Advanced Searcher

[meteorquake]

I'm not sure how much this idea is on your radar but I think the Advanced Search would benefit from the style of search you have with Thunderbird where you choose the field, an operator and enter (or select) the value, with some other enhancements.
However the key thing with this would be to have a 'Save' and 'Load' which would allow you to save the state you've set up as the standard set of fields you use and recall it at need, and so thereby customise the searcher to personal usage, since in reality we probably all have different fields we tend to use most the time and would ideally only see those as the initial offering and not the search fields we more rarely use (as is currently the case).
For example we might like to have a very simple setup of
Name - Contains - (value) - (casing options)
Path - Contains - (value) - (casing options)
Modified - At least -
Modified - At most -
Extensions - Any of -
and someone working with audio might choose various audio fields as their default search fields
Hope that makes sense in regards to usefulness. In theory you could also use it to Edit an existing search if it's a simple one though if you had bracketing and op options it could also edit more complex searches (I could mention thoughts on how I imagine that might work).
David

[NotNull]

Please provide a Thunderbird screenshot (not everyone has Thunderbird installed)

Updating the Advanced Search dialog is on the to-do list.


As there are too many settings in 1.5 for a simple "list", my idea would be to have categories, like Name, Size, Date, Properties, etc as a collapsable list of settings/options in that category. Default all are collapsed.
Clicking on, for example, the Date dropdown arrow reveals all Date settings.
Setting one or more of those will show Date in bold font (vs the standard font if nothing was set), even after collapsing the Date "list"

This way one keeps overview of what options were set (well .. sort of; there are many, many options ..).

[meteorquake]

This is how the Thunderbird search lines look -

a.png (3.94 KiB) Viewed 2569 times

It shows the Field - Op - Value concept I was indicating, although the lines need enhancing with more options as the three fields as used there without further control is too simplistic.

d

[NotNull]

Thanks for the screenshot @meteorquake!

[void]

A search builder is on my TODO list.

Thank you for the suggestion.

[meteorquake]

Typically it would benefit from 4 extra columns -
InterlineOp, open bracket set, (Field Op Value mentioned above), close bracket set
thus using all lines

Code: Select all

         ((    Name     Contains   Europe        CaseInsensitive
OR             Name     Contains   Asia      )   CaseInsensitive
AND            Date     AtLeast    2018
ANDNOT                             (manual search syntax)
OR             Album    Contains   Elvis     )
AND            Ext      AnyOf      mp3,m4a
               Size     Approx     2Mb

where the interlineop is omitted such as with Size there it assumes the prior (there AND), so in fact if there's a default OP for all they can all be left blank and if no bracketing is needed all brackets can be omitted
wherever a field is omitted the value is considered to be manual search syntax of the style used in the search bar

[meteorquake]

just fixed the formatting of that post

[Thy Grand Voidinesss]

I'm not sure how much this idea is on your radar but I think the Advanced Search would benefit from the style of search you have with Thunderbird where you choose the field, an operator and enter (or select) the value, with some other enhancements
[...]

I concur