On Fri, 18 Mar 2022 at 14:40:09, Ken Blake <Ken@invalid.news.com> wrote
(my responses usually FOLLOW):
>On Fri, 18 Mar 2022 12:11:43 -0700, Sailfish
><NIXCAPSsailfish@NIXCAPSunforgettable.com> wrote:
[]
>> such as Agent
>>Ransack (one of the best File Search programs I've found.
>
>
>Search Everything is much faster and much better for filename
>searches, and that's what I use. However it doesn't do file content
>searches, so I use Agent Ransack for that.
>
Agreed. Everything, like IrfanView, is one of the things I install
almost as soon as I get a machine (in fact those two I installed before
signing the "I won't put any software on this machine" sheet on a recent
provided machine!). For _content_ searches, which I _expect_ to be slow
by their very nature, I find AR works well enough (and often faster than
I expect), so I haven't really looked at any others; I don't do content
searches often enough to be worried. (Similarly for the EaseUS partition
manager, which did what I wanted - and more than the built-in one - so I
didn't look further at those.) Everything continues to amaze me. I
frequently use it to access files (you can do so from its result list)
even if I _do_ remember where they are - it's quicker than navigating
there (and sometimes I want to leave Explorer open at a given directory
anyway).
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Everyone looks sun-kissed and beautiful and as you watch it ["Bondi Rescue"],
pale and flabby on your sofa, you find yourself wondering if your life could
ever be that exotic. (It couldn't. You're British.) - Russell Howard, in
Radio Times, 20-26 April 2013

On Sat, 19 Mar 2022 21:02:09 -0700, Sailfish
<NIXCAPSsailfish@NIXCAPSunforgettable.com> wrote:

>The worst thing for me in Win7+ is the search feature. It is what drove
>me to find other search programs eventually ending when I found Agent
>Ransack. In a way, I am pleased that they broke search in that Agent
>Ransack beats even WinXP search speed and feature wise.

Have you tried Search Everything? If you haven't, you should. Except
for its not doing content searches it's much better than Agent
Ransack.

--
The real, original Ken Blake, not some other newcomer

On Sat, 19 Mar 2022 at 07:49:27, Sailfish
<NIXCAPSsailfish@NIXCAPSunforgettable.com> wrote (my responses usually
FOLLOW):
>Paul graced us with on 3/18/2022 7:47 PM:
>> On 3/18/2022 3:11 PM, Sailfish wrote:
[]
>>>base-level pieces of the OS seems more like a company in financial
>>>trouble than a multinational company secure in its ability to produce
>>>newer features to offer its base.
>>>
>>
>>https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MSFT/microsoft/number-of-empl
>>oyees Interactive chart of Microsoft (MSFT) annual worldwide
>>employee count from 2010 to 2021.
>> Microsoft total number of employees in 2021 was 181,000, a
>>11.04% increase from 2020.
>> Microsoft total number of employees in 2020 was 163,000, a 13.19%
>>increase from 2019.
>> Microsoft total number of employees in 2019 was 144,000, a 9.92%
>>increase from 2018.
>> Microsoft total number of employees in 2018 was 131,000, a 5.65%
>>increase from 2017.
>> Hmmm.
>> No danger signal there.
>>
>Agree. makes one wonder what the creative to functionary ratio is,
>though.
>
My thought exactly: from recent viewing of MS output, it's been either
complete shill (often I think "they can't be _that_ gullible: maybe
they're actually not, but are just pretending to be because it keeps
them getting paid"), or semi-bot (the posters in so-called help threads,
who just keep repeating the same answer, not apparently understanding
the question - often clearly not native English speakers).

There was a time when I'd respect a MS employee just for that fact; long
gone. (In the same way the BBC was once synonymous with engineering
quality.)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Everyone looks sun-kissed and beautiful and as you watch it ["Bondi Rescue"],
pale and flabby on your sofa, you find yourself wondering if your life could
ever be that exotic. (It couldn't. You're British.) - Russell Howard, in
Radio Times, 20-26 April 2013

Ken Blake graced us with on 3/20/2022 9:28 AM:
> On Sat, 19 Mar 2022 21:02:09 -0700, Sailfish
> <NIXCAPSsailfish@NIXCAPSunforgettable.com> wrote:
>
>
>> The worst thing for me in Win7+ is the search feature. It is what drove
>> me to find other search programs eventually ending when I found Agent
>> Ransack. In a way, I am pleased that they broke search in that Agent
>> Ransack beats even WinXP search speed and feature wise.
>
>
> Have you tried Search Everything? If you haven't, you should. Except
> for its not doing content searches it's much better than Agent
> Ransack.
>
I also rely on AR's regular expression feature at times, does SE support it?

