Search problems [resolved]

[Spliff]

Re Shortcuts for "Search titles only", etc. (see above): Non-mnemonic shortcuts are better than are no shortcuts at all. ;-)

And I had to realize that AutoHotkey "ControlClick, Button8, ahk_exe UltraRecall.exe" and variants of that are totally unreliable, while it's evident that for many UR users, "just titles" is an important switch, and for others, "whole words" may be...

As for an intermediate solution, UR users could use something like controlsend, Button8, {space}, ahk_exe UltraRecall.exe, which makes a reliable toggle.


Re the Search Results pane (which you will not like to stay beyond situational usefulness if you don't use the Child Items pane anyway), I tried some ways of coping with the problem (to have to first activate it by ^3, then close it by +F4, since a global "hide" command is missing; it's true that some users might also wish for such a thing for other panes, but then, they will probably want to see those anytime, whilst the search results are quite special: everybody needs that pane, but JUST after searching), including the command for automatic hiding of the pane in question (it's in the context menu for each pane), and I was not happy with the latter at all, so it's scripting again, but I'm sure a special "hide search results" command would arrange almost any user.

All the more so since in Autohotkey at least, I didn't find any solution for sending the necessary +{F4} to that pane, neither by any of several "send" commands, nor by controlsend. Thus, my macro has to retrieve the position of the pane, then add (about) 12 pix to the horizontal position and subtract (!) 12 pix to the vertical position (since I finally need the context menu of the caption, not of the list), then I send a rightclick to that position, and then, finally, I can send a "c", for "close (the pane)" to the pane's caption's context menu - that only works... Or then, some UR command "toggle the ^3 pane" (children, search results; ^c shows it in case, then sets focus to it: that's obviously different)... ;-)

Btw, I had also tried (manual) double-click on the ^3-pane caption, and that was overly (exceedingly) successful: Neither ^c nor a new search brought that pane up again, I had to close and re-open UR. I then did the same thing again, in order to verify, and again, the pane disappeared for good, and not even closing and re-opening UR did help: Perhaps the double-click, or some other means obviously had made the pane "floating", and it was now shifted beyond my screen (to the right of it), even for searches and child items display of other (!) databases. (Good to know it's beyond the screen (and thus is retrievable) if it has disappeared for good, then.)

And finally, when it's easy to close that window, the user might even resize its size and position - this comes handy with long search results lists -, e.g. placing it all over the Data Explorer, given the fact that navigation to some search result in the latter will kill the search results lists anyway; in order to situationally resize according to your respective needs, you'd need scripting though, again. (UR has a functionality for several "layouts", so if you can easily change them on-the-fly, that might be another way of doing things.)


Re the highlighting of the search results: Stable since a week or so, and not having done anything with any setting (or then, inadvertently perhaps?), the highlighted search results are black on RED, instead of black on yellow, and that of course infers with readability, besides the fact that it's aggressive on the eye. Any ideas as to possible causes?


Re highlighting the search results terms again: As we all know, any editing of ONE result item also breaks the highlighting of the terms in the other results. I don't know if doing away with this very unwanted behavior might be challenging, code-wise, or too much of recoding work?

[kinook]

Select another highlight color to change it to something else.

[Spliff]

Where would I do that?

I have looked into https://www.kinook.com/Forum/showthread.php?t=2267 ("How to change the fonts & colors in UR"), which speaks of Windows settings, but those have not been changed, and in my browser for example, selections are white on green, as always.

Also, in that link, it says, "Different variations of window colors and styles can also be chosen by changing the Paint theme at Tools | Customize | Options in Ultra Recall." - I looked into this, but didn't find any such setting in there.

It's just that in UR, search terms in search results are now black (not white e.g.) on red, instead of black on yellow, as before, and for no apparent reason.

[kinook]

Go to or create a text item, type some text, select it, and highlight it with the color that is desired. Future searches will use that highlight color.

Here is a screen shot of the mentioned Paine theme option.

