Selective catalog searching for seldom-used catalog sources [feature request]

[thisisconlan]

Problem: I use some catalog sources more than others. And there are some catalog items I very rarely use, but don't want to remove from the catalog entirely. I would like a way to prevent these rarely used items from appearing in QS results until some specific action is invoked.

Example: My example is iTunes music. I don't usually control iTunes from QS, but occasionally I like to quickly start playing a song or playlist via QS. The rest of the time however, seeing iTunes results when I search is just unnecessary clutter.

Possible Feature: My idea is to only include certain catalog sources in search results after a (user-specified?) minimum of 4 characters have been typed into the search field. This way, in most of my QS interactions (which only use a couple characters to get to the item I want), I wouldn't have to see the rarely used items in the search results. But if I wanted to invoke one of those items, I could keep typing a few more characters and then those items would start appearing. This may not be the best way to solve the problem.

[pjrobertson]

There is already something similar to what you suggest, which I think works much better:

Disable the iTunes music catalog entry, and then just search for iTunes and press →. This is also possible for many other things:

• If you don’t want to index all files in a folder, just add the folder to the catalog, then press →
• To get at your contacts, find ‘Contacts.app’ and hit →

I think making Quicksilver change its search scope after a certain number of keystrokes would be misleading and confusing, not to mention how Quicksilver would deal with ranking items based on the mnemonics (search terms) used to find them.

Try out searching for iTunes and pressing →. It’s really good. And you’re right, having your entire iTunes library in QS is crazy!

On 18 Ion 2014, at 08:10, thisisconlan notifications@github.com wrote:

Problem: I use some catalog sources more than others. And there are some catalog items I very rarely use, but don't want to remove from the catalog entirely. I would like a way to prevent these rarely used items from appearing in QS results until some specific action is invoked.

Example: My example is iTunes music. I don't usually control iTunes from QS, but occasionally I like to quickly start playing a song or playlist via QS. The rest of the time however, seeing iTunes results when I search is just unnecessary clutter.

Possible Feature: My idea is to only include certain catalog sources in search results after a (user-specified?) minimum of 4 characters have been typed into the search field. This way, in most of my QS interactions (which only use a couple characters to get to the item I want), I wouldn't have to see the rarely used items in the search results. But if I wanted to invoke one of those items, I could keep typing a few more characters and then those items would start appearing. This may not be the best way to solve the problem.

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[thisisconlan]

You're probably right. The more I think about it, it doesn't seem worth the work and added complexity. There's probably a way to get things to work the way I want by monkeying with triggers and whatnot. I'm going to leave this issue open for a little while in case anyone else has thoughts. Then I'll probably just close it.

[philostein]

A way to catalog the top level items of some plugins without cataloging the contents would be neat. You could then have triggers for 'Bookmarks/Playlists ⇥ Show Contents' to browse just the stuff you're looking for without cluttering up the catalog the rest of the time.

'Browse Tracks⇥Show Contents' is a perfect example of this method, as is 'Contacts.app⇥Show Contents' when Contacts is unchecked in Catalog preferences.

[skurfer]

First and foremost, you might want to set “Show other results” to Never (in the Command section of the preferences). That way, you never have to see anything but the best match (which is usually right), unless you explicitly request more results by hitting ↓. I’ve done this for as long as I can remember.

Speaking about iTunes specifically, it doesn’t put anything in the catalog, really. The only thing it adds are playlists, which is a drop in the bucket (for me, anyway). What @pjrobertson suggests often works, but in this case, if you disable the playlist catalog preset, you won’t see them when right-arrowing into iTunes either.

But in general, there are a lot of things you can access without adding them to the catalog by right-arrowing into something else.

Some other tips:

• Just add a few important folders to the catalog, but not their contents. You can always browse as deep as you want by selecting a folder and using → or /.
• To add just a few arbitrary files to the catalog (under 10.9), tag them with something like “Quicksilver Catalog” and use the File Attribute plug-in’s ability to add to the catalog based on tags.
• You can do more specific searches quickly by creating triggers for “Some Item ⇥ Search Contents”. There are several examples of this pre-defined with the iTunes plug-in (like Search Artists, Search Tracks, etc.)

[thisisconlan]

Thanks for the replies. I've tinkered with some triggers and the catalog to make it easier to do what I want. I think there are good enough solutions in place already, so I'm closing this ticket.