--
Sailfish
CDC Covid19 Trends: https://www.facebook.com/groups/624208354841034
Rare Mozilla Stuff: http://tinyurl.com/z86x3sg

"Java Jive" <java@evij.com.invalid> wrote

| You are wrong, because you do have an 'up' button.
|

I see that now. Thanks. So subtle I didn't notice it.

| > | Note also that if you do <Alt-D...
| >
| > I'm not interested in 19th century tricks. I just want
| > an up button. :)
| | I think you should change your sig to: "I don't want to be helped,
| really I don't!", that would remind everyone not to bother.
|

Sorry, Gramps. :) It's perfectly legitimate too use
keyboard shortcuts. A lot of old people never got used to
using a mouse regularly. And it's the only option for blind
people. But most people don't use them. You shouldn't
assume that they're a solution for everyone. Any relevant
functionality should be accessible via mouse. And in fact,
it turns out I need only click in the path field to get the
path string.

On Sun, 20 Mar 2022 16:17:38 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
<G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:

>(Sounds like I agree with the two of you in many cases.)
>
>On Fri, 18 Mar 2022 at 08:36:48, Ken Blake <Ken@invalid.news.com> wrote
>(my responses usually FOLLOW):
>>On Fri, 18 Mar 2022 13:30:16 -0000, "NY" <me@privacy.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I've used every version of Windows from Windows 3 onwards (95, 98, ME, 2000,
>>>XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10).
>>
>>
>>You left out a few others since 3.0: 3.1, 3.11, WFWG 3.11, 3.2
>>(Chinese), Windows 98 Second Edition, 8.1, 11, Windows NT 3.1, Windows
>>NT 3.5, Windows NT 3.51, and Windows 4.0.
>
>I think 98SE was the one I liked best at the time.
>>
>>I started with Windows 2.0, and have run every version since then
>>(including 11) except for 3.2 and the NT versions. With an occasional
>>exception, I thought every version was at least as good as its
>>predecessor, and usually better.
>>
>I never actually owned them, but having played with them in shops and
>helped others with them, I thought Vista and 8 were actually backward
>steps. (In usability - basically, hardware requirement - for Vista, and
>UI for 8.)

I agree with you about 8 (note that I said "with an occasional
exception"; that's the main exception to me), but not about Vista.
Yes, I know that many people share your view about Vista, but I never
had any problems with it.

>Hmm. Some. I guess "many" is probably correct for "under the hood"; I
>can't say I've been _that_ aware of them at the use point of view; there
>were some cases where they included things I'd needed third-party
>freeware to do previously, granted. (Though almost - possibly completely
>- countered by the things they changed how I had to do them to no
>benefit _to me_.)
>>
>>>such as a better file manager post-98. There have also been some worsenings.
>>
>>
>>Yes. Many. Fortunately, most of those can be turned off, either
>>through Windows settings or third-party software.
>>
>Increasingly obscure over the decades, though: either buried more and
>more within menus (I was amused - I think it was the transition from '95
>to '98 - where the ability to change colours, border widths, etc.
>disappeared behind an "Advanced" button; we oldsters could do it, but it
>was "advanced" for new users!), or hidden as more and more obscure
>settings in the damned registry. Why the registry has to use
>impenetrable hex strings - I don't just mean for the keys, I mean for
>the "folders" - rather than human-readable things, I don't understand,
>other than laziness on the part of the coders (or deliberate obscuring).

Yes to all the above.

>>Yes. But it was easy to go back to what was much like the old GUI
>>using Start 8 or something similar.
>>
>Which many called "stardate" of course (-:

Interesting. I had never seen or heard it called that.

