I have tested it with that name, and filter should alwasy select the first file, so on D it wil select first file that starts with D, and it should happen regardless if anything was selected in files list before activating the filter
Spacebar works in filter only if Spacebar Preview is off in Settings>Preview. That was always like that. I don't know if that's the best way, but I was aiming for consistency and assumption that preview is more useful in preview than testing for space in name