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Author Topic: [DONE][Suggestion] Longer search strings with 'Q'  (Read 1366 times)

Offline psavola

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[DONE][Suggestion] Longer search strings with 'Q'
« on: February 04, 2024, 02:25:14 pm »
Searching with 'Q' seems to be capped to 9 or 10 characters, depending on how wide the characters you type are (try with 12345689A and 1234567891 to see slightly different results). It could be useful to have some more, ideally at least 12 or 15 *). However, in some contexts there isn't enough space in the GUI for a much longer field.

Would it be feasible to implement the search field either as:
 a) the displayed width is fixed, but the text keeps rolling to the right as you type it longer (and the start vanishes from sight). Then the search string could be essentially of infinite length.
 b) like a) but as you keep typing, it still shows only the first 9-10 characters (no rolling), but you just have to write the rest of the string 'blind'.

Either of these would work for me, but a) would be more user-friendly.

*) For example, in XCF with a big tech tree, I just wanted to search for 'syndicate security', preferable I'd have typed 'syndicate sec' to find just that, not everything else related to the syndicate.

Offline Scamps

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Re: [Suggestion] Longer search strings with 'Q'
« Reply #1 on: February 04, 2024, 06:24:25 pm »
Why not "cate sec", for example? I am way too lazy to type 10+ characters, so never encountered the limit  :)

Offline Meridian

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Re: [Suggestion] Longer search strings with 'Q'
« Reply #2 on: February 05, 2024, 09:25:50 am »
It's Q for quick search, not S for slow search :)

just type "secur" instead of "syndicate security captain combat analysis"
or scroll a bit
both are quicker than writing poems imo

Offline psavola

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Re: [Suggestion] Longer search strings with 'Q'
« Reply #3 on: February 05, 2024, 10:11:56 am »
There are different tradeoffs, depending on your typing speed and how much time you want to take to think of an adequate search string. Obviously, if this is a repeated search, you may want to optimize the string to be short yet precise, which may require some thought and experimenting.

With this particular example, an obvious search for 'syndi' gives too much, as does searching for 'sec'. I agree that 'secur' narrows it down sufficiently, and 'cate sec' is very specific. But when you want to do a search, at least for me the first priority is to get the results fast, not spend time thinking too much how I should search for it.

But I agree that in cases where you'd like to search with a string of more than 9-10 characters, I suppose it would often be more beneficial to spend the time thinking of a better search string (especially if this is something you expect to have to search multiple times).

Offline Meridian

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Re: [DONE][Suggestion] Longer search strings with 'Q'
« Reply #4 on: February 05, 2024, 11:05:15 pm »
You can now enter "syndicate security captain combat analysis" into the search box.

Offline psavola

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Re: [DONE][Suggestion] Longer search strings with 'Q'
« Reply #5 on: February 06, 2024, 06:27:23 pm »
Thanks. I tested this. This was apparently added only for Q-searching in the global tech-tree viewer (where there is more space for typing), and not available in Q-searching elsewhere. But because this is probably even less useful elsewhere, this should be OK.

Offline Meridian

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Re: [DONE][Suggestion] Longer search strings with 'Q'
« Reply #6 on: February 06, 2024, 08:23:00 pm »
I made the space by removing one line from the list.