>I guess I'll end up using 10 or 11 eventually, but it will reflect a
>much more move to just a software user than a computer user. (Which I'm
>doing more - or similar things - in all walks of life as I get older.
>[I'm not quite 62 - I know that's probably young for here!] It does feel
>like "giving in" though.)

*Very* young to me. I'm 84. You're only two years older than my son.

>>>When I bought a new laptop last year, I knew it would be Win 10, and I was
>>>resigned to a lot of hassle, but I've found that as long as you make a few
>>>essential tweaks, it behaves enough like Win 7's UI not to be a shock to the
>>>system.
>>
>>
>>Yes.
>>
>Probably. Though I'm not sure I'll ever buy a brand-new machine again,
>having been happy (for myself and others I've helped) with refurbished
>ones. Not so much the saving of money - we probably have in fact lost
>out in terms of bang per buck, especially if you consider remaining
>lifetime - but less transition hassle.
>>
>>> My essential changes are:
>>>
>>>- install Classic Shell (absolutely essential)
>>
>>
>>No, it's not absolutely essential. I don't like the new GUI, but some
>>people do. And for those of us who don't like it (including me),
>>Classic Shell is only one of several choice. As far as I'm concerned,
>>it's a good choice, but Start 10 is even better.
>>
>I've heard that. I have Classic on this 7 machine*, but I don't know how
>well it works on 10; for a friend who got a new (to her) 10 machine last
>summer, I put on Open shell, having read here and in the 10 group that
>it's later and therefore better (and that Classic might stop working
>altogether after some 10 upgrade [though of course that'll apply to any
>of them]), but I got the feeling it did a lot less (I think only the
>start menu), and wished I'd put on Classic instead. Of course, Open may
>do more if I'd had more time to play.

My wife has Classic Shell on her machine, running 10. No problems. I
offered to upgrade her to Start 10, but she didn't want me to.

>* Classic on here (7) gave me back a lot of XP (such as lines and
>[+]/[-] boxes in Explorer), but I really have a much older interface -
>probably more like '98 than anything: I have windows with square
>corners, and same-size minimise/restore/close buttons (not a big red
>close one) [except in Chrome which insists on having its own UI - not
>even a title bar!]; I _do_ have graded-colour title bars which I
>consider a gimmick (I think it came in - again - at 95/98); IIRR that
>could be disabled (then - I don't know about now) by setting both ends
>to the same colour, but knowing the coding was still doing the
>transition made me not bother.
>
>Actually, when I first got 7, I quite _liked_ Aero glass; I just turned
>it off eventually because it stopped some other things working (I think
>including windows settings, and TClockEx) either at all or properly.
>>
>>>- enable quick-launch bar and add commonly-used programs to it
>>
>>
>>
>>I never did. I preferred the new task bar which was sort of a
>>combination task bar/quick launch bar.
>>
>I think you're referring to "pinning" things to the task bar.

Yes.

>I use both
>- I have a quick-launch bar because it has tiny icons, so I can get more
>of them in,

You can change the size of the task bar icons. I keep my task bar on
the left side of the screen not on the bottom, and the icons are small
and have no text, except for the running programs.

>but I have a few things that I use a lot pinned - IIRR
>(can't tell when they're actually open)

As I said above, only open programs have text next to them, so it's
easy for me to tell. Can you do that in 7? Sorry, I don't remember.

>IrfanView and Command Prompt,
>possibly others. (And on-screen keyboard as I had a keyboard fault, but
>since switching to external I've not had that for a while so maybe
>should unpin it.)
>>
>>>- turn on file extensions and hidden files in File Explorer
>>
>>
>>Yes. I completely agree with you there. I think Microsoft's defaults
>>there are terrible, but they go back farther than Windows 10. But it's
>>easy to fix.
>>
>I think it might go back to 9x, or even 3.x. It was sensible - or, at
>least, understandable

Understandable, yes. Sensible, no--not to me.

>- when first introduced, as newcomers to computing
>didn't need to see what files were

Not showing them because newcomers didn't usually *need* to see that
is understandable. But you never know when somebody (even a newcomer)
might need or want to see it. In my opinion, there has never been any
real advantage to anybody in not showing them. And there's often a
disadvantage.

