A plea for the return of the IDimager V5 search bar feature

[Phrans]

Maybe it’s because I’m fairly new to Photo Supreme and not used to the tiny search bar in the upper right corner. For me, it doesn’t come near the capabilities and user friendliness of the way Hert had programmed this in ID Imager V5. For those who don’t know Idi V5 or never worked with it, a short description:
When entering Ctrl+F a search window was displayed on top of the screen, where you could build your search. A search line (search condition) consisted of 4 elements:
1. Fieldselect (drop down menu, including ‘any’ for searching through all indexed fields)
2. Operator 1 (drop down menu with many variations, including: Contains, Starts with, Is empty, Greater than etcetera)
3. The actual search text (free user text input)
4. Operator 2 (drop down menu with AND, OR) which, by clicking, entered a new search line below the previous one.
You could have as many search lines as you liked, but in most cases one or two lines were sufficient.
You could run the search by clicking OK, and if you were not happy with the results, you simply entered Ctrl-F again, and your search criteria were kept, so that you could alter them: change an operator, change your search text, add an extra search line etcetera.
Now that’s powerful and very straight forward!
In fact, I never ever worked with a Search function that good and user friendly, and I worked with many, many programs for information retrieval in my working career. Why on earth is a search function THAT good, put aside? If I was asked to teach students how to program a decent search function, I would take IDimager V5 as an example.
IDimager of course has the knowledge to install it again in Photo Supreme, maybe with even slight improvements. I would be very happy if that would be done, but maybe I’m just daydreaming.

Anyway, I made a request in Mantis: http://mantis.idimager.com/view.php?id=2957

[fbungarz]

Dear Phrans,
I must say, though I tend to complain a lot about things that I miss, I am actually very much impressed by PSU's search capabilities. In my experience they are way more powerful!

The dynamic search needs a bit getting used to and admittedly has its quirks (see http://forum.idimager.com/viewtopic.php?f=57&t=24079), but it is a LOT more intuitive than the way this works in IDI. I never managed to get used to setting these checkmarks in IDI and the weird logic how to combine the red and green ones.

Ironically you may not have noticed that most of this still works in PSU (and much faster!): you can click a folder to quickly mark it, CTRL+click a second folder, images from both folders are displayed. Or click the first folder and SHIFT+click one below and all folders from the first to the last are quickly marked. And then start experimenting with ALT+SHIFT+click and ALT+CTRL+click ...

Apart from the dynamic search, you can actually still use a quick search for a particular keyword, label, folder, etc. etc. Simply open CTRL+F and a fast search box pops open just where you are in the catalog.

And finally: have you tried the search box in the top right corner? You can search for almost anything in the whole catalog or with the tiny arrow below the loupe restrict it to the current collection on display. Also enormously powerful!

I wouldn't be surprised if you change your mind, once you have explored all these ways to find images quickly with PSU.
I'd like to have a few things back, but this one? Not really...

Cheers,
Frank

[fbungarz]

PS: My catalog is pretty large (2 GB the catalog database, 22 GB the thumbs; >100.000 images). In comparison to IDI I am experiencing a bit of a lag-time searching for images, sometimes even several seconds, which is a bit of a nuisance. I compacted the database, no difference.
So, now I am rebuilding the search data, perhaps that will help:

Code: Select all

Catalog.BuildSearchData;
Say ('done.');

A general question: does it make sense to execute this script to rebuild the search data as part of a general maintenance routine, perhaps after compacting the database? To speed searching up...

[fbungarz]

Re-building the search data apparently did the trick. Really fast now...

[Phrans]

Hi Frank,

Thanks for your reply.

The Ctrl-F (green search bar) has a bug, which is being fixed, and then it's OK to me.
Direct filtering is also OK in PSU when the 'alt-click' bug is fixed. Unlike you, I was a real fan of the filter checkmarks in IDi, probably because I did get the logic!. The checkmarks in combination with the search bars were extremely useful to me.

