Search my bookmarks without adding them to the Catalog?

[mason k]

I have 541 bookmarks.  I would like to use the Safari module to make them searchable via Safari Bookmarks (Catalog) -> Search Contents, without, however, adding them to the Catalog.

If I uncheck Safari Bookmarks in the Catalog, and then rescan my Catalog, quit and restart Quicksilver, then I Safari Bookmarks (Catalog) -> Search Contents starts to search an empty list.  So I don't see a way of searching the bookmarks without having them in the Catalog.  Is this how it is right now?

[Rob McBroom]

On Jul 14, 2012, at 7:07 PM, mason k wrote:

I have 541 bookmarks.  I would like to use the Safari module to make them searchable via Safari Bookmarks (Catalog) -> Search Contents, without, however, adding them to the Catalog.

If I uncheck Safari Bookmarks in the Catalog, and then rescan my Catalog, quit and restart Quicksilver, then I Safari Bookmarks (Catalog) -> Search Contents starts to search an empty list.  So I don't see a way of searching the bookmarks without having them in the Catalog.  Is this how it is right now?

If you right-arrow into Safari itself, you should be able to browse into Bookmarks Bar, Bookmarks Menu, and History whether their equivalents in the Catalog are enabled or not. I don’t think you can set a trigger to get to them, but you can at least access them.

-- 
Rob McBroom
<http://www.skurfer.com/>

[mason k]

Bummer.  I would have been ok with an untriggerable solution, but I can't actually search my bookmarks by arrowing in, either.  I'm going to turn them off for now.

If I wanted to take this as an opportunity to start hacking on QS plugins, is there any reference material for me to get started with?

[mason k]

Found it .(http://projects.skurfer.com/QuicksilverPlug-inReference.mdown)

[Patrick Robertson]

It should be possible to right arrow into Safari.app even with the catalog entries disabled. This was a bug in an earlier version of the plugin - make sure you have the latest (v2.1.3).

You could also try setting up a trigger for "Bookmarks Menu" ⇥ "Show Contenst" (get the 'bookmarks menu' item by right arrowing into Safari)

Found it .(http://projects.skurfer.com/QuicksilverPlug-inReference.mdown)

-- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Quicksilver group. To post to this group, send email to blacktree-...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to blacktree-quicks...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at https://groups.google.com/d/forum/blacktree-quicksilver?hl=en

[mason k]

Thanks Patrick for responding.  However, this isn't really what I'm looking for.  I want all my bookmarks to be searchable at once with Quicksilver's fuzzy matching.  Essentially, I want a separate catalog for bookmarks that I can trigger with a different key sequence.

If I want to get to Quicksilver - Google Groups using your suggested approach, this is the sequence

Trigger "Show contents of Safari" -> Down arrow -> left arrow -> Remember which folder it's in -> down arrow -> left arrow -> Remember which sub folder it's in -> down arrow twice -> left arrow -> down arrow 23 times -> Enter.

"Search contents" of Safari doesn't work either.  Only the 12 top-level folders are searched, QS does not expose actual bookmarks or recursively enter subdirectories.

 I'm trying to figure out a way to modify the Safari plugin to create a Bookmarks direct object with a Search Contents action.  That solves my problem here, and stretches me in terms of understand Obj-C and Quicksilver.  A more general solution would be a way of making any set of Catalog scanners into a separate Catalog.  Essentially, a way of maintaing n Catalogs on n different key sequences.

Found it .(http://projects.skurfer.com/QuicksilverPlug-inReference.mdown)

-- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Quicksilver group. To post to this group, send email to blacktree-quicksilver@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to blacktree-quicksilver+unsub...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at https://groups.google.com/d/forum/blacktree-quicksilver?hl=en

[Daniel]

A more general solution would be a way of making any set of Catalog scanners into a separate Catalog.  Essentially, a way of maintaing n Catalogs on n different key sequences.

That is an absolutely awesome idea (something I've thought of before, myself). +1 if there's anyone interested in implementing.

[Howard Melman]

On Jul 20, 2012, at 4:31 PM, Daniel wrote:

A more general solution would be a way of making any set of Catalog scanners into a separate Catalog.  Essentially, a way of maintaing n Catalogs on n different key sequences.

That is an absolutely awesome idea (something I've thought of before, myself). +1 if there's anyone interested in implementing.

So why is this useful? I'm sure there's something I'm not understanding. It strikes me as "I want to find this stuff but not have it in the catalog, well put it in the catalog". 

What's the issue with having one catalog with everything? When you want to find something it's still in there. Just type a little more the first few times and then QS learns. Are you browsing the results list rather than continuing to type to find something in it? 