>(from I think 9x, the icon told them
>anyway),

Sometimes.

>but from the instant that malware started using double
>extensions - such as .txt.exe - the _default_ should have been to show
>them, and I think MS were bordering on criminal, or at least negligent,
>in not changing it on all versions from then on.
>[]
>>>As long as Win 10 behaves reasonably similar to Win 7, I'm happy. The UI is
>>>the important thing.
>>
>>
>>
>>To you, yes. To me, yes. But not to everyone.
>>
>To me, its _mostly_ the UI that matters,

Same to me.

>>>Oh, and I wouldn't touch the built-in Mail app of Win 10 with a bargepole.
>>
>>
>>Same for me.
>>
>Didn't 7 initially not come with _any_ mail client (I hate the "word"
>app!), and you had to fetch one (though MS told you where to get
>"Mail")?

On 3/20/2022 12:54 PM, Sailfish wrote:
> Ken Blake graced us with on 3/20/2022 9:28 AM:
>> On Sat, 19 Mar 2022 21:02:09 -0700, Sailfish
>> <NIXCAPSsailfish@NIXCAPSunforgettable.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> The worst thing for me in Win7+ is the search feature. It is what drove me to find other search programs eventually ending when I found Agent Ransack. In a way, I am pleased that they broke search in that Agent Ransack beats even WinXP search speed and feature wise.
>>
>>
>> Have you tried Search Everything? If you haven't, you should. Except
>> for its not doing content searches it's much better than Agent
>> Ransack.
>>
> I also rely on AR's regular expression feature at times, does SE support it?
>

It helps to give examples, just in case someone isn't
familiar with Regex versus PCRE.

^birthday # Find me all the files that begin with birthday...

cake$ # Find me all the files that end in ...cake

^birthdaycake\.txt$ # Exact match for "birthdaycake.txt"
# The back slash escapes the period, because
# punctuation has magic properties.

Regex allows very complex search patterns to be used,
perhaps patterns that overlap and "expand" to be quite
deep. This leads to a characteristic called "unbounded".
We can't be sure exactly when a complex Regex will complete.
Unless you were the team that created Regex, you probably
won't be unintentionally making those.

PCRE was an attempt to simplify Regex, allowing only
bounded behaviors, so we could get answers relatively quickly.

I included the examples, just so it might jog someones memory.

I don't know if Voidtools Everything.exe has Regex, but I can
find hints that it does.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything_(software)

"Everything searches its index for ... a fragment of the
target file name or a regular expression,
displaying intermediate and immediate results
as the search term is entered."

Paul

On Sun, 20 Mar 2022 09:54:35 -0700, Sailfish
<NIXCAPSsailfish@NIXCAPSunforgettable.com> wrote:

>Ken Blake graced us with on 3/20/2022 9:28 AM:
>> On Sat, 19 Mar 2022 21:02:09 -0700, Sailfish
>> <NIXCAPSsailfish@NIXCAPSunforgettable.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> The worst thing for me in Win7+ is the search feature. It is what drove
>>> me to find other search programs eventually ending when I found Agent
>>> Ransack. In a way, I am pleased that they broke search in that Agent
>>> Ransack beats even WinXP search speed and feature wise.
>>
>>
>> Have you tried Search Everything? If you haven't, you should. Except
>> for its not doing content searches it's much better than Agent
>> Ransack.
>>
>I also rely on AR's regular expression feature at times, does SE support it?

I don't know. If it's doesn't, use Agent Ransack when you need to, and
SE when you don't.

I use both: SE most of the time--AR, when I need to do a content
search (which is very seldom).

--
The real, original Ken Blake, not some other newcomer

Mayayana wrote:

> I've also installed AR on all machines. It's like Firefox and Irfan
> View -- on my list of basics. That also allows me to turn off
> indexing, which seems wasteful to me. In general I know where things
> are. I don't need "for dummies" functionality like indexing or "asset
> management" to replace Explorer for me.