The small search bar (upper right) in PSU is where I was referring to in comparison with the IDi V5 search feature (search bars).
I think it was waaaaay better (user friendly, precise, intuitive) in IDi V5 (as I described).
In PSU I'm struggling with the operators (+, -, ?, "") and tags (@CATITEM.FileName etcetera), which I think would be handier to choose from drop down menus. But more importantly: I don't get the results I expect to find. I never had that problem with the IDi V5 search feature: it did exactly what I expected.

But I will not go on complaining about it, I've said what I wanted to say about it and put a request in Mantis.
I don't really think there will be a follow-up on it, to be honest.

[vlad]

Hello Phrans,

Although it's a long time since I last used IdImager, I do remember that the old checkmarks in the Catalog Explorer allowed me (quite easily, IIRC) to compose fairly complex queries. That was indeed impressive - but let's now move over to Photo Supreme and review the status quo and what exactly could be improved.


Regarding queries via item selection in catalog explorer:

Although the catalog explorer provides for multiple selection of catalog items (even across different categories, in Catalog->All - sweet!), there are indeed some needless constraints on the queries which can be triggered that way. Shortly after Photo Supreme V3 was released, I submitted a feature request to enhance the selection+query logic: http://mantis.idimager.com/view.php?id=2674. I also submitted a FR to allow exactly the same logic in the Favorites area (as well as the Dynamic Search area): http://mantis.idimager.com/view.php?id=2676

Please vote for these proposed enhancements if you expect to benefit from them. (Frankly, I can't imagine any cons, since they would have virtually no impact on the visual interface).


Regarding the search bar (top right) in PSU:

In PSU I'm struggling with the operators (+, -, ?, "") and tags (@CATITEM.FileName etcetera), which I think would be handier to choose from drop down menus.

I would probably be satisfied with fully typed queries (the status quo), provided that the query language (based on FTS):
1) Was fully documented
2) Allowed complex queries

While Hert did an excellent job of documenting the search domains and properties (those are very neat, btw), I still don't understand which combined queries are supported and which are not. (For example, I'm still not sure if a query involving multiple domains is supported. Heck, I don't even know how to search for all images that do *not* have 'France' or some other string in the metadata: http://mantis.idimager.com/view.php?id=2683 ) My impression is that complex queries are *not* possible in the search bar.

Given these limitations, would I prefer a search interface based on drop down menus? Not always (meaning: not as a replacement of the simple search bar), as I often search for a simple string. However, I would probably welcome an advanced search option which would offer a search interface based on drop down menus + remembering the last search, as described by Phrans. Having the existing search bar always visible (status quo) and, in addition, providing an advanced search (based on drop down menus) on demand would be...well, truly Supreme!

But more importantly: I don't get the results I expect to find.

I must say I've struggled with certain search results too. I have largely nailed down the expectation mismatch to the inconsistent treatment of image versions in conjunction with different search domains - not sure if that's an issue for you as well. (Again, I reported in detail my results vs my expectations inside ticket #2683.)

I never had that problem with the IDi V5 search feature: it did exactly what I expected.

In fact, I never ever worked with a Search function that good and user friendly, and I worked with many, many programs for information retrieval in my working career. Why on earth is a search function THAT good, put aside? If I was asked to teach students how to program a decent search function, I would take IDimager V5 as an example.

That's probably the highest praise I could imagine. Hert can be proud of such an accomplishment, even if it concerns a legacy product. (Let's however not conflate products and technologies: even if a commercial product is left behind for good, certain features and components could still be (re)considered in the context of current and future offerings.)

One tip, Phrans: you could still benefit in PSU from powerful filters based on macro commands. (Look inside the Filters dropdown.)

Regards,
Vlad

[Phrans]

Hi Vlad,

Thanks for your detailed explanation, which clears up some things for me.
I added my votes to some of your Mantis-tickets.

Would be great if one day an 'advanced search' option (or maybe it's 'easy search''?) with drop down menus was added (indeed, it doesn't have to replace the current search features), but I'm not really counting on it. I find it more and more frustrating that even though technology evolves, I'm not getting the feeling that working with this 'advanced' technology truly improves the way we work. Maybe I'm just getting old ...