Suggestion: the ‘quick search’ function should filter the displayed items instead of just moving the cursor

Support for Android version of Total Commander

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aasasd
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Suggestion: the ‘quick search’ function should filter the displayed items instead of just moving the cursor

Post by *aasasd »

Hi. Feature suggestion: the function ‘134 Keyboard for quick search’ shouldn't just move the cursor to an item matching the entered letters—instead, it should pop up a text input field and filter the displayed file list by the entered text.

Rationale: quick search, as it exists now, is rather finicky and unpredictable. Basically it only moves to the next item by its first letter—when I try more than one letter, it works only sporadically. It's not possible to jump to another item by the same letters. The cursor doesn't seem to move backward. Overall, if the file list is sorted by date and not by the names, the quick search is useless.

Instead of that, I'd like to present the filtering functionality as it exists in Double Commander, and suggest that TCA implements ‘quick search’ similarly. (I don't remember if desktop TC has such filtering or just matching on the initials, as I don't use Windows anymore—but I seem to recall that alt-letters worked in a similar manner.)

In DC, when I press alt+letter by default (or just a letter in my configuration), an input field appears, and the panel lists only items that have the input text as a substring. When the filter is active, I can press Tab to move the cursor back to the panel and navigate among only the filtered items. Alternatively, Enter activates the first item immediately, and F-keys likewise work without Tab-bing first. The Escape key cancels the filter, when the focus is either in the input field or in the panel.

Here in the screenshot I have a filter on the string ‘pref’ in a directory that actually has 68 items. Note that it matches anywhere in the file names. (The filter has some options, but those aren't material to the proposed functionality.)

Image: https://i.imgur.com/OqmdmZD.png

This function proved incredibly useful to me. In lists with more than a dozen items, it's much faster to jump to the item I want by pressing a few keys instead of moving the cursor—especially since I have the filter configured to appear when just letters are pressed, without modifiers, and I'm a touch-typist. Plus, if I know the file has the string somewhere in the name but not at the beginning, I still can find it quickly.

In Total Commander on Android, I browse long file lists rather often: when connecting to desktop machines and looking for downloads, documents, media to load onto the phone, etc. Also in downloads and documents on the phone itself. On a rooted phone, looking for an app in the data dir can be quite tedious. In all these cases, I usually know what I'm looking for, but have to scroll though the list to find it.

My suggestion is that, when the ‘Keyboard for quick search‘ button is pressed, a text input field appears at the bottom of the screen (above the virtual keyboard if there's one). On each change in the input, the file list displays only the items that match this text anywhere in the name. The user should still be able to scroll the list and open the files, invoke the long-tap menu, etc. When opening a file or doing file operations, the filter should still be kept applied in the panel. When going into another directory, it should reset and disappear. If the files change on the device, the filter should be applied when redisplaying the list. A button to cancel the filter should be displayed next to the input field, and also the ‘back’ button of the device cancels the filter if it's in action, instead of going to the parent directory.

For hardware-keyboard users, I guess something like alt+letter can be set up as the shortcut to invoke the filter. The Tab button should move the cursor from the input field to the file list (I don't think that it's feasible to not focus the field at all, since backspace should modify the filter string). Enter in the input can activate the first of the filtered items (or the focused one if the panel cursor was moved), and Escape cancels the filter.

I realize that this request is a bit of a tall order, since it introduces a new state that must be kept for each panel, and changes the procedure of displaying the file list. But it really is a very useful function judging from my Double Commander experience, and at least for me matches the use-cases of TCA rather well.

I also believe that this feature can fully replace the existing ‘quick search’: it's hard to imagine someone regularly using ‘quick search’ with the limitations that it has now and not being satisfied by filtering proposed here. Thus, I think workings of the existing button can be modified instead of introducing a new one.
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