Agent Ransack (aka FileLocator) does indexing when you first load it by
caching up an index on first load, and why it is faster on subsequent
use, but if you exit it then it loses its cache and reverts to slow on
load, and fast on subsequent use. If you also want it fast on first
search after load, it also can index; see:

https://www.mythicsoft.com/filelocatorpro/
"Indexes can be created for instant searching through GB of data."

https://help.mythicsoft.com/filelocatorpro/v9/en/index.html
Index Manager

Back when I started using Agent Ransack (which was later renamed to
FileLocator to sound more professional since Mythicsoft wanted to lure
businesses to the product, and "ransack" sounds like something vicious),
it did not have an indexing feature. I don't leave software that I'm
not using, so I would exit AR with I was done with it. On next load,
the first search was slow. I haven't been back to AR since moving to
Everything, so I don't know what can be configured to include in an
index. Maybe you can use AR/FileLocator without using indexing, but I
can't searching would be as fast (on first use) having to walk through
folders caching up the files found at that time.

[Search] Everything does indexing, too. That's what its service is for,
and why it is just as fast on first load as for subsequent use.

https://www.voidtools.com/support/everything/everything_service/

They realized that indexing in the background would afford their tools
faster searches. Microsoft knew that long ago, but I doubt Microsoft
was the first. I was hoping Microsoft would eventually replace their
file system with their proposed SQL file system (WinFS; see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS), but that was yet another
unfulfilled promise.

I couldn't get the hang of Microsoft's syntax for advanced searching aka
Advanced Query Syntax.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/lwef/-search-2x-wds-aqsreference
https://www.howtogeek.com/school/learning-windows-search/lesson5/

I knew regex (well, some it as it's too vast to memorize all of it),
mostly from defining filters in my NNTP client that also supports regex,
and on ALL headers, not just overview headers. AR/FileLocator and
Everything supported regex in searches, so I could bring my experience
with regex over to those search tools.

Both AR/FileLocator and Everything will let you search the contents of
files, but that search is not indexed, so it will take a long to open
every folder and subfolder (in the specified target path) to read the
entire contents of every file. How fast a content search takes depends
on how many files the search tool has to open and read during the search
(no indexing available on content). This is also available in Windows'
File Explorer: under the File menu, "Change folder and search options",
and under the Search tab enable "Always search file names and contents".
Non-indexed content searches are s-l-o-w. Neither of those search tools
will cache up the entire contents of every file to speed up a search on
content. A content search can help when you know some file contains a
string, but you don't know which file has it, so a slow search is better
than hunting around yourself.

Most users leave Windows Indexing configured to its default of indexing
only filenames. It can also be configured to include file content in
its index, but that will add TONS of background CPU cycles to delve into
every file included in a file+content index. In the Start menu, enter
"indexing", and select "Indexing Options". Click the Advanced button.
Go to the Filetypes tab. There is a "Index Properties and File
Contents" option, but I'd suggest not to enable it on every filetype,
just those that are documents. This is a per-filetype setting. You
could have file+content indexing on .txt and .doc filetypes, but not on
..xls or .db filetypes. I don't know of a similar backgrounded content
indexing in AR/FileLocator or Everything.

Ken Blake wrote:

> Have you tried Search Everything? If you haven't, you should. Except
> for its not doing content searches it's much better than Agent
> Ransack.

[Search] Everything does support content searching. It's buried under
Search menu -> Advanced Search -> A word or phrase in the file. I
didn't know about it, either, until someone else pointed it out to me.

Sailfish wrote:

> Ken Blake:
>
>> Have you tried Search Everything? If you haven't, you should. Except
>> for its not doing content searches it's much better than Agent
>> Ransack.
>
> I also rely on AR's regular expression feature at times, does SE
> support it?

Yep, Everything supports regex: Search menu -> Enable RegEx. However,
it is a persistent toggle. If you want to go back to DOS expressions,
you have to first disable this setting. You can use the Ctrl+R key
combo to toggle regex support on and off. At the right-end of the
status bar (at the bottom of the app window), "REGEX" will appear when
regex criteria is enabled, and disappear when you toggle it off.

