[packagekit] search as you type

[Richard Hughes]

On Tue, 2008-04-22 at 00:34 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> Discussion originally from
> 
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=439698#c7
> 
> Bringing it here as suggested.

Right, I've been thinking about this whilst sitting in the middle of
no-where somewhere deep in the Polish countryside.

The number of combinations of selected filters makes it very hard to do
GetPackages(filter) and then populate a GtkEntryCompletion model. This
isn't to say it's not possible, users only change the filters very
infrequently. We also need to pack potentially 15000 items into the
model which won't be quick to add.

We could however add all the items for no filter, although this would be
slightly confusing as the GtkEntryCompletion would suggest a package,
but when you pressed enter, then nothing would be found as the filter is
filtering out all the installed options.

Doing the search after each keystroke would make the UI seem very
interactive, although after pressing "g" then a few thousand packages
would show up. It might make sense to only do the search as you type
after a small delay in typing, perhaps as long as 500ms.

Ideas certainly welcome. I've attached a screenshot of what find as you
type autocompletion would look like. The code is in a local branch on my
computer.

Richard.

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