“Today, I’d like to share with you a hidden gem inside of Windows Vista’s search capabilities. It’s a neat little feature that lets you build one saved search on top of another, and we call it Query Composition. Think composition in the mathematical sense, not in the context of writing an English paper. To explain this feature, I’d like to start by talking a bit about Libraries.”
Well, I’m no Windows fan, but since I’m forced to deal with it on a daily basis I’m always open to powerful advanced features. From my point of view, and just like the author says, this isn’t the kind of feature you might expect the average Windows user to take advantage of, but I’m sure it’ll be as useful as hell for us “advanced users”. It’s a shame we’re going to get a power toy to get the best of it, I’d like to have some kind of “Enable really advanced search” in the Vista standard UI.
It’s not a ground breaking feature though, and it’s not that different from any other tag-based search engine but it’s a great enhancement to previous Windows search tools for sure.
Now I only hope that some clever coder makes something similar to this for GNU/Linux, but I really doubt so, since this seems to rely on filesystem-specific features. If someone can prove me wrong, you’re welcome 😉
Edited 2006-11-01 01:23
Now I only hope that some clever coder makes something similar to this for GNU/Linux, but I really doubt so, since this seems to rely on filesystem-specific features. If someone can prove me wrong, you’re welcome 😉
Let’s see if I can by standing on the shoulders of giants
Some time ago Robert Love wrote BeagleFS. a FUSE implementation that mounted Beagle’s query results as run-of-the-mill directories, see
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=15256
Once it’s a directory of hard links, I can’t see why it can’t be again indexed and searched by Beagle just as any other directory, thus performing the same trick that the blog describes with plenty of screenshots.
So yes, it’s a filesystem-specific feature, but thankfully dealing with filesystems is something *nixes do egregiously.
Small disclaimer: I never really tried out BeagleFS and I don’t even know if it ever progressed past the prototype stage, but I’m pretty sure if there was interest in it, it could be fixed up quickly.
Edited 2006-11-01 04:53
I had that idea a while back. Due to my terrible coding skills I never did anything about it. I’m glad someone is.
For someone like me that spends a lot of time at the console mounted files searches is awesome.
It’s not much different than copying a search and adding an extra criterium.
Is it me or this search window looks surprisingly similar to BeOS ?
http://lestat.orenet.co.uk/~kendra/graphics/beos_query_builder_1.jp…
Be, Inc. should really have patented stuff years ago, they would be rich by now (even though I despise software patents, but since everyone uses them…)
>It’s not much different than copying a search and adding an extra criterium.
I love it when people “meh” a feature because it isn’t much different than whatever their hack is. I can hardly think of any improvement in any OS that isn’t a codified version of a workaround people were already using.
>>>>>
From wikipedia:
verb-object paradigm
1. Initially, no text is selected.
2. The user initiates the operation by selecting a move command in some manner.
3. The system displays a prompt such as “Move what?”
4. The system enters a modal state in which the only actions available to the user are either to select text or cancel the move operation.
5. The user selects the text in some manner.
6. The system displays a prompt “To where?”
7. The system enters a modal state in which the only actions available to the user are either to indicate an insertion point or cancel the move operation.
8. The user indicates the insertion point and confirms the move operation.
9. The effects of the move are displayed.
>>>>>
This is not to say that the feature described in the blog is as revolutionary as cut/paste but I’m sure that when Apple introduced cut-and-paste to replace this some people said, “Hey I can already do that!” You sure can, be my guest. I’ll take cut-and-paste.
Over the long term search composition it is much better than duping and revising saved searches as you describe. You can build a pretty sophisticated quickly with just a few saved searches rather than having a truckload of searches that might just one or two parameters difference between them.
Though BeOS search was amazing and in some ways still more advanced than the comparative hacks out today, including Vista’s search, I don’t recall being build a search in the manner described in the article. It has been a long time though.
I do recall being able to right click on a saved search and having the dynamic, and utterly instant! results pop up in a context menu without having to open find. Now that was cool.