search results

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wsp
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search results

Post by wsp »

I notice that in some note-taking programs -- such as My Notes Keeper and OneNote -- the list of results links to individual occurrences of a word or phrase, not merely to a note/document as whole. That is very helpful if you have long documents, because then you don't have to do a separate search in each document. Is there any possibility of seeing this feature in MyInfo in the future?
Bill
Petko
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Post by Petko »

I think OneNote shows only document with search results only one. It, however, allows you to go trough the document using Next and Previous result buttons, which is useful feature, which may appear in some of the future MyInfo versions.

My Notes Keeper shows all occurrences are separate items in the results, but I find it too cluttered, if you have many documents in the topic.
wsp
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Post by wsp »

Petko, thanks for refreshing my memory about OneNote (which I abandoned several years ago).

Next and Previous buttons in the results list would solve the problem very nicely.
Bill
Fred
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Post by Fred »

At this time, the highlighting of the finds vanish as soon as you put the focus into the editor pane, so I help myself with positioning the mouse on the scroll bar, then scrolling by moving the scroll bar within the scroll bar maintaining the mouse button pressed, the only way it seems to maintain those highlightings at this time.

Best solution would be to maintain the highlightings also when you do PgUp / PgDn, i.e. to have a possitility to switch the focus ONTO the editor pane but NOT WITHIN the editor pane, i.e. the cursor NOT being yet in it:

1. First you click on the search result item, this would give the focus to the text pane, and PgUp / PgDn would apply to the content of the text pane, and all highlighting there would be maintained.

2. Then only, when you click into that text pane, the text pane would become editable, and by this the highlighting would vanish.

THIS would be the perfect solution indeed; the other solution mentioned here, using the "search again" command for INTERNAL ITEM searching / text replacing, would be much much better than the current state of affairs, but would be an intermediate solution only:

Because, first, it would mix up the general search functionality (=by indices) with the local search functionality, and technically, the first up to now has nothing to do with the second, so why mix it up without need for this.

And because, second, MY solution here will maintain ALL highlightings of the global search, so you can, by doing several PgUp / PgDn in a row, have a look on ALL the finds (which may be multiple), before then, by clicking with the mouse on the right spot, choosing the paragraph you want for further reading or editing, whereas the aforementioned half-solution, with NextFind (=without the need to put in the search term in the find dialogue, that's understood, and that the progress in it) would only give you ONE "hit" at a time even when there are multiple hits, so you would need to do several "search again" just in order to know IF there are some other hits; my solution would bring you the real overlook upon your item, the "search again" "solution" would be a rather fractional one. Even if I had that "solution", in order to see speedily where I want to go, I would maintain my awkward mouse scrolling.

Please, fellow users, try out the two possibilities, my intermediate "solution" and searching again in the finding dialogue (and imagining you would not be forced to enter your search term again)... and you will see that what I propose here would solve our problem in a much better way, for all of us.
wsp
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Location: Washington, DC

Post by wsp »

Fred, your suggestion is ingenious, but I am unconvinced. You are treating this at a high theoretical level (e.g. worrying about mixing categories of search), whereas I see it as a small practical problem. Petko's proposed next and previous buttons would allow me to move effortlessly through the hits in a long document. I'm used to a system like this in Evernote (which uses a pair of arrow keys), and it seems to me that it works very well.
Bill
Fred
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Post by Fred »

wsp, I differenciate the two problems. Indeed, there is the deontological one, mixing up two functions when in fact they should be REUNITED... but which is impossible for technical reasons, the global search being another, totally different section of the program than the "find"/"find and replace" unit - but you are right, for most users this won't be of any importance.

The second problem, though, is a real one for every user. Whereas I am perfectly willing to concede that the "nextfind" solution is a viable intermediate solution, I try to make my point clear. If an item has several hits instead of just one, you must then trigger that "nextfind" command several times, and worse, you must trigger it even when there isn't but just one hit, just in case of; this is far from elegant (especially when you then need go back to the second or third hits of five or six).

On the other hand, the solution to have something like a "halfway-focus" is not my invention, but rather common in many other programs: Clicking on a "hit" will not go INTO the hit item, but will just go TO the hit item, preserving all highlighting there, and allowing you the use of PgUp/PgDn (and also Home and End and UpArrow and DownArrow) to have a complete overview of the item and all possible highlighted passages there.

Then only, after having chosen your passage to work further on, you go INTO the item, to edit, and by this only, the highlightings vanish, i.e. when your cursor is IN your text, not a second before. This overview WITH highlighting is extremely helpful and useful, AND it should be technically feasible without any problem, so why not have it - and the intermediate solution of NextFind / PrevFind could be preserved. So I'm not at all against your solution, but why being against mine?
wsp
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Post by wsp »

I'm not against your solution or any others if it's possible for Petko to incorporate more than one way to do it. I just don't want you to talk him out of the "next" and "previous" buttons!
Bill
Fred
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Post by Fred »

Hi wsp,

Sorry for my late answer, I normally just look into the first thread group, forgetting again and again there is this second one.

I see your point, talking him out of the other kind of doing this thing. No, I need all backup here I can get in order to convince Petko to optimize his / our / HIS MI, so that I clearly say, let's have your solution first! That's unequivocal, isn't it?

And then, there's even a third solution, combining the two others: Up and Dn Arrown show the prev / next hit in that current item, WITH the highlights still ON !!!!!

And then, any Enter would go to the end of the selected hit, any Space would go at its beginning - selected hit meaning, when the screen shows several highlighted hits, the one vertically centered on the screen, let's say the second one if there are two hits seen on screen, or otherwise the first hit in the middle third of three horizontal thirds (= let's remember in this case the text cursor isn't yet visible in the screen). But then, this combination is a rather elaborate thing (= 3 days' work), so again, let's have your solution first.
Fred
Posts: 216
Joined: Wed Jun 23, 2010 8:07 pm

Post by Fred »

( ONLY this first paragraph copied from "Miscellaneous" : ) The search functionality (= a third party add-on I suppose) does NOT work in an always reliable way. Non-english words are "found" even as parts of words, and that without entering any asterix, and that is true for single characters (vowels with accents, etc.) and for short words. For example, the french "il" and "elle" - "he" and "she" - are "found" within any word where those 2 or 4 characters are contained.

I've tried in vain to better identify this problem but it's ubiquitous and unpredictable in MI. Often, all's ok, and then, terms I want to find as a word (be they with accents or not, be they 1, 2 or several characters) are falsely "found" in the middle of other words.

And then, the same search brings about the same results, so the index building seems to be the problem, there is consistency in the false results.

And then, doing such a search having brought false "finds" not only on the current topic, but on all open topics, brings another clue: For such a single search and one search term, there are false "finds" in SOME of those searched topics, but not in others. That is to say, even when the search term that is wrongly "found" in one or some of the open topics searched all together, and even when that same search term SHOULD THEN be wrongly "found" in other topics since there it is ALSO contained in other words, and even in the SAME words as those in which it is indeed "found" in those former topics, it is NOT "found" in those.

This is to say, ONE search over several topics brings FALSE results for SOME of the topics and RIGHT results for the remaining topics!

This seems to prove that it's not the "searching" that is faulty = the evaluation of the index for results, but the index BUILDING, faulty for some topics, right for others.

(Since I'm a new user to MI, all my topics have been built with the same and only version of MI, the one I bought in June; thus, it's not that some topics are "old" and other "newer", the fault must be elsewhere... and is subsisting present-day.)
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