Search improvements
Welcome back. This is my last (or second to last) blog post for this year’s Google Summer of Code with Xfce and Thunar. Unlike previous weeks this time I have only one new thing to talk to you about. Searching in Thunar.
Most of you might have noticed that Thunar has had a significnt deficiency for a while. Thunar has been missing a decent solution for searching for files in the filesystem. Users could search for files in the selected directory, but even that was a pretty mediocre
experience, because results weren’t being filtered while searching. Fortunately there is another program under the Xfce umbrella that
makes searching for files a breeze. That program is, of course, Catfish. Unfortunately this status quo requires users to juggle between Thunar and Catfish even when searching for simple things.
In the past two weeks I’ve been working on two things. First, making Catfish easier to use through Thunar. Second improving Thunar’s built-in search features to make routine and/or simple searches possible without leaving Thunar. The first improvement is pretty straightforward.
A new button has been added that allows the user to open catfish with the specified search query from inside Thunar. As far as the improving the built-in search features goes, I’ve implemented a basic depth-limited recursive search in Thunar that is accessed from the location
bar, which can now be used as both a location bar and a search bar. As the user types his/her search query the view is updated with the results. For convenience in addition to the current directory and its subdirectories, Thunar searches the GTK-Recent database for eligible entries.
Instead of describing how all this works I would like to demonstrate state of things to you. Some small things are missing (like options for selecting whether the GTK-Recent database should be searched and a new `location` column that will be introduced), but the
core functionality has been implemented and is close to being merged.
Link to all my Merge Requests: link
Previous post
Previously I have written about how useful public cloud storage can be when starting a…
This is Part 2 of the "Karafka to Async Journey" series. Part 1 covered WaterDrop's…
For many software teams, documentation is written after features are built and design decisions have…
With the release of the FIPS 140-3 certified cryptographic modules for Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, Canonical…
Open source libraries are repositories of code that developers can use and, depending on the…
Last year, we had the opportunity to speak at Regent’s UX Conference (Regent’s University London’s…