Please support Chinese pinyin search

[treblam]

Please support Chinese pinyin search. For example, when search for a directory or file named "我的文档", it's faster to just type Chinese pinyin "wodewendang" than "我的文档", I hope this will be supported. Spotlight can do this, but I want Alfred to replace it.

[Andrew]

Please support Chinese pinyin search. For example, when search for a directory or file named "我的文档", it's faster to just type Chinese pinyin "wodewendang" than "我的文档", I hope this will be supported. Spotlight can do this, but I want Alfred to replace it.

 

Do you have anything installed which enables Spotlight to be able to search using pinyin? I've named a file 我的文档 and when I use Spotlight (or use mdls), can't see any reference to wodewendang, and 我的文档 isn't found.

 

Cheers,

Andrew

[deanishe]

It only works when you have the Pinyin keyboard/Input Source activated.

 

When you start typing Latin characters, OS X shows a little pop-up at the cursor containing the Chinese ideograms it can convert the Latin to. In Spotlight, it searches using the suggested ideograms as a query, not the Latin characters you actually entered.

 

Activate Pinyin input and 我的文档 will pop right up when you search for "wode…" in Spotlight.

Edited February 23, 2015 by deanishe

[treblam]

It only works when you have the Pinyin keyboard/Input Source activated.

 

When you start typing Latin characters, OS X shows a little pop-up at the cursor containing the Chinese ideograms it can convert the Latin to. In Spotlight, it searches using the suggested ideograms as a query, not the Latin characters you actually entered.

 

Activate Pinyin input and 我的文档 will pop right up when you search for "wode…" in Spotlight.

 

Thanks for your explanation.

[treblam]

Do you have anything installed which enables Spotlight to be able to search using pinyin? I've named a file 我的文档 and when I use Spotlight (or use mdls), can't see any reference to wodewendang, and 我的文档 isn't found.

 

Cheers,

Andrew

Hi, Andrew, please look the comment by deanishe.

[Andrew]

I've added a ticket to investigate this

[treblam]

I've added a ticket to investigate this

 

Thanks

[Vero]

Thanks

 

I've been investigating this and if I use the Pinyin input source and type "wodewendang", the four correct Chinese characters appear in a sub-bar. I then simply need to press 1 (to choose the first option it presents me with) to convert the Roman characters into Chinese ones. Alfred then finds the file based on the Chinese file name.

 

Have you tried it that way? It feels quite straightforward and allows you to confirm that's what you want to search for.

 

 

[deanishe]

That works, of course, but you kind of have to Alfred before you can Alfred if you know what I mean.

[treblam]

I've been investigating this and if I use the Pinyin input source and type "wodewendang", the four correct Chinese characters appear in a sub-bar. I then simply need to press 1 (to choose the first option it presents me with) to convert the Roman characters into Chinese ones. Alfred then finds the file based on the Chinese file name.

 

Have you tried it that way? It feels quite straightforward and allows you to confirm that's what you want to search for.

 

 

 

Yes, I know this. But this is not what I mean. 

 

The functionality I was talking about is this: when your current input method is English, but you want to search for some directories or files named in Chinese. In Spotlight you just need to type the Pinyin in English, and the results will show up. The key here is that you don't need to switch to Chinese input method first, then type the Pinyin, then choose the right candidate characters. So the pinyin search reduce 3 steps to 1 step, and it's more productive.

 

As for the example I provided above,  I type wode with English input method in Spotlight, the file "我的文档" didn't show up, I believe it's a bug in Spotlight's implementation. In other situations it's OK. So I choose another example: If I want to search for files named "集客", but I am currently in English input method(we are not always in Chinese input method, sometimes we need to input English, for example we need to type urls when we browse websites), I open Spotlight, and just type jike with English input method, and the results will show up. Look the screenshot below:

 

Edited April 4, 2015 by treblam

[oakley]

Hi, I have same requirement, especially, some app name is Chinese. It makes can not access the app through alfred2.

[cos2004]

This is exactly what I want, hope to add this feature

[jaywang]

Yes, I know this. But this is not what I mean. 

 

The functionality I was talking about is this: when your current input method is English, but you want to search for some directories or files named in Chinese. In Spotlight you just need to type the Pinyin in English, and the results will show up. The key here is that you don't need to switch to Chinese input method first, then type the Pinyin, then choose the right candidate characters. So the pinyin search reduce 3 steps to 1 step, and it's more productive.

 

As for the example I provided above,  I type wode with English input method in Spotlight, the file "我的文档" didn't show up, I believe it's a bug in Spotlight's implementation. In other situations it's OK. So I choose another example: If I want to search for files named "集客", but I am currently in English input method(we are not always in Chinese input method, sometimes we need to input English, for example we need to type urls when we browse websites), I open Spotlight, and just type jike with English input method, and the results will show up. Look the screenshot below:

 

This is the behavior on my Mac too.  I believe you need to add China to you language(doesn't have to be the first or display language) and maybe set your region to China, so that the system would index filename's pinyin too.

 

I know for sure that if your language setting is English, Contacts and iTunes won't index pinyin of anything, and from the screenshot above spotlight seems to work the same way.

 

This feature is crucial for Chinese user, typing Chinese instead of just pinyin is woefully slow for quick search. For now I don't use Alfred for searching because of this, and make my own workflow ( where I translate Chinese app names to pinyin "keyword") so that I can even comfortably launch apps.

Edited July 20, 2016 by jaywang