Nautilus: select specific file in large directory

[Matthew Thomas]

On 26 Jan, 2005, at 1:57 AM, Eric Feliksik wrote:
> ...
> Now, I'd like to press 'p', and go to the files with p. But [Nautilus] 
> selects the first file with a name starting with letter p, and no 
> further (often this is a subfolder). But I'd like to traverse all 
> files starting with either "p" or "P", by pressing 'p' over and over. 
> In MS Windows (I think, not sure) this works,

Last I checked (which may have been before Windows XP), this kind of 
traversal happens for menus (if a programmer mistakenly sets multiple 
items with the same access key), but not for file listings. In file 
listings, Windows always selects the first item with a name 
greater-than-or-equal-to the most recent letter you typed, no matter 
how fast you type.

> and you can even go to the file by typing "pul" relatively fast, which 
> is even better.

That has been the Macintosh Finder behavior since 1984: it selects the 
first item with a name greater-than-or-equal-to the most recent string 
you typed, where a string is terminated by going one second without 
typing anything. It's like Tab-completion, but without the Tab.

There would be a big problem with adding Windows-menu-style traversal 
on to this behavior. People wanting to traverse the files starting with 
"p" (for example) would frequently type "pp" too quickly, so Nautilus 
would think they were looking for files starting with "pp". Better, I 
think, to let people who want to do such traversal use the arrow keys 
once they've typed the first letter. (They would therefore have to be 
viewing the folder as a list rather than unsorted icons, but that can't 
be helped.)

> Now, Firefox has the "Find" field at the bottom, when you start typing 
> with a '/' or hit ctrl-F... Maybe in nautilus when one starts typing a 
> "Jump to file" firefox-like-bottom-thing could appear where one could 
> enter the start of a name quickly, with live (while typing) selection 
> of the first matched file. (No escaping with '/' necessary, I suppose, 
> as all other thinks are escaped by CTRL. )
>
> So basically it's like the functionality in - I believe - MS explorer, 
> but with a firefox-like think that gives more visual feedback.

Typing to select works quite well in the Finder without such an 
obtrusive UI. And typing to select works quite well for links in 
Internet Explorer for Mac without a UI as obtrusive as Firefox's, too. 
(That's not to say either browser is wrong: Firefox's goal is to 
attract people away from Internet Explorer for Windows quickly, even at 
the expense of elegance, whereas Internet Explorer for Mac was taking 
advantage of people's familiarity with the Finder. I hope Ubuntu can 
afford a little elegance.)

The main problem with the Finder's type-to-select behavior, in my 
opinion, has always been its strict adherence to the 
"greater-than-or-equal-to" part of what I wrote above. For example, if 
the last item in the current folder starting with "p" is "Pygmalion", 
and you type "pygn" by mistake, the Finder will move the selection from 
"Pygmalion" to the first item starting with "q". Better, I think, would 
be to leave "Pygmalion" selected, while offering some gentle error 
feedback (for example, a quiet "bip" or "uh-oh" sound, and/or coloring 
the "-malion" part red).

> This should not be a major eye-catcher, just suble extra feature like 
> in firefox. Maybe a button "Search for files" botton could be at the 
> right in the "jump to file"-bar, so people can easily do more advances 
> searching as well.

I think that is another reason not to give typing-to-select any visible 
UI at all: it would make people more likely to confuse it with an 
actual search function.

> Thanks for reading, I hope to hear some response.
> ...

All that said, if Ubuntu's Nautilus is going to diverge from upstream, 
there are probably more important things to start with than its 
typing-to-select behavior. So perhaps you could raise this issue with 
the Nautilus developers themselves.

-- 
Matthew Thomas, waiting for his Ubuntu CD to arrive
http://mpt.net.nz/