On 12-09-19 06:49 PM, Andrej N. Gritsenko wrote:
>> As far as that goes, I'd strongly suggest switching that to something
>> like Ctrl+Shift+F to keep things intuitive and consistent with other apps.
>
>      You suggest Ctrl+Shift+F for upcoming filesystem search?
>

It makes sense. It's another kind of find and it's been my observation 
that programs bind the shifted version of a keyboard shortcut to either 
some kind of inverse (eg. Ctrl+Shift+Z = Redo, Shift+Tab = Previous, 
Ctrl+Shift+A = Invert Selection) or some "another kind of" (eg. 
Ctrl+Shift+V = Paste Special..., Ctrl+Shift+R = Reply to All) that's 
less likely to be desired.

>> When you use Ctrl+F in an office suite, or a web browser, or any other
>> app, it invariably means "find in current document" and the closest
>> thing a file manager has to a current document is the folder currently
>> being shown so it follows that the most intuitive use for the Ctrl+F
>> binding is as an enhanced alternative to the "show GTK+ prefix search
>> box" already bound in released versions of PCManFM.
>
>      Exactly what it does already - it opens a box to fast-find a file in
> the current context, i.e. directory. It does it for ages and that should
> stay bound to Ctrl+F for consistency with everything else.
>

Except that, to me, that sounds like a poor decision for the following 
reasons:

1. That functionality is already available by just focusing the file 
view and typing... and that's the de facto standard way that's common 
with every other file manager and Open/Save dialog I've ever used.

(I don't know about now, but Konqueror 3.5 actually launched KFind to 
search the whole hard drive if you hit Ctrl+F... possibly because the 
filter bar was manually-added and either always visible or always hidden)

2. This new functionality is a variation on the functionality already 
bound to that key which is probably closer to a human's intuitive 
understanding of "find", so it's not as if the keybinding's meaning 
would be taking on a whole new meaning.

(One could also make a case that defending the old behaviour is like 
defending ASCIIbetical sort for file listings rather than the 
natural/human sort all modern file managers use because that's what 
people have grown used to)

You could also put a prefix/substring/suffix/regex dropdown selector in 
the filter bar, default it to prefix, and make it remember its last 
setting. That would make the default behaviour effectively unchanged but 
would allow an elegantly intuitive way for people like me to get the 
behaviour we want.

3. Is there any way to do research on this? I know this is observer 
bias, but I've never found anyone who even THOUGHT to try Ctrl+F to get 
that prefix search behaviour. You just start typing in the view.

(And given how weird focus can be in the Open/Save dialogs or some 
applications using GTK's list view if you're tired or distracted, typing 
in the view by accident means almost everyone has probably noticed that 
feature at some point or other)

Heck, my first impression on discovering that binding when you drew my 
attention to it was. "Huh. Overeager keybinding without a reasonable use 
case, you think?" If that IS the result, then "because that's the way 
it's always been" wouldn't be a very good stance to take at all.

(And given that it's a hotkey bound in GTK+ code and originating in the 
GNOME team, the possibility that it was an impulsive, hubris-driven 
decision without much thought into how real people use their computers 
is very real)

4. If you want consistency, KDE's Dolphin file manager is already sort 
of half-and-half to retain some level of consistency with Konqueror 3.5. 
Their filter bar is bound to Ctrl+I, which I keep having to look up 
again because it's not memorable, but when you press Ctrl+F, you get a 
built-in re-implementation of KFind, pre-set to search the current 
folder recursively and the slow way.

Honestly, I'd go with binding Ctrl+F to the filter bar and adding the 
prefix/substring/suffix/regex dropdown with setting memory.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Everyone hates slow websites. So do we.
Make your web apps faster with AppDynamics
Download AppDynamics Lite for free today:
http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;258768047;13503038;j?
http://info.appdynamics.com/FreeJavaPerformanceDownload.html
_______________________________________________
Pcmanfm-develop mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/pcmanfm-develop

Reply via email to