On Sun, 20 Mar 2022 10:35:46 -0700, Ken Blake <Ken@invalid.news.com>
wrote:

>On Sun, 20 Mar 2022 16:17:38 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
><G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:

>
>
>I used Outlook Express (also with Quotefix) for years, and I also
>thought it was fine. Then I moved to Outlook.exe for e-mail and Agent
>for Usenet, both of which I thought were better.
>
>
>>It _did_ encourage top-posting, but
>>that's the disease of the 21st century, not unique to OE.
>
>
>My belief is that Microsoft invented (or, if not invented, defaulted
>to it in all its popular programs) top-posting and almost everyone
>else copied them. It became "the disease of the 21st century" because
>of Microsoft.

I meant to add that I wouldn't have objected so much to what Microsoft
did in providing the placement of the reply cursor if they had made
it an easily configurable choice. But as Microsoft so often does, they
provided no choice. As usual, Microsoft's view is that everyone should
do everything the way Microsoft considers best; our opinions don't
count.

It's just a far-fetched dream, I know; there's no way it can ever
happen. But sometimes I wish I were a trillionaire, so I could buy
Microsoft and change the way it did so many things it does so poorly.

--
The real, original Ken Blake, not some other newcomer

On Sun, 20 Mar 2022 12:52:24 -0500, VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> wrote:

>Ken Blake wrote:
>
>> Have you tried Search Everything? If you haven't, you should. Except
>> for its not doing content searches it's much better than Agent
>> Ransack.
>
>[Search] Everything does support content searching. It's buried under
>Search menu -> Advanced Search -> A word or phrase in the file. I
>didn't know about it, either, until someone else pointed it out to me.

Yes. I remember now. I think you pointed it out to me before, but I
must have forgotten it since I do content searching so seldom. I
should dump Agent Ransack; maybe that will help me remember.

I wish there was some way to put that choice on the menu bar.

Thanks again.

--
The real, original Ken Blake, not some other newcomer

On Fri, 18 Mar 2022 14:40:09 -0700, Ken Blake <Ken@invalid.news.com>
wrote:

>Search Everything is much faster and much better for filename
>searches, and that's what I use. However it doesn't do file content
>searches, so I use Agent Ransack for that.

https://www.voidtools.com/faq/#does_everything_search_file_contents
Does Everything search file contents?

Yes, "Everything" can search file content with the content: search
function.
File content is not indexed, searching content is slow.

Even so, I'd use Agent Ransack for content searching, partially because
I'm already more familiar with it.

Mayayana wrote:

> It's perfectly legitimate too use keyboard shortcuts. A lot of old
> people never got used to using a mouse regularly. And it's the only
> option for blind people. But most people don't use them. You
> shouldn't assume that they're a solution for everyone. Any relevant
> functionality should be accessible via mouse. And in fact, it turns
> out I need only click in the path field to get the path string.

Yep, there's an Up button.
https://imgur.com/cAeaRhO
Its key shortcut is Alt+uparrow (a popup says that when you hover over
the Up button).

The up-arrow key works to traverse items within a pane whether it's the
folder or filelist pane.

To navigate backward through folders, hasn't the Backspace key been the
go-to keyboard method for eons? That's been the "up button" I've used
for as long as I can remember to navigate backward that's it's become
finger memory.

139 shortcuts for Windows 95
http://www.keyxl.com/aaa3f71/132/Microsoft-Windows-95-keyboard-shortcuts.htm
"BACKSPACE Displays the contents of the parent directory. This may
open a new window, depending on the options you have
selected."

Windows 3.1 keyboard shortcuts
Backspace isn't mentioned there, but I don't know if that's a
comprehensive list of all key combos for Program Manager. Back then I
probably much more used a command shell than the GUI.
https://defkey.com/windows-3-1-shortcuts

Ken Blake wrote:

> VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> wrote:
>
>> Ken Blake wrote:
>>
>>> Have you tried Search Everything? If you haven't, you should. Except
>>> for its not doing content searches it's much better than Agent
>>> Ransack.
>>
>> [Search] Everything does support content searching. It's buried
>> under Search menu -> Advanced Search -> A word or phrase in the
>> file. I didn't know about it, either, until someone else pointed it
>> out to me.
>
> Yes. I remember now. I think you pointed it out to me before, but I
> must have forgotten it since I do content searching so seldom. I
> should dump Agent Ransack; maybe that will help me remember.
>
> I wish there was some way to put that choice on the menu bar.

