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liam
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Join Date: Apr 2005
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2005-05-03, 12:18

I have just upgraded to tiger today and my first impressions are that spotlight is, for me and the type of work I do, invaluable. I can see me relying on it heavily. Most of my work is on text documents, bog standard word and pdf files, with a pile of emails flying about. Because I employ the same lawyers on multiple cases each of which may have a number of sub-cases or applications filing and organisation of my work has become a nightmare. This is particularly the case as I work alone for the most part and never seem to have time to sit down and organise my files properly. I have already been able to track down stuff I had forgotten about (or thought I had lost). As a still relatively recent windows convert I am totally blown away. Whilst for more advanced and capable mac users it may have flaws or be a disappointment for me it is a superb. I think even those who are disappointed might see, in spotlight, the potential for a quite wonderful application.
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sunrain
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Join Date: Jun 2004
Location: Portlandia
 
2005-05-03, 12:38

Quote:
Originally Posted by digitaldave
I'm surprised that the iPhoto image title isn't found, as that is clearly specific to the image.
I was able to find images using titles. I'm running iPhoto 5.0.2.
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digitaldave
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Join Date: Apr 2005
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2005-05-03, 12:51

Quote:
Originally Posted by sunrain
I was able to find images using titles. I'm running iPhoto 5.0.2.
It's working for me too now, I guess I wasn't giving it enough time to add the comments to the index (I don't normally use titles, I was just trying them out for Spotlight).
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torifile
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Join Date: May 2004
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2005-05-03, 12:53

iPhoto 5 is supposed to be ok with spotlight. iPhoto 4 is not.
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sunrain
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2005-05-03, 13:08

Quote:
Originally Posted by torifile
iPhoto 5 is supposed to be ok with spotlight. iPhoto 4 is not.
Well, I'm sure *that* was entirely by accident.

It seems like an entirely avoidable problem. Sucks that Apple's forcing the issue for upgrading in order to allow full functionality on Spotlight. Although, I really do like iPhoto 5 a lot better. It was worth the upgrade alone.

"What a computer is to me is it's the most remarkable tool that we've ever come up with, and it's the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds."
- Steve Jobs
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torifile
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2005-05-03, 15:07

Quote:
Originally Posted by sunrain
Well, I'm sure *that* was entirely by accident.

It seems like an entirely avoidable problem. Sucks that Apple's forcing the issue for upgrading in order to allow full functionality on Spotlight. Although, I really do like iPhoto 5 a lot better. It was worth the upgrade alone.
My thoughts exactly. I was going to upgrade to 5 eventually, and I was happy to do it but this has left a bad taste in my mouth, to be perfectly honest. If they had touted "spotlight integration" as a key feature of iPhoto 5 when it was introduced, it wouldn't be so bad but the way they didn't say anything made it seem underhanded. Spotlight isn't even mentioned on the iPhoto page.
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eleazar
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Join Date: Jan 2005
 
2005-05-04, 07:06

Call me crazy, but I have a question that has been bothering me for a while. I don't know if I was dreaming this, but I recall a long time ago that I saw a video for spotlight that showed something different than what I see in tiger right now. The user pulled the search area up the same way, and even the search worked the same, but the difference is that when, for example, they searched for the term "mountain" and clicked on the emails that contained the words "mountain" in it, the email client launched and the screen dimmed and highlighed/spotlighted the words "mountain" that appeared. Like an actual spotlight.

Am I crazy? Does is do this and I can't do it cause I only use a powerbook? Does anyone know what I am talking about?
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bassplayinMacFiend
Banging the Bottom End
 
Join Date: Jun 2004
 
2005-05-04, 07:29

djf225,

Read the Ars article again and zoom in on the page where Siracusa talks about the 'xattr' command. Once you have this down, you can use the exec() command in an Obj-C (or C) program and build something that allows you to add attributes to your files programmatically. Siracusa says it slows down when trying to add thousands of pieces of metadata but if you're only doing a handful it shouldn't take too long.

Hmmm *light bulb goes on* maybe I'll put together some kinda utility thingy to do this...

[edit]
I just realized the 'xattr' command was built for Siracusa by someone at the Big Nerd Ranch and isn't part of the OS X install. I've downloaded the source but it's gonna take me some time to figure this out.

