Re: spotlight - SUCKS

On 31/10/2005 8:26 AM, Fetch, Rover, Fetch wrote: 
it is a resource hog (while indexing)
it indexes without permission (as recently mentioned)
it indexes removable media without asking

I'm unsure why this would a problem under most circumstances. This certainly has not hindered my use of Spotlight. Since this is v1.0 of Spotlight, if people can clearly point out serious problems with this to Apple, I imagine they will be interested in changing behaviour or adding more options.

All that said -
the actual use of spotlight's index - near zero.

For you, maybe.

For those who have been using any Mac OS since 7(?).
There has been a simple - fast, easy to use Find utility.

With a terrible UI, if you ask me. At any rate when I used the GUI Find to find files, it always took forever. Spotlight caches high hits and gives you the results even faster the second time. So the trivial use of simply using Spotlight to find less-used applications (i.e., apps I do not want on my Dock) without having to open the Finder.

The less I have to open a Finder window, the happier I am.

Seriously, it takes less than a second for me to hit Ctrl-space and type "Unreal" to have Unreal Tournament come up as the first hit. I hit enter and go, all without taking my hands of the keyboard. For someone in the computer biz who is always flirting with RSI, this is a huge, huge win over any previous gesture I could have made.

The question of whether someone who risks RSI should be playing a first-person shooter is left as an exercise for the reader :) The point is I do this for every second-tier app I run nowadays.

It did not require indexing *ANYTHING*. Finding files by name, or many other attributes is quick and easy.

Yes, I can run find . -name ... from the Terminal, which gives me faster results.

For those **FEW** instances when it is useful be able to search the content of a file (which is why spotlight does its indexing) it has always (at least since OS7 (?)) been possible to select a folder, or volume to index - **at your discretion** -
ask yourself - "how often do I search for a file by content?"
-- most people will answer, "hmmm never" or "less than 10 times"

I don't, but anyone in academics may disagree. My SO uses this feature on a daily basis. Spotlight has transformed how she uses her computer. She raves about it.

also ask yourself - "Those times that I *do* search for a file by
content, are the target (intended results) file(s) usually located in one or 2 specific directories?"
-- the answer here will most often be "yeah, usually the file(s) I am looking for are <fill in your own personal reference> emails."

Again, her experience is "yes." Specifically she looks for words and phrases in PDFs and Word docs she uses for reference. She no longer bothers trying to sort her documents in some sort of project-specific directory structure. She uses Spotlight to slice through her collected docs in a project-specific way.

This is a big win for her.

So... index the folder(s) that are usually, or most likely to be needed.
leave the rest of the volume(s) alone.

Aren't Spotlight prefs tweakable in this manner? I recall turning off all indexing of my Media volume. Works for me, as I never get Spotlight hits against my music, movie or image collections.

- results in minimal loss of cpu time to indexing process
- smaller index file size (less loss of disk space)
- no need to 'opt out' of remote, or removable (or other temporary) volumes

On a modest machine like a G4 it runs fine here. My average CPU has not changed since Tiger, except for some poorly behaved Dashboard items.

Perhaps automatically enabling it is a problem for others. Disk space is a bit of a red herring. In general, indexes of this nature will grow less than linearly with indexed items. That is, they are relatively fixed in size over time (once created.) And does anyone actually care about disk space anymore? I mean, perhaps for some older systems or laptops that are too expensive to upgrade, maybe. These kinds of systems will always need special treatment on install and configuration anyway.

But disk space is down to less than a dollar a Gig if you shop around.

--------
Additional failure of spotlight

invisible files and folders -
spotlight completely ignores them - even for filename search -

try this:
open spotlight,
enter 'smb.conf'  (no quotes)
add a criteria - invisible and visible files
search
result - not found.

I thought that files in the BSD Unix /private filesystem were ignored by default. I suspect this is by design. I also expect this can be tweaked by an interested user. Most people don't care about these files. Those who do already know how to run "find ..."

So, not a failure.

--------
additional failure of spotlight

there is no 'start search' button (or equivalent)

try this
start a spotlight search
stop it before it completes
try to start it again - without modifying the search criteria
I've heard this can be a problem. I suspect this is a UI issue on some machines. I rarely look at the Spotlight input thingy when searching. I just let me fingers type and the UI will catch up if it has to. It's not like those keystrokes go anywhere. The search will still work, and I like the fact that it searches immediately. For me it is a usability bug to have a "search now" button.

Like anything related to UIs, we can argue this point forever. What I'm trying to get across is that what bothers you is actually a feature for me. So, it is not a general "failure" in Spotlight, but a perceived problem for a subset of users (whether that subset is small or large is also not the question.)

I may have noticed the UI start to spin when you hit the backspace. I'm thinking the keystroke event loop might be a bit tight. I'm pretty ham-fisted, though, and often make typos. I would expect to notice this more if it was a general problem.

So, just to balance out the SUCKS vs. ROCKS ratio since this post will be cheerfully archived by Google (and others): I think Spotlight ROCKS, and my SO agrees.

-- jdv
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