[PD] Browse/Search plugin update

[Jonathan Wilkes]

----- Original Message -----

> From: Hans-Christoph Steiner <hans at at.or.at>
> To: Jonathan Wilkes <jancsika at yahoo.com>
> Cc: PD List <pd-list at iem.at>
> Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2012 10:38 PM
> Subject: Re: [PD] Browse/Search plugin update
> 
> 
> On 10/30/2012 07:20 PM, Jonathan Wilkes wrote:
>>  I updated my search plugin by adding a progressbar:
>> 
>>  http://puredata.info/Members/jancsika/searchandbrowseplugin/view
>> 
>>  It also prints out the number of files it searched.  There were some
>>  reports of a search taking over a minute, but with GNU/Linux and
>>  winxp I'm getting about 3 seconds for a little over 9,000 docs (I
>>  think I'm searching two different copies of pd-extended libs so
>>  that should be well over what you'd typically be searching).  If
>>  people are getting long searches please start by telling me how
>>  many files you're searching.  Also, the progressbar updates don't
>>  start until it's built a list of files and sorted it, so if it's 
> taking a long
>>  time when you search before the progressbar appears then that
>>  may be the culprit.
>> 
>>  Now that the interface updates live I don't really think there's 
> much
>>  need to build an index.  You can start reading the first results
>>  immediately and even scroll the list as it finishes printing the results.
>>  (I guess I can also add a "Cancel" button, too.)
>> 
>>  Let me know if there are any bugs.
>> 
>>  -Jonathan
> 
> Looking very good!  I consider this something everyone should install now.

It's UI is designed to be a drop-in replacement for the ctrl-b browser.  You should
be able to browse all the same locations, plus the user gets descriptions of
all the libdirs which makes browsing them much more meaningful.  There is
zero delay when browsing docs.  (Well, aside from a small delay on winxp
with the libdirs because of another lsort -command, but I'll be removing that
soon.)

You can use ctrl-minus and ctrl-plus (or ctrl-equals) to make the text larger or
smaller, just like every web browser and word-processor I've ever used, so it
has more accessibility than the ctrl-b browser.  Additionally, clicking the folder
icon to bring up the containing folder is easier to discover than however you
do that in the ctrl-b browser (which isn't documented).

Finally, displaying a description for the content of pd files encourages devs to
actually describe the content of their files.  I know "No DESCRIPTION tag" looks
ugly but the fix is to add descriptions and improve the documentation.

If there's interest in this replacing the ctrl-b browser I'll do some work to make it
an actual drop-in replacement instead of a plug-in.  (So for example, you click
ctrl-b and the search/browse plugin pops up.)

-Jonathan

> The 
> progress bar is a good enhancement.  I wonder if it could somehow fit in to the 
> GUI elements better somehow.  Its fine how it is, but it seems a little out of 
> place.
> 
> Looks like there are some debug messages still in it, I get these when hovering:
> 
> filename is 5.reference/all_about_arrays.pd
> basedir is /Applications/Pd-0.43.3-extended-20121008.app/Contents/Resources/doc
> filename is 5.reference/loop~-help.pd
> basedir is /Applications/Pd-0.43.3-extended-20121008.app/Contents/Resources/doc
> filename is 5.reference/all_about_arrays.pd
> filelist is 7751
> filelist is 7751
> 
> .hc
>