Last edited by bassplayinMacFiend : 2005-05-04 at 15:58.
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ezkcdude
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Join Date: Jan 2005
 
2005-05-04, 14:36

Several of the Tiger reviews (see other thread) say that Spotlight can search the text inside files. I thought this wasn't the case. Are those reviewers just inaccurate?
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bassplayinMacFiend
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Join Date: Jun 2004
 
2005-05-04, 14:46

Quote:
Originally Posted by ezkcdude
Several of the Tiger reviews (see other thread) say that Spotlight can search the text inside files. I thought this wasn't the case. Are those reviewers just inaccurate?
Well, Jobs touted Spotlight as being able to search text inside .pdf files so I'm sure it can search text inside plain ole text files.
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ezkcdude
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Join Date: Jan 2005
 
2005-05-04, 15:20

How would that work, though? Wouldn't it be tremendously slow to index every word, not to mention memory-hogging?
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chucker
 
Join Date: May 2004
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2005-05-04, 15:37

Quote:
Originally Posted by ezkcdude
How would that work, though? Wouldn't it be tremendously slow to index every word, not to mention memory-hogging?
Uh. It indexes references.
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autodata
hustlin
 
Join Date: May 2004
 
2005-05-04, 15:39

I just installed tiger last night and only got to play with spotlight this morning, but it really wasn't a good as I expected (although my expectations were pretty low following the Siracusa article). I've been accustomed to sebastian krauss' locator gui for the locate tool and spotlight just isn't as good for searching file names. locator give me exactly what I want: a file name and a path. Spotlight might be useful for searching content and I look forward to seeing how it works. It really is too bad that it's not using extended attributes fully, and it would be nice if locator did as well.
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chucker
 
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2005-05-04, 15:54

Quote:
Originally Posted by autodata
spotlight just isn't as good for searching file names
Um, yeah. What has Spotlight to do with searching file names?

Quote:
Spotlight might be useful for searching content
That would be the /only/ thing it's useful for.
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BlueRabbit
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Join Date: May 2004
Location: San Francisco, CA
 
2005-05-04, 16:04

Quote:
Originally Posted by ezkcdude
How would that work, though? Wouldn't it be tremendously slow to index every word, not to mention memory-hogging?
Apparently not. I just tried Spotlighting some stuff, and a ton of text files without the search terms in their names (but in the content) showed up.
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Paul
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Join Date: May 2004
Location: New York City
 
2005-05-04, 17:00

Quote:
Originally Posted by dfj225
Do you have any links? I haven't seen that mentioned.

The Ars Technica article did talk about this a little. The problem with networked volumes seems to be that files created on that volume might not necessarily have been created by your computer. After the initial scan, Spotlight data is updated by the kernel when a file is written, but if that file gets written by another Mac or a Windows PC then there will be no data. In essence the volume will have to be reindexed each time it is attached.
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.p...50430233117572
But yeah, you do need to explicitly run the command every time the volume is mounted...

I'm sure this will be addressed in a future update.

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People really have got to stop thinking there is only one operating system, one economic system, one religion, and one business model. -EvilTwinSkippy (/.)
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autodata
hustlin
 
Join Date: May 2004
 
2005-05-04, 17:59

Quote:
Originally Posted by chucker
Um, yeah. What has Spotlight to do with searching file names?
I don't know ... maybe the fact that a major basic attribute spotlight queries match is the filename.
Quote:
That would be the /only/ thing it's useful for.
Well, that's what I aim to find out. I haven't had a chance to try out some more interesting queries yet.
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torifile
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2005-05-04, 18:01

Quote:
Originally Posted by ezkcdude
Several of the Tiger reviews (see other thread) say that Spotlight can search the text inside files. I thought this wasn't the case. Are those reviewers just inaccurate?
It can search inside documents. That's one of it's best features.

-t

ps - I'm starting to like it more and more. It's actually working where I need it to now. Go figure...
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dfj225
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Join Date: Jul 2004
 
2005-05-04, 19:52

bassplayinMacFiend,

When I read the article, it was pretty clear that Tiger has the framework to do most of what I want it to...I was hoping Spotlight would take advantage of everything the framework offered, but it doesn't. I suppose I should say that Apple would have built a tool that would allow you to create metadata easily or at least in an obvious sort of way...kind of like how you would create a file name when you save something. Metadata should be like this with as much of it auto generated as possible. I'm sure Apple or a 3rd party will create something soon...but I'm disappointed that its not in there now. People said that Spotlight would be good enough to stop people from having to use folders...until there is a good way to associate metadata with files, I'll still need folders to remain organized. Since needing less folders is the ultimate goal, I would say that Apple still has more work to do.
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Kickaha
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Join Date: May 2004
 
2005-05-04, 19:56

My prediction:

We will not see a robust metadata tagging system from Apple until 10.5, at which point the Finder will be replaced completely, and 'folders' will simply be live Spotlight searches, where what is now the 'path' will be the default search criteria. Apple has the backend pieces in place now, but what they need is to step back and take a long hard look at the UI. (Read Siracusa's excellent rundown of how he thinks the Spotlight and Finder UIs hit on each other roughly.) Until we see an integrated approach, where metadata becomes a natural extension of working with the files, I don't see Apple producing a serious keyword system for the end-user.

Just my thought.
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