HaikuDepot search term

[lorglas]

Hello there, I noticed when entering the depot in a search box, which are all available apps displayed. However, I expect the Apps with A, not all. It would be better if you were since the characters * for all app.

[diver]

Not sure what you mean. Could you expand on that?

[lorglas]

I've added a screenshot , I hope it is now understandable .

[taos]

Is it possible that descriptions are searched, too? Most of the descriptions in the screenshot contain an "a" somewhere.

[diver]

This is exactly what's happening here and it was implemented on purpose. This way you can find packages which name or summary you forgot or might not even know.

[humdinger]

I'll close the ticket then. If the search box is used as intended, i.e. searching for one or more keywords, it works pretty well. Alphabetical listing of all applictions isn't really useful when the number of packages gets bigger. Limiting to certain categories is also helpful, though I think this isn't yet completely implemented yet.

[tangobravo]

A drop down of what to search (Name / Keywords / Description, all can be toggled independently) might be a handy addition.

[lorglas]

Why it works correct, when I enter an b or c, then i see the apps with the b or c first. It works not completly correct.

[lelldorin]

But should not a search option in input "a" also first all found packages begin with "a" first appear? The current approach irritated and is not the standard on other systems or applications. This should be reconsidered time.

[humdinger]

The "Search term" text box doesn't filter the package name column, but filters all packages that contain the search string(s) in their name|summary|description. It's not useful to enter one letter, because pretty much every name|summary|description contains every letter of the alphabet.
From a practical point of view, most people don't look for "some application beginning with 'A'", but search for some category of application or feature, like "graphic", "vector", "font" or "PDF" etc.

[lelldorin]

Case study: Seeking a known program but me reminds me of the name no longer correctly ( spelling ) , I know but it starts as with D , then I give " d " in the search to find it , here would bother me if I had to scroll until " d " to find it .

[humdinger]

I'm still not convinced, sorry. :)
If you can't seem to hit on a word used in name/summary/description, you can limit your search to the category. That should cut short the result list. If you don't want to try all that, the worst that will happen is that you have to got through the trouble of scrolling the list manually to the letter you remember.

I suspect that the case where you really only remember the first letter and not at least one syllable in the name of an application is very rare. I doubt complicating the search algorithm is really worth it. But if more people think differently, I'll re-open the ticket and we'll see what a dev can come up with.