Thursday, March 25, 2004
Mac OS X, Stored Searches, Limited
Finder — I really like the new Finder, and the sidebar is certainly going in the right direction. But I wish that they had gone further. The sidebar looks so much like the playlist window in iTunes, that I wonder why they didn’t implement similar functionality. Imagine if you could make a file ‘playlist’ which would dynamically contain files matching a query—you could have all files modified today in my Documents folder, all files with the label “Urgent”, or all movies with the word “holiday” in the file name. Now that would really be cool. I’m even wondering if it might not be possible to implement something similar with Perl or Applescript. I might have to do some work on that. --But She's a Girl, "Panther, Part 2, 26 October 2003
Every since reading bsag (But She’s a Girl), comments about Mac OS X’s new finder, I’ve been intrigued by the idea of “stored finds.” Now I should state up front, that technically speaking a “stored find” may be less functional than an actual “playlist” function. Often, the first will store documents that met your search criteria ‘at that time’, while the second will add new documents, files and folders automatically keeping an updated list of items that match your search criteria.
I would love if Apple adds the second, ‘stored search criteria’ to the finder. But until then, I’ve found this temporary, but fairly limited trick, that works for me.
Above is a workable link to a ‘stored search’ that has been usable for multiple days. I haven’t shut my computer down, yet. I’m hoping to play around more with finding the parameter of its limitations, but here’s what I know today.
Storing a Search
Don’t use the Apple+F command, use the Finder. Apple temporarily stores finds in an invisible folder in /private/tmp/501. So question to myself was, if the Finder SideBar stores folders, why not the temporary search folder, and low and behold it was. Open the Finder or any folder. For my search, I opened my home folder, selected my Documents folder, than switched the search parameters to be limited to selection, than entered my criteria. Once the search was complete, I went to the Find Menu, and selected “Add to SideBar” (Apple+T). The search was then placed in my sidebar.
I next, completed the work I needed to do based on the search criteria, then decided to test to see if the criteria would remain, if I closed the Finder window, or performed other tasks.
Limitations
I haven’t fully tested the limitations of this function, but I do know the following:
- It seems you can only have one stored search at a time. I’m certain this is due to the fact that Apple doesn’t actually consider this a feature of the Finder. Which is too bad, and hopefully something that will be changed in the future. Like all people, who don’t actually have to do the programming themselves, say, “I’m certain it can’t be too complicated.”
- You can’t rename the search folder to something more meaningful. This means my search for ‘invoices’, reads as ‘.Search by terms in Documents’ in my SideBar. It doesn’t even indicated which term. This is liveable with the limitation of one stored search.
- You can perform other searches, from both the Finder and using the Find command, though none of them can be stored.
- You can open and close the Finder window, various document and folder Windows without losing the find criteria.
- I assume that restarting your computer will terminate or conclude the find session, since the tmp folder is typically purged.
Yes, there is a slew of limitations, most making the function unusable for lots of real world situations. But I’ve found the ‘hidden’ function useful when working on short-term projects. My first use of it was to centralize invoices on my local machine, so that I can in the future use the wonderful ChronoSync to handle keeping my server up-to-date, while still maintaining a similar file structure.
My previous structure had invoices from consultants and clients alike stored in their specific folders, or a /client_name/invoices infrastructure. I wanted to switch that to the /invoices/year/client_name structure. My goals were to only store current year invoices on my laptop, and to insure that all current invoices were also reflected on the server.
While ChronoSync is quite good, and has an array of amazing features, I was fairly certain, it couldn’t reorganize my files to how I wanted them stored on the server. Hence the minor project of collecting over a 100 ‘invoice’ folders separated by client and or consultant name, as well as unfiled ‘invoices’ and renaming and regrouping them. This project was made easier by storing the find criteria, and being able to move items from a centralized location rather than rummaging through folder after folder.
I’m not certain, if anyone else has used this function (it’s really not up to being called a feature, yet), so enjoy.
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