Consider speeding up the 'search for books' feature which takes 10 seconds on my HTC Hero

[GoogleCodeExporter]

The current implementation (r143) 
http://code.google.com/p/android-daisy-epub-reader/source/detail?r=143 searches 
the entire sdcard for possible books. It doesn't provide any feedback to the 
user while it's searching, and takes about 10 seconds on my phone - which 
provides a poor user-experience.

We have already considered limiting the search to the first 2 levels of folders 
as one possible optimization on the assumption that books will generally be 
stored near the root of the sdcard, however this assumption may limit the 
ability of some users to manage their books.

Perhaps we can implement a background search capability and start displaying 
books as soon as we get the first few results. We'd need to carefully consider 
the user-experience (UX) aspects especially for users with visual impairments. 
as a 'searching...' message may be confusing.

Other work e.g. the enhancement in issue 16 
http://code.google.com/p/android-daisy-epub-reader/issues/detail?id=16 may help 
mitigate the delay.

I'd like to significantly improve performance and/or the UX before we launch 
the application on Android Market.

Original issue reported on code.google.com by julianharty on 28 Jun 2010 at 3:00

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Now the user can specify the root folder for their books, it's possible to 
minimize any unwanted search time by creating a single folder on the sdcard 
e.g. called daisybooks then set that folder as the default folder e.g. 
/sdcard/daisybooks/ 

Note: the software requires the trailing / at the end of the name of the root 
folder.

I hope to make the default folder easier to select e.g. when browsing for books 
on the filesystem.

Original comment by julianharty on 5 Jul 2010 at 10:59