Searchbar sorting issue

[tlecomte]

The criteria for sorting the output of the search bar look strange.... See this example : I have the "Active Contours" plugin installed. I want to run it. I type "active" in the search bar, and I get:

I get a whole lot of meaningless results ! Most of the command results are not relevant, since "active" only appears in the command description, not in the command name. It's even worse for "Widefield Fluorescence Miscroscope PSF" and Matlab Communicator, where "active" is found as part of "interactive" and "refractive"...

And the worst of the worst is that "Active Contours" does not even appear at all !! I expect users to remember the name of the plugin once they have used it a couple of times, and then they will probably use that name in the search bar.

Some suggestions :

• Do not sort by category at all. I don't see any reason for commands to be displayed first.
• Instead sort by giving each result a score. Since a Bayesian scheme is probably out-of-scope right now, I propose the following rules : 1) If the searched word appears as first word in the title, give 10 points 2) If the searched word appears elsewhere in the title, give 5 points 3) If the searched word appears in the description, give 2 point 4) If the searched word appears in the doc, give 1 point 5) If there is multiple occurences, add the points (appears as first word in the title and once in the description => 12 points). 6)If the searched word appears inside a longer word (such as "refractive" for "active"), divide the above score by 2.
• Display the result type (Command, Installed plugin or online plugin) on the right of each result, maybe with an additional color code (dark blue = command, dark green = installed plugin, dark red = online plugin). If it is on the right, it will catch a little less the eye, and I think that's desirable, since we don't really care if it is a command or a plugin. I can see why Spotlight in Mac OS sorts the results by type : it's because the user knows if he is looking for an app or a file. But in Icy, every result is basically a command (unless you plan to allow the user to search for a sequence. They would deserve their own category).

I hope these ideas can be useful !

[Stephane-D]

Local and command results are now sorted, just remain additional sorting from online plugin. About the categorization, i think we need them as any plugin can actually provide result to the search engine. Currently we only have command and plugin, but soon we will add protocols and later we would see others things in there.

[tprovoost]

Hi,

Just to add some stuff about the sorting:

• a command that is not clickable should not appear at all
• a plugin that is not actionnable should be grey'd out and put at the end of the "Local Plugins" (to show that it is installed, but it is a library).