Howard

[Jon Stovell]

Like Howard, I don't see what the issue is with having the bookmarks in the catalogue. A bookmark will only come up when the user types in a string that matches it, and if the bookmark in question is not what you want when you enter that string, QS will quickly learn that. Hiving them off into a separate function via a proxy object does not seem very useful to me.

But just because I don't see a need for this doesn't mean masonk doesn't. Basically, what masonk wants is the same behaviour for the Safari plugin as is used in the iTunes plugin. But if anything, I've always found that this sort of behaviour in the iTunes plugin was odd and annoying, and wish there were an option to put tracks, albums, artists, and playlist straight into the catalogue rather than using proxy objects. (Maybe if I had an enormous iTunes library I would think differently on this, but I don't, so I don't.) At any rate, if masonk wants to do the code work to add this functionality to the Safari plugin, fine, so long as it remains entirely optional and something that the user has to turn on for themselves in QS's settings. The default should be to use the method that currently exists.

[mason k]

Good morning all you fine Quicksilverers. I have a few pontifications to lavish.

In the words of the 20th century lama Chögyam Trungpa, "precision breeds relaxation." Having my Bookmarks in the Catalog triples the size of the Catalog, which is why I don't want it. (Having my iTunes music in there would multiply the size of the Catalog 100x and is laughably out of the question.)

In my father's carpentry shop, his single organizational principle is "ready to hand/out of the way". That is, each item in the shop must be either close to hand or out of the way. The reasoning behind each item's placement is actually less important than the discipline of the message: each item must be explicitly the one or the other. The human mind will certainly find excellent "whys" to fill in blanks.

In QS, this means that I carefully curate what goes into the Catalog. Perhaps hmelman has the answer: perhaps, given time, QuickSilver's machine learning will correctly organize the shop for me.  I certainly haven't given it enough time to claim that it doesn't. Less the possibility of that deus ex machina, each person needs to draw the line between "ready to hand" and "out of the way" differently. I do believe that the very act of drawing the line is a useful clarifying exercise: even if the computer would eventually (and implicitly) draw much the same lines on my behalf.

All of that said, "which water is too pure has no fish". So, I'm going to dump the bookmarks into my beautiful Catalog for a week and see whether I'm still rifling through garbage at the end.

On Saturday, July 21, 2012 12:32:53 AM UTC-4, hmelman wrote:

[Howard Melman]

FYI, my bookmarks add about 3000 items to the catalog and they don't get in the way.

To me it's like google. If what I want is the in the first page of results, I don't care if there are another 180,000 pages of them.

Howard

-- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Quicksilver group. To post to this group, send email to blacktree-...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to blacktree-quicks...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at https://groups.google.com/d/forum/blacktree-quicksilver?hl=en

[mason k]

It's not like Google, because I know what exactly what I'm looking for when I Quicksilver for something. Therefore, I don't expect there to be an intercolary step of picking that item out of a short list of possibilities.

-- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Quicksilver group. To post to this group, send email to blacktree-quicksilver@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to blacktree-quicksilver+unsub...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at https://groups.google.com/d/forum/blacktree-quicksilver?hl=en

[Rob McBroom]

On Jul 21, 2012, at 12:07 PM, Jon Stovell wrote:

But if anything, I've always found that this sort of behaviour in the iTunes plugin was odd and annoying, and wish there were an option to put tracks, albums, artists, and playlist straight into the catalogue rather than using proxy objects. (Maybe if I had an enormous iTunes library I would think differently on this, but I don't, so I don't.)

Heh. That sounds awful. For me, that would mean around 10,000 additional catalog entries. At the time when the iTunes plug-in was designed, Quicksilver’s performance would be noticeably reduced by that kind of thing. Even with the improvements it’s seen, I don’t think that would be unnoticed. I think it was a sensible trade-off (obviously, since I left it that way). Why have a performance hit for everything you do just to make something you do rarely a teensy bit faster. It’s not like you can’t get to those things extremely quickly as it is.

I thought Safari bookmarks were available even with the catalog entries off, since it works for history. Apparently, they aren’t.

I’m on the fence about whether or not they should be. I agree with the sentiment that you should just let things be in the catalog because Quicksilver will learn what you really care about, but the previous paragraph demonstrates that I’m not willing to take that to ridiculous extremes. I only have like 25 bookmarks. If I had thousands, I might feel differently.

On Jul 23, 2012, at 8:51 AM, mason k wrote:

So, I'm going to dump the bookmarks into my beautiful Catalog for a week and see whether I'm still rifling through garbage at the end.

