Hi all, Currently, Thunar provides three ways of searching (correct me if I missed something): 1. Start typing: matches the exact name of a file or folder 2. Ctrl + s search by pattern: as beginner user wouldn't know how to use this 3. Right mouse click > Catfish: probably the best for beginners as it matches almost anything by keywords I would still say that despite those three, there is one missing that is efficient yet user-friendly. Personally, I really like the implementation recent Nautilus has chosen. Like 1. you can start typing and it matches anything by keyword, not just exact matches of the name, unlike Thunar. How do you feel about the search in Thunar, specially looking at user-friendliness? Is there anything you see we could improve to aid beginners? Thanks for the conversation. Regards
Thanks for reporting ! Yes, I agree, it would be nice to match a keyword, instead of the exact string in the "Ctrl + F" search. Patches are welcome !
Thanks! Appreciate your openness to patches. :-) Regards
I think it would be better to implement this as a new thunar plugin, same way it is with thunar-achive-plugin, thunar-media-tags-plugin and others. I'd call it thunar-search-plugin. Motivation for this is because I think this adds up some complexity in several places (not that I would be familiar with the code itself, sadly), but also - maybe not all users may want this, especially those "minimal install" fans, including me. I can see thunar getting a UI upgrade by installing this plugin, example - a search field always sitting in the top, right of the location bar, and an extra tab in the settings dialog. Thunar should also be able to display files sitting in multiple directories (results of the search), as opposed to working always only on current working directory. I believe this search should happen from current directory going in recursively (optionally including hidden files/folders). For starters - it could look at only filenames. For example, I currently have this in my bash profile: `alias findhere='find . | grep -i'` - works for me, somehow I find it faster than `find . -iname "*$1*"`, but it returns what I suspect should be the most basic minimal goal of this feature. Adding more advanced search later on (full text search, picture file metadata, pdf authors, ...). Thunar has it's own versioning, but I guess this should be targeted together with xfce 4.16 or whatever the next installment will be called.
> Motivation for this is because I think this adds up some complexity in several places I dont think it would add much complexity. Possibly it just boils down to use "g_strrstr" instead of "g_str_has_prefix" or something similar. > a search field always sitting in the top, right of the location bar, and an extra tab in the settings dialog Thunar plugins need to use the thunarx API. Afaik this API currently does not allow to put widgets near the location bar or adding extra setting tabs .. the possibilities available to plugins are very limited, like adding context menu entries. > Thunar should also be able to display files sitting in multiple directories (results of the search), as opposed to working always only on current working directory. This bug is not about adding something complex like recursive search. There is e.g. catfish for this purpose. If you request a catfish-like search, integrated in thunar, please open a separate bugreport.
Thank you for explaining about plugins limitations. > This bug is not about adding something complex like recursive search. There is e.g. catfish for this purpose. If you request a catfish-like search, integrated in thunar, please open a separate bugreport. Then I don't see what is the end result after performing the search. I suspect only filtered files matching search query in current directory is what you suggesting? And this is just two small steps away from making it go recursive. We have Ctrl+S which is sort of doing the search already, it's just made for selecting matched files (which is in a way you can called "searched" items) and not filtering out unmatched. Personally, I really like that just by typing (or by what I call useless shortcut currently - Ctrl+F) I can select the file starting from match - I use this daily. I see valid uses for Ctrl+S as well. So it means only one more function either hidden somewhere in the menu or under new shortcut, which is again - not very user friendly as the bug title wants. Maybe typing in the directory could be separated from the Ctrl+F shortcut and this shortcut could then act as filtering by keyword match?
I dont think yet another shortcut would be a good idea. I rather would just extend the current "search by typing - Ctrl+F" to not only match the beginning of the filename, but to just match any part of the filename. If there is one (or more) matching beginning, I would select the first beginning match (like currently) If there is no matching beginning, I would select the first "any part match". Easy like that.
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