[Spliff]

Thanks, I know that, I always have it as "Office 2010 Blue" and didn't change that. (Always show full menus, large icons no, show screen tips no, menu animations no).

So I changed the theme to some others, including yours, closed UR, re-opened it, and my search terms continue to be black on (or "in") red (background), instead of yellow background, so the theme obviously is not responsible for this. (Windows neither, I think, I hadn't changed any settings, and there was no Windows update before, just yesterday evening, and I've seen this - continuing - behavior for around a good week.) - I add a screenshot on my turn since this is quite "crazy" a phenomenon indeed; it's a search result for "gpt", from the item being displayed by single click on the item name in the Search Results pane.

[kinook]

The theme has nothing to do with the highlight color for search terms, I was just answering your question about the paint theme.

To change the highlight color for search terms, go to or create a text item, type some text, select it, and highlight it with the color that is desired. Future searches will use that highlight color.

[Spliff]

Oh, thank you, Kyle, that worked now! Nowhere in the help file it's mentioned that user formatting highlight settings also work for the search results (just Rich Text and web page editing are mentioned somewhere to which those highlight settings apply), or then that the search text highlighting color can be user-changed to begin with.

I don't have the slightest idea btw how this setting would have been de-set in my case - I never use text highlighting, so don't had any motivation to change it (I just use italicising, and then bolding or bolding plus underlining for different levels of "highlighting"), and to speak more generally, the scope and the persistance of settings changes imply a lot of trial and error, not from the technical side, but from the user perspective, considering user errors will have very unwanted effects, also and especially because of scope questions: current database, or then current and future databases, or then current and all (incl. existing) databases, and then, persistence only if the database you do the settings changes in, is the current one (and not only "open") when you close UR - lots of ways user errors or just misconceptions can have unwanted effects, whilst on the technical level, everything works as "expected".


EDIT:

In order to make this more constructive, here's an example from just yesterday. I had loaded all my 23 UR databases (I had split those I had before as far as reasonable), then I had succeeded in setting for them, one-by-one (since these settings are database-specific), to set the columns for all existing items (by search for *, then re-setting the columns) and for all my future items (by setting them for the Template "Text").

Also, one-by-one again, for every one of the 23 databases, I had manually reset the "coordinates" (not by numbers though) of the Child Items pane, FROM
Left: Data Explorer 80 p.c., beneath it Child Items 20 p.c.,
Right: Content pane, beneath it Item Parents, Item Attributes, Search (these from left to right there and just the caption plus 3 lines/rows)
TO
the same, but Data Explorer just the caption plus two lines (two instead of one, in order to give space for a possible horizontal scrolling indicator), and with Child Items the rest of the left part.

This in order to have the Search Results (i.e. the same pane as Child Items which I don't use for that) almost full-screen-height, and with it disappearing, AND automatically resizing by that (!!!), the Data Explorer to almost full screen height when I then hide the Search Results (as described above); this seemed to work fine.

Today, ALL my Child Itrems panes are back in their old position and with their old size (see "FROM" above), so I'll probably have to work on my 23 UR databases with this again, one-by-one, and not even knowing what went wrong with my assumed "scope error". It's very probably my mistake again, but I'm not happy about the fact that UR has me making such mistakes, without any warning (upon closing the database(s) in question for example), let alone some possible hint WHY this will not be persistent. (My (unique) pane "layout" is identical in all my existing databases since I did it manually (with success at the time) for the then existing ones, and created the additional ones from a "specimen" one I had created with the then-wanted settings and layout; obviously, this is only possible for newly-created databases and will not "work on" the existing ones.

I currently suppose that it might possibly have missed because of some "minimal size" for the Data Explorer upon saving / new loading, but I then would have liked to get that information when resizing the Data Explorer to so tiny a format, instead of my new format for it just not being stored beyond the session. Or then, it's another system(at)ic "scope-and/or-persistence problem" I'm not aware of...