Do

Why does Do divide my word up?

Asked by David D Lowe

If I type hello into Gnome Do, my first result is Shelf Item Source, with hel underlined in Shelf and o underlined in Source.
Why does Do do this? I don't see the logic behind it. Why should my words be divided up? Why should a letter be forgotten? (The second L.) Can I disable this behaviour please? I would prefer Do to just offer me the word and let me tab to actions.

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David Siegel
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David Siegel (djsiegel-deactivatedaccount) said : 		#1

Try pressing the up arrow or END key to jump to the word-only (pure text) result.

You actually want this behavior. Say I'm sending you an email address, and I have ten people named David in my address book. In Do, I can type "dlowe" to bring up your contact.

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David Siegel (djsiegel-deactivatedaccount) said : 		#2

*say I'm sending you and email, and I...

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David D Lowe (flimm) said : 		#3

If I were looking for someone with the initials D Lowe, I would type "d lowe", (without the quotes), not "dlowe". By typing the space I would have specified where I want my entry to be divided up. Gnome Do can look for "d" and "lowe" seperately, however, it shouldn't consider this result: "low memory data" (for example) and display it. How would that be useful? The e at the end of "lowe" should have elimated "low".
Also, the fact that Gnome Do actually forgets one of the letters you type is definitely strange (the second l in hello, for example), and I'm filing it as a bug.
All my questions have been answered except: "Can I disable this behaviour please?"

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Best David Siegel (djsiegel-deactivatedaccount) said : 		#4

"low memory data" would not come up for "dlowe" because the 'd' comes after
"low...e". Fuzzy matching + intelligent suggestions is a very important part
of how Do works, as it also allows you do type "ff" or "fwb" for "Firefox
Web Browser," and I can think of countless other examples where the user
might not want to be forces to type a space. Also, do you suggest requiring
a space between words, but allowing fuzzy matching within individual words?
Could I type "ff" to match Firefox still? Would this confuse people?

There's no way to disable this behavior, and the dropped letter certainly is
a bug. Would you prefer that Do require you to type a strict substring of
your target item/action? We could probably add this option. If this is not
what you want, can you provide some more examples of how you think matching
should work? Also, can you show how current matching would break (e.g.
"right now, you can type X to match Y, but this would not match in my
scheme").

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jrcramer (jaap-cramer) said : 		#5

I want to join this converstaion. I agree with Lowe. I have a huge music collection. Any possible letter-combination finds a musicpiece. I dont want to shutdown the rhythmboxplugin. Is it at least possible to separate the connected results and the fuzzy results?

Thanx for the END-tip

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David D Lowe (flimm) said : 		#6

Thanks David Siegel, that solved my question.

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Parthiban Balasubramanian (parthiban-bls) said : 		#7

Just a suggestion........Personally I can see very valid justifications for both behaviors. So why not retain the current fuzzy matching and offer a 'stricter-matching' mode through an easy switch (like "." for the pure-text mode). It's important that this new mode be easily discoverable and accessible.

Thanks.