right to it. Simply the coolest thing I've seen in any software!

[admin]

my bad, it's forward slash, as in "/" (usually with my right pinky, easy to reach). You enter just at the page. And a small Quick Find window will appear in the lower left corner. start typing the text for a link on page for example. Say you go to www.ubuntu.com, type the first few letters of 'philosophy' and the link to it will hilight then just with your pinky press [Enter], it jumps right to it. Simply the coolest thing I've seen in any software!

Ah yes, I did not know that trick, nice.

But in XY you have something similar in the Adress Bar (and some other places): auto-completion of path/file names (aka "autosuggest list") (must be enabled in config/advanced). Have you tried that?

[wc96]

Yes I love the auto completion feature, one of the best in XY. But I think incremental is slightly different usage case. For auto completion you type the entire path name say: e:\temp\classes\notes\philosophy.txt, and it allows you to get there rather quickly. But quick find is aimed at out of order matching. say you just type a few letters like "es\philo" then the Tree view already found it. A simple [enter] ad you there. I think in many common cases it's just incredibly fast way to get to a dir. Once I used it in emacs first then firfox, intellij IDEA ide also sports it in class finder, I am just totally in love with it. Hope this an make its way in one form or another into XY.

[lukescammell]

This is similar to, but different from an older feature request (that I either asked for or someone else did and I supported) - the "quick visual filter" like the quick search box in Thunderbird.

Only with this suggestion you don't hide anything, you just highlight and jump back and forth (next/prev).

I still prefer the quick visual filter though, as you don't have to scroll around, it just only displays what matches as you type

[wc96]

This is similar to, but different from an older feature request (that I either asked for or someone else did and I supported) - the "quick visual filter" like the quick search box in Thunderbird.

Only with this suggestion you don't hide anything, you just highlight and jump back and forth (next/prev).

I still prefer the quick visual filter though, as you don't have to scroll around, it just only displays what matches as you type

luke you got a link to your post? Let me take a look, I'm curious as to your idea on this feature. From the name, it seems you suggest a regex filter string that quickly alters the tree to only those things that pass through your filter. Not bad I like it, but if I'm not mistaken might be more resource intensive than my suggestion which is simpler just hilight the stuff that's already there in the tree.

In any case, I believe some type of speed search needs to be implmented for the tree. I find browsing it the hardest thing and wastes too much time. A quick search feature can remedy that and make getting around your directory and finding the right dir much quicker.

[Twisten]

its the same basic idea,
only IMHO to implement it would either require a continualy updated very big cache of the filesystem or a realy exaustive drive search as you type. not realy the same a with a web browser where you usualy look through a not so large page.

that said, perhaps it could be done more efficently if it poped out a window for possible matches and did the search directly on the FAT or MFT without jumping around the tree.

[wc96]

its the same basic idea,
only IMHO to implement it would either require a continualy updated very big cache of the filesystem or a realy exaustive drive search as you type. not realy the same a with a web browser where you usualy look through a not so large page.

that said, perhaps it could be done more efficently if it poped out a window for possible matches and did the search directly on the FAT or MFT without jumping around the tree.

not sure about implementation but wif you load a very large text file in emacs and s control-s (inc search) you can see it works quite fast. However, if you need to go to disk every time this isn't going to work out for the Tree inc search has to be just a cache of the current state. i.e. in memory search.

[lukescammell]

Tree? Oooops, I was thinking about this in the list I don't see any reason why it couldn't be used in the tree as well though.

I'm no programmer, but I don't honestly see why (in the list view) this would be particularly resource heavy. If you think of it as a live/quick/realtime/as-you-type visual filter, then how does that require any massive amounts more resources than XY already uses? I mean Visual Filters are as quick as you like, but they're just kinda slow you know?

For an example of how this works just open your mail in Thunderbird and start typing in the search box at the top right. Thunderbird manages it on an IMAP inbox with thousands of messages in (yeah I know I should sort it out) without taking up massive resources or any great length of time over things.

P.S. I'll see if I can find my post...

[wc96]

Tree? Oooops, I was thinking about this in the list I don't see any reason why it couldn't be used in the tree as well though.

I'm no programmer, but I don't honestly see why (in the list view) this would be particularly resource heavy. If you think of it as a live/quick/realtime/as-you-type visual filter, then how does that require any massive amounts more resources than XY already uses? I mean Visual Filters are as quick as you like, but they're just kinda slow you know?

For an example of how this works just open your mail in Thunderbird and start typing in the search box at the top right. Thunderbird manages it on an IMAP inbox with thousands of messages in (yeah I know I should sort it out) without taking up massive resources or any great length of time over things.

P.S. I'll see if I can find my post...

Yeah likewise why not implemented for List as well. That isn't a bad idea at all. Incremental searches are just quick and nimble. I think if the filtering could be done in real time would definitely be better visually than just hilight search results. I am a programmer so knows there are some limitations to certain things, hopefully this could be implemented practically I would really love this feature.

[avsfan]

This could be a very cool feature! I actually like both ideas, and think I would use them both, the two ideas being:

- QuickFind (like in FireFox) where the search bar has a "next" and "previous" button to find the next and previous occurrences of the search string.
- QuickFilter (like in Thunderbird) where, as the user types in the search/filter box, everything that doesn't match is hidden (and the search/filter box could have a little "x" button to clear the existing filter). This is different from the visual filter in that it updates in real time as the user types.

I think both would be excellent (though if I had to choose, I think I'd go for QuickFilter myself...)

Just my thoughts...

[wc96]

This could be a very cool feature! I actually like both ideas, and think I would use them both, the two ideas being:

- QuickFind (like in FireFox) where the search bar has a "next" and "previous" button to find the next and previous occurrences of the search string.
- QuickFilter (like in Thunderbird) where, as the user types in the search/filter box, everything that doesn't match is hidden (and the search/filter box could have a little "x" button to clear the existing filter). This is different from the visual filter in that it updates in real time as the user types.

I think both would be excellent (though if I had to choose, I think I'd go for QuickFilter myself...)

Just my thoughts...

Yes I think Quick filter is the better choice as well. I did some checking, free commander has the list filter that's done real time. Total commander I believe has that as well, it actually just jumps to the stuff you typed not filtering. Of course both just dual panel style so no tree filtering used. I can see that this can be done real time for both Tree and Lists. Would be incredibly cool to have in XY definitely will be a feature that's used often in everyday browsing.