Task browser search bar

[timvParticipant]

Hi Gavalakis,

With version 2.8.5 it seems I need to input at least 3 characters to find any task. Additionally, it seems the order of sub strings is important to match a task name. (was it like that before?) If you search for “play pos” you get “Play Audio At Position”. However, if you search for “pos play”, you don’t find it. Both of these issues decrease the usability in my opinion. :-/

I see you did work on an “Improved smart matching algorithm” for this version, but I must admit that I don’t see the improvements. (sorry) Could you elaborate a bit on what exactly changed here? Thanks!

[GavalakisKeymaster]

Hey,

The words you are inputting in the search field, are matched in the order of appearance against the full path of the task (thus category + task name). This way you can search for “obj destroy” or “anim ik”. Once you know how this works you will see that it’s much easier to find stuff.
If also even more useful in “Script Control” tasks when searching for a function or property, since you can do things like “trans pos”, or “rigid force”.
It is working like this for quite a few versions now by the way.
The 3 minimum character is easy to change. I could make it 2 characters instead.

Thanks.

[timvParticipant]

Thanks for your reply. I have been using version 2.7.0 for a while before upgrading recently to 2.8.5 so I skipped several versions.

I often don’t quite remember the exact name of a task that I need. E.g. I don’t remember if it was Tween Curve or Curve Tween, and there are a couple of more tasks like that. Requiring users to remember the order of sub strings just seems a bit counterintuitive to me. Besides Unity stuff I often work in C++ with Visual Assist https://docs.wholetomato.com/default.asp?W194 , which allows you to find symbols using space separated substrings of any length, in any order. (and more, but that’s the basic functionality)

Why would you like to have any limit on the amount of characters? Is it too slow to update otherwise?

[GavalakisKeymaster]

Hello again,

There have been many different iterations on how the search works and it seems that I never manage to please everyone, which is of course to be expected 🙂 I promise to take another look at that so that your considerations are taken into account!

The char limit is a performance thing, yes, in case there are hundreds of elements (which can be the case in reflection searches), but maybe 3 is a bit too high. 2 Would be OK.

Thank you for your input.

[Author]

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