If you find you can’t stand it, feel free to open an issue.

https://github.com/quicksilver/Quicksilver/issues

[Howard Melman]

I can appreciate that. My typical use model is to type until it's first. I'm curious to hear how your experiment goes.

Howard

-- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Quicksilver group. To post to this group, send email to blacktree-...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to blacktree-quicks...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at https://groups.google.com/d/forum/blacktree-quicksilver?hl=en

[David Rees]

The original question does have an issue, its https://github.com/quicksilver/Quicksilver/issues/1066. Also see this related discussion - https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/blacktree-quicksilver/bookmarks$20"show$20contents"/blacktree-quicksilver/cdvA2Ti6DaM/4k60JUXhIuYJ.

And as I am really wanting this again, and I have thought of an alternative solution that I want to share so I have an excuse for bringing it up again.

It still seems incredibly useful to have catalogs that are not in the global index, but that can be explicitly accessed through their catalog object. For example, search/hotkey for  "Chrome Bookmarks (Catalog)" then "Show Contents" to search just that catalog. This could be extended to custom catalogs for all kinds of things - selected files searched by Spotlight query, bash history, headers in documents. By allowing non-global catalogs we expand what QS can be used with effectively. 

I'll add that the catalog attribute naming implies that this is possible by having two checkboxes " "Include in Global Catalog" and "Maintain an index of contents", but the latter never seems to be settable by itself.

An alternative approach that accomplishes something similar would be catalog priorities. So a catalog could be marked low/high priority and its contents would be initially ranked lower or higher. So these explicit-only catalogs could be marked low so their items end up at the bottom. And the high could be useful for indicating top areas like "recent documents" or current project somehow. That would keep the "everything global" people happy while still letting us "scope lovers" isolate the less interesting items at the bottom of the list.

That said, I agree with Daniel that mason's idea of multiple global catalogs is a very powerful idea as well. It enables more than explicit catalogs because you mix/match catalog types. There could multiple "global" catalogs that the user could activate. It would allow the user to create different collections of catalogs. They could have different global catalogs for different use cases, for example:

* dev catalog - code files, git repositories, bookmarks, bash histories

* work - work folders, contacts

* personal - journal, photos, and music. 

Global catalogs would be a new catalog. And global catalogs would get the new action "make active catalog". We could even add that action to regular catalogs allowing the user to make any regular catalog the "active" catalog for a while. Users could then create triggers as needed.

The bezel would probably need to be updated to show the catalog the user is searching in (which would be useful for the existing Show/Search Contents also).

I've created https://github.com/quicksilver/Quicksilver/issues/1510 for this idea.

d

 

[David Rees]

On quick additional thought on this is its important to consider new users (or in my cases old users on a new machine :). The fact that QS will eventually be tailored to your to items isn't much solace to a user who is arrowing through a thousand bookmarks looking for a Word doc.

d

[Howard Melman]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding something, but I think if you're arrowing through results lists, you're doing it wrong.

Quicksilver was not made to have you scroll through an alphabetical list of a thousand anything.

Just keep typing the letters of the name until the thing you want is first.

If you have no idea what the name of it is, use spotlight (to search the contents).

Howard

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Quicksilver" group.

> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to blacktree-quicks...@googlegroups.com.

> To post to this group, send email to blacktree-...@googlegroups.com.

> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/blacktree-quicksilver?hl=en.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
>
>

[David Rees]

Or having to type 15 characters before you have narrowed down the list to the item you want (which can happen with lots of bookmarks since they have so many characters in them).

d

On Monday, June 3, 2013 5:05:06 PM UTC-7, hmelman wrote:

Maybe I'm misunderstanding something, but I think if you're arrowing through results lists, you're doing it wrong.

Quicksilver was not made to have you scroll through an alphabetical list of a thousand anything.

Just keep typing the letters of the name until the thing you want is first.

If you have no idea what the name of it is, use spotlight (to search the contents).

Howard

On Jun 2, 2013, at 10:20 PM, David Rees <da...@ubiqsoft.com> wrote:

> On quick additional thought on this is its important to consider new users (or in my cases old users on a new machine :). The fact that QS will eventually be tailored to your to items isn't much solace to a user who is arrowing through a thousand bookmarks looking for a Word doc.
>
> d
>
> On Monday, July 23, 2012 8:40:40 AM UTC-7, hmelman wrote:
> FYI, my bookmarks add about 3000 items to the catalog and they don't get in the way.
>
> To me it's like google. If what I want is the in the first page of results, I don't care if there are another 180,000 pages of them.
>
> Howard
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Quicksilver" group.

> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to blacktree-quicksilver+unsub...@googlegroups.com.