Keyword-order-insensitive Clipboard History Search

[ssppjj]

Hi,

 

It seems that currently Clipboard history search is keyword-order-sensitive, i.e. searching "bar foo" doesn't match record "foo bar". Is it possible to make it keyword-order-insensitive?

 

Thanks!

[deanishe]

Technically, yes, it's absolutely possible and very simple to implement, but Alfred currently doesn't support it.

 

@Andrew, Alfred's developer, tends quite strongly towards stricter matching, and he doesn't implement anything without giving it a lot of thought first, so my recommendation would be to post a feature request with some good, concrete examples of how out-of-order matching is better/more useful than strict, in-order matching.

[Andrew]

2 hours ago, deanishe said:

Technically, yes, it's absolutely possible and very simple to implement.

 

There is so much more to consider than this just being "simple to implement" though, especially with a significant data set such as the clipboard history. There is a very sensitive balance between getting useful matches vs noisy irrelevance.

 

As @deanishe said, some decent concrete examples may help shape future matching.

[deanishe]

6 minutes ago, Andrew said:

There is so much more to consider than this just being "simple to implement" though

 

Hence the rest of my comment  

[ssppjj]

Cool. Feature request posted: 

Thanks, guys! Alfred has been great. I wish I'd gotten Powerpack sooner!

[deanishe]

Umm … That's kinda the opposite of what I recommended (and Andrew reinforced). "Foo" and "bar" are not concrete examples. They're made-up words never used outside of examples. You need to provide real-world, understandable examples that show the superiority of your suggestion.

 

Like I said, out-of-order matching is super simple, so it's absolutely not something Andrew doesn't know about. He chose in-order matching for a reason. You need to demonstrate why that was not the best choice if you want it changed, and "foo" and "bar" aren't going to do it.

 

Also, FZF absolutely does not work that way. It uses strictly in-order matching. "foo bar" will not match "bar foo" in FZF.

[ssppjj]

On 7/30/2019 at 7:17 PM, deanishe said:

Umm … That's kinda the opposite of what I recommended (and Andrew reinforced). "Foo" and "bar" are not concrete examples. They're made-up words never used outside of examples. You need to provide real-world, understandable examples that show the superiority of your suggestion.

 

Like I said, out-of-order matching is super simple, so it's absolutely not something Andrew doesn't know about. He chose in-order matching for a reason. You need to demonstrate why that was not the best choice if you want it changed, and "foo" and "bar" aren't going to do it.

 

Also, FZF absolutely does not work that way. It uses strictly in-order matching. "foo bar" will not match "bar foo" in FZF.

 

 

OK. I'll try to find you a good example. In general, it's cases when I want to narrow down search results using more words regardless of their order.

 

BTW, FZF seems to work that way for me: 

 

[deanishe]

2 hours ago, ssppjj said:

BTW, FZF seems to work that way for me

 

Yes, you’re completely right. Sorry for the nonsense comment.