Bug 405343

Summary:	Typing invokes filter function (like Gnome Nautilus)
Product:	[Applications] dolphin	Reporter:	leftcrane <leftcrane>
Component:	bars: filter	Assignee:	Dolphin Bug Assignee <dolphin-bugs-null>
Status:	RESOLVED INTENTIONAL
Severity:	wishlist	CC:	nate
Priority:	NOR
Version First Reported In:	18.04.3
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Ubuntu
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description leftcrane 2019-03-11 09:56:17 UTC

The default typing behavior isn't ideal. To get a file by typing, you have to type the first characters of the file really fast. It would be better typing automatically invoked the filter function, which is much more user friendly.

Pressing control + I every time you want to drill down to a file isn't ideal. 

To see the proposed behavior in action, open Nautilus and start typing. You will get a list of search results, with the ones from the current directory appearing first.

It would be tough to implement efficient type-to-search on KDE, so instead i propose type-to-filter (or type-to-search on the current directory).

Comment 1 leftcrane 2019-03-11 09:58:00 UTC

Basically you start typing and it searches/filters the current directory, with the first result highlighted. Then you can just press enter and open the result.

Comment 2 Nate Graham 2019-03-16 23:46:18 UTC

Nope, sorry. Type-ahead and filtering are used for different things; you're proposing removing the type-ahead functionality entirely. In Nautilus, this is actually one of the most complained-about feature removals (see https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=680118) and I don't have any interest in going down that path. I personally consider it to be an anti-feature in GNOME and I find it to be just awful wherever it's implemented.

Comment 3 leftcrane 2019-03-18 13:51:08 UTC

How about editable type-ahead? This is the standard for GTK file managers. 

I really do prefer Nautilus's behaviour, but I doubt it's not going to happen cause that would be a huge technical challenge, one that would require KDE to adopt Gnome tech. People complained about it cause the performance was shit - but they've largely fixed that.

Comment 4 Nate Graham 2019-03-18 15:14:58 UTC

It's not that it would require us to adopt GNOME tech; we can do it too. It's a design decision that we don't have this (or rather, GNOME made the design decision to drop the conventional approach that we have and implement the feature).

Editable type-ahead makes sense. This is already tracked with Bug 395960.

Comment 5 leftcrane 2019-03-18 15:26:03 UTC

OK, makes sense to me.