force consecutive characters?

[James McLean]

I know that a big part of the power of Quicksilver is that while looking for something, the letters you type don't need to be consecutive in the target.  However, sometimes I know a set of consecutive letters in my target, and Quicksilver can't find what I want because it doesn't know that.  At least, the target I want must be somewhere in the results, but it is WAAAY too much hassle to look through the results.

Is there a way to tell Quicksilver that for the current search, the letters typed should be consecutive?  (I don't want to do this for every invocation.)

[Stuart Docherty]

Seemingly not... am in a similar boat.. now struggling to see what the attraction is for everyone in this program...

On Wed, Jan 18, 2023 at 2:31 PM James McLean <mcl...@geneseo.edu> wrote:

I know that a big part of the power of Quicksilver is that while looking for something, the letters you type don't need to be consecutive in the target.  However, sometimes I know a set of consecutive letters in my target, and Quicksilver can't find what I want because it doesn't know that.  At least, the target I want must be somewhere in the results, but it is WAAAY too much hassle to look through the results.

Is there a way to tell Quicksilver that for the current search, the letters typed should be consecutive?  (I don't want to do this for every invocation.)

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Stuart Docherty
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stubo...@gmail.com

[Nathan Henrie]

I think what you're looking for is to change results matching from "best guess" to "filter results" (going from memory). I think the default keyboard shortcut is command arrow (right or left), once you've started a query, which makes it quick and easy to change the setting on the fly.

Should probably add this to https://qsapp.com/manual/Introduction/#matching, I think I'd been using QS for nearly a decade before I discovered this. Then again I'm not big on reading manuals so maybe that's on me :)

Hopefully that helps.

Stuart you are certainly under no obligation to use our free software if it doesn't fit your process. Alfred and Raycast are interesting alternatives under more active development. QS has always appealed to me above the competition due to customizability and being FOSS, which means I can peek under the covers, develop my own plug-ins, or even contribute back to the project if I see an opportunity for improvement.

Nate

On Jan 17, 2023, at 9:34 PM, Stuart Docherty <stubo...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[James McLean]

I use both "Filter Catalog" and "Snap to Best" search modes, and in fact I find Quicksilver fabulously clever in automatically choosing the mode I want, in ways that I don't fully understand.  However, those modes only change the way that the results are presented, not which items are matched or their ranking.

[Nathan Henrie]

Interesting, perhaps I'm misunderstanding you then. It definitely changes which items are shown for me.

1. QS -> "Desktop" ->

2. Snap to Best

3. "prod"

4. 39 results

5. change to "filter results"

6. "Desktop" ->

7. "prod"

8. 2 results

Nate

On Wed, Jan 18, 2023, at 8:25 AM, James McLean wrote:

I use both "Filter Catalog" and "Snap to Best" search modes, and in fact I find Quicksilver fabulously clever in automatically choosing the mode I want, in ways that I don't fully understand.  However, those modes only change the way that the results are presented, not which items are matched or their ranking.

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[Stuart Docherty]

Of course... and I will follow up those options...

Because it is easy to open, each day, as I am working, I will throw a search item at it and am continually befuddled at it's inability to find the item and the obscure results that it throws up.....

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[Nathan Henrie]

Sorry you're having that experience. Please fill out an issue on GitHub so we can get enough information to try to help.

Nate

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[James McLean]

Hi Nate,

My understanding is that Snap to Best will show more "results" because it lists everything in that source, regardless of whether they match.  Am I right to guess that you have 39 items on your Desktop, only 2 of which have p-r-o-d in their name?  And that the highlighted item with "Snap to Best" is the same as the top item with "Filter Results"?  That is, the same item "ranks" highest, but it is shown in a different context.

I use "Snap to Best" after I have arrowed into a text file, where it is helpful to see the lines around the top-ranked matched line.  (For a source with a less defined order, such as "Desktop", I don't know what order "Snap to Best" chooses.)  The down side is that the 2nd ranked match might be far away in the list.  Maybe that is an alternate solution for me: in Snap to Best, is there a way to jump to the 2nd ranked match?

In my original query, I was hoping for a way to make "prod" match "Product List" but not "PlopRunOverDitch".  Or at least rank the first higher than the second by default.  Of course, if I select "Product List" a few times, QS will learn to prefer that.  But in my specific use case, I never have need to select the same thing multiple times, so QS never has a chance to learn.

[Rob McBroom]

It’s possible to write different plug-ins to customize the way strings are matched, but that’s pretty heavy handed and unlikely to happen. Personally, I prefer the TextStart Ranker plug-in which places more weight on letters at the beginning of words and capital letters. It might be worth a look. (If you install it, be sure to enable it under Preferences → Handlers.)

Either way though, Quicksilver learns what you’re after very fast. What I do in a situation where my search has too many results is just type more characters to narrow it down (even if it’s more than I would normally be willing to type), then run whatever action on the thing I was looking for.

Simply “using” the located item in this way once or twice causes it to be ranked higher in the results in the future. So there’s a good chance that the next time you type whatever small number of characters come natural to you, that item will be higher if not the top result.

If you would like to short-circuit this learning process, there’s also the Assign Abbreviation… action.

1. Search for and select the desired item
2. ⇥ to the second pane and select Assign Abbreviation…
3. ⇥ to the third and and type what you want to use to find that item
4. Hit ↩

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Rob McBroom