I'd like to put in a vote for including substring searches, at least as an option. It shouldn't slow down the search process at all, as winamp can do it instantly in +10 gig playlists.

I don't think the problem with substring searches is speed. I think the problem is the way the searches work, since they are fuzzy-searches on each letter triplet, that you would need to type too many letters to complete your search. The goal of the search interface was to reduce the number of keystrokes, not increase them.

Then again, I ran into a situation recently where a substring search would have come in handy. I'd downloaded a song from the Blizzard Software people, called "Greetings - Deckard Cain Rap". It's a gag song done with the actor who played the part of Deckard Cain in Diablo 2. If you've played Diablo 2, the song is quite funny.

Anyway, I knew it was "Deckard Cain Rap", but I didn't remember the "Greetings" part when I wanted to play it for another Diablo 2 fan. I kept typing in "D-E-C-K" and it would say "no matches". I got frustrated because I knew it was in there.

So, at that point, a substring search would have helped me. The only question is... how many more keys would I have needed to type to get the song to appear? Is there a way to figure that out statistically?

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Tony Fabris

And the answer is: zero!

You simply make the UI so that any substring matches appear after all the matches at the start of the string. There is no useability penalty! Any key sequence which works now will still work. But there might be performance penalties. We discussed this about a year ago, I think, and someone (Hugo?) was a bit concerned about speed.

Richard.

You simply make the UI so that any substring matches appear after all the matches at the start of the string.

That would make the substring search useless, because you'd have to type too many characters to get past the startstring matches. Wouldn't it?

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Tony Fabris

Yeah, if you haven't entered enough characters, you may have to move over all the startstring matches, but that's not much worse than having to move to the last startstring match anyway. The upside is (as in your example) if you keep entering characters, you move into the pure substring matches.

It doesn't make anything you currently do any harder, but it might not make the new stuff as easy as you like. Here's an idea, do a substring search, but sort the result by the column in which the substring matched! So if the match was near the end of the string, that item will be towards the end of the list of matches. And it is still pretty much compatible UI-wise with the existing interface.

Richard

I'll second this wish... :) sounds like a good way of doing it...

would also help with tracks that have been badly tagged... or with the "firstname Lastname vs Lastname, Firstname" issue...

Cheers

Kim

" I think the problem is the way the searches work, since they are fuzzy-searches on each letter triplet, that you would need to type too many letters to complete your search. The goal of the search interface was to reduce the number of keystrokes, not increase them. "

I don't think that this would be much of a problem. Let's say you need to enter on average four letter triplets to find your song. I think it will be rare that those four triplets map to a song that you weren't searching for, especially since your only searching for either the artist name or song title, not both at the same time.

Also, like other people have mentioned, the substring search matches could appear after the normal matches. This would be useful, for example, your songs aren't very well organized (like me). If you can't remember the beginning of a song title, it would be nice not to have to browse through (up to) 60 gigabytes of songs to try and find it.

These are all good points. Substring searches would be nice... hmm....

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Tony Fabris

Substring searches would be nice...

Or.. here's an idea: How about Voice Recognition so I could just say "Empeg. Red Barchetta. Play." and Geddy Lee would start singing about his uncle's Ferrari.

Naaahhh, that idea's too far-fetched, never happen in our lifetimes.

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

I think this might be alleviated by 1.1

especially if you can then dig further into your selection. Tony, you prbably knew which playlist your song was in, but navigating to it and finding out what the name was then going back to searching by title and typing it in again would have been a drama. If you can search by playlist (or anything for that matter), then dig into the selection for a specific entry, THAT would be handy.
Even better that you can the insert it as the next track.


Murray 06000047
I don't think, therefore I am not.