find by content with Mac OS

stephen barncard stephenREVOLUTION2 at barncard.com
Thu Jun 9 21:13:49 EDT 2011


You haven't used "Spotlight"?   If it's set up right and you use good
searching approach, it works quite well.

On 9 June 2011 18:04, Timothy Miller <gandalf at doctortimothymiller.com>wrote:

> Thanks Jim and others.
>
> I have worked out ways to search my LC stacks quickly and conveniently
> (more or less) for the things I need. I can always use the "find" function
> in Stickies. I can search my email messages in Mail. This is the usual
> procedure.
>
> I always had the vague idea that find-by-content in Mac OS, was available
> as a last resort if I couldn't find something important. Today I was
> searching for some notes I made several months ago. I couldn't remember
> whether I had saved the notes in a LC stack, in stickies, in an email I sent
> to myself, or whatever. I thought find-by-content would help me find the
> notes. I knew they contained some rare or unique words. It didn't help.
>
> I can't fault other developers if Apple itself doesn't enable
> find-by-content in its own applications. Come to think of it, find by
> content probably doesn't work for bookmarks in Safari. Nor does it work for
> "events" in iCal. Nor any content in Address Book, nor email messages in
> Mail -- not sender nor recipient nor address nor content. Funny, I always
> assumed it did all of these things, but never thought much about it.
>
> On the other hand, if Apple and other developers can easily enable
> find-by-content, but don't, this seems inconsiderate all around. If Apple
> doesn't want to bother supporting its own feature, and doesn't want to
> encourage developers to support its feature, maybe Apple should eliminate
> find by content.
>
> At minimum, Apple should take more care to notify users that find by
> content only searches a small subset of all the files on their hard disks,
> or even their documents folders.
>
> Regarding LC scripts, it appears these are not indexed, either. There are
> plenty of unique strings in my LC scripts. They are not turning up.
>
> At one time, find-by-content was supposed to be a thrilling new feature in
> some Apple OS rollout. Maybe OS 7?
>
> I long ago abandoned the naive daydream that computers will make my life
> more convenient. Every new feature introduces new complications. So, I'm
> over it.
>
> Tim
>
>
> On Jun 9, 2011, at 3:12 PM, Jim Ault wrote:
>
> > Usually the vendor has to adjust their app to make spotlight indexing
>  'Allowed' and 'visible'.  Some vendors have created plugins and made them
> available for download.
> >
> > Google "spotlight nabble revolution" to get a better take on the issue.
> >
> > For OSX QuickView, their are plugins for expanding the formats, eg.
>  '.php' files
> >
> > The best solution for now is to have an LC script export to a text file
> all the info you would like to have Spotlight available.
> >
> > Hope this helps
> >
> >
> > Jim Ault
> > Las Vegas
>
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-- 



Stephen Barncard
San Francisco Ca. USA

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