Quicksilver is easy to use, but it is unfortunately not intuitive.
It's one of the reasons I decided to write a manual for it. Having
100 different plugins means it is configurable in many different ways,
but it also means that there is a lot to know. The manual hopefully
will help you. I tried to include everything but also to explain how
things work so you can learn to explore on your own. http://mysite.verizon.net/hmelman/Quicksilver.pdf
No you don't have to enter everything individually. The catalog
allows you to configure "sources" that are scanned to populate the
catalog. One source is look in the ~/Documents folder and find all
the files in it and and 1 level down. This is the default to avoid
having too large a catalog but it also throws people off that not all
their documents are indexed. To be more counter-intuitive, this
default source can't be modified, but it can be cloned and you can
change the depth search of the clone. Instructions for this are in
the catalog section of the manual (including screenshots which I think
really helps explain things).
In addition to the catalog (the index of things) you can also use QS
to navigate to any file. If you type ~ it will go to your home folder
and then typing → or / will go down a level where you can type the
name of a subfolder and then type → or / to go into that and down to
any file. This is an alternative to having to have everything in the
catalog which would slow QS down.
As for music files, the way to get to them is to install the iTunes
plugin. This makes playlists available in the catalog but not
individual tracks. You can get to them by navigating by genre, artist,
albums, etc. Again it's easier than it sounds and there are
instructions with screenshots in the manual.
Some of the tutorials on this page might be helpful too, though some
are based on very old versions of Quicksilver.
http://docs.blacktree.com/quicksilver/tutorials?DokuWiki=970ffb5260de891bf765937511c1c056
The dock icon issue is a common complaint and I'm not sure if it's
just flakey or an actual bug.
It took me about a week of using quicksilver before I really started
to get it. And now I'd be lost without it. It's unfortunate that it's
not intuitively obvious on first use, but not everything is. Hopefully
future versions will be better at this.
Howard
On May 11, 2008, at 12:04 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
So i read so much positive things about QS. But actually this is one
of the most non-intuitive programs i ever saw.
Let´s start with some funny option: i configured QS not to show the
icon in the dock (this wasn´t possible until editing some file in
order to make it possible to remove that check box). But at least
after relaunching QS the icon is still there in the dock. Is this a
bug?
Then there is the catalog. Why can´t i just type name parts of MP3s
or
picture or anything else? QS won´t find anything of this. Well, then,
have a look inside the prefs. There surely has to be a solution. You
wish! There is written something about "Modify the list of searchable
items". That sounds right! But i couldn´t find a checkbox saying
"just
search ANYTHING i type in", nor could i search for "MP3" or "Images".
All i could do is chose folders or single files within that folders!
Are we supposed to add every single item manually?? What if i have a
100,000 files? Sorry, but this is ridiculous. I added that folder in
the "custom" field containing some music (even though i´d expect the
program to index all items by itself), but it will only look at the
folder, ignoring the contents.
Sorry, but what´s wrong with this program?