You could install both programs. I started with Agent Ransack, and
moved to FileLocator on a version update. Mythicsoft wanted to present
a more professionally sounding product name. "ransack" has a negative
connotation. I kept FileLocator as I experimented with Everything. I
think it was just over a year later that I uninstalled FileLocator,
because I rarely used it anymore, and was always using Everything. I
don't remember to date order of which program came out first, but I
didn't notice Everything until I had been AR for a few years.

On Sun, 20 Mar 2022 13:28:33 -0500, VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> wrote:

>Ken Blake wrote:
>
>> VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> wrote:
>>
>>> Ken Blake wrote:
>>>
>>>> Have you tried Search Everything? If you haven't, you should. Except
>>>> for its not doing content searches it's much better than Agent
>>>> Ransack.
>>>
>>> [Search] Everything does support content searching. It's buried
>>> under Search menu -> Advanced Search -> A word or phrase in the
>>> file. I didn't know about it, either, until someone else pointed it
>>> out to me.
>>
>> Yes. I remember now. I think you pointed it out to me before, but I
>> must have forgotten it since I do content searching so seldom. I
>> should dump Agent Ransack; maybe that will help me remember.
>>
>> I wish there was some way to put that choice on the menu bar.
>
>You could install both programs.

Yes, I've had them both installed for the last year or two. I was
think I should uninstall AR and just keep SE.

--
The real, original Ken Blake, not some other newcomer

VanguardLH graced us with on 3/20/2022 10:56 AM:
> Sailfish wrote:
>
>> Ken Blake:
>>
>>> Have you tried Search Everything? If you haven't, you should. Except
>>> for its not doing content searches it's much better than Agent
>>> Ransack.
>> I also rely on AR's regular expression feature at times, does SE
>> support it?
>
> Yep, Everything supports regex: Search menu -> Enable RegEx. However,
> it is a persistent toggle. If you want to go back to DOS expressions,
> you have to first disable this setting. You can use the Ctrl+R key
> combo to toggle regex support on and off. At the right-end of the
> status bar (at the bottom of the app window), "REGEX" will appear when
> regex criteria is enabled, and disappear when you toggle it off.

Thanks all, I'll give Search Everything a look-see next chance I get.

--
Sailfish
CDC Covid19 Trends: https://www.facebook.com/groups/624208354841034
Rare Mozilla Stuff: http://tinyurl.com/z86x3sg

Ken Blake <Ken@invalid.news.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 20 Mar 2022 16:17:38 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
> <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:
[...]

> >I never actually owned them, but having played with them in shops and
> >helped others with them, I thought Vista and 8 were actually backward
> >steps. (In usability - basically, hardware requirement - for Vista, and
> >UI for 8.)
>
> I agree with you about 8 (note that I said "with an occasional
> exception"; that's the main exception to me), but not about Vista.
> Yes, I know that many people share your view about Vista, but I never
> had any problems with it.

People who had/have problems with Vista or/and 8 are wimps who should
be forced to use - and pay for - a Mac!

[...]

"VanguardLH" <V@nguard.LH> wrote

| To navigate backward through folders, hasn't the Backspace key been the
| go-to keyboard method for eons?

Beats me. I came to computers in late '98. A mouse
was already standard and DOS wasn't generally needed,
so I never really learned the old-fashioned methods.

On Sun, 20 Mar 2022 13:36:02 -0400, Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:

>On 3/20/2022 12:54 PM, Sailfish wrote:
>> Ken Blake graced us with on 3/20/2022 9:28 AM:
>>> On Sat, 19 Mar 2022 21:02:09 -0700, Sailfish
>>> <NIXCAPSsailfish@NIXCAPSunforgettable.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> The worst thing for me in Win7+ is the search feature. It is what drove me to find other search programs eventually ending when I found Agent Ransack. In a way, I am pleased that they broke search in that Agent Ransack beats even WinXP search speed and feature wise.
>>>
>>>
>>> Have you tried Search Everything? If you haven't, you should. Except
>>> for its not doing content searches it's much better than Agent
>>> Ransack.
>>>
>> I also rely on AR's regular expression feature at times, does SE support it?
>>
>
>It helps to give examples, just in case someone isn't
>familiar with Regex versus PCRE.
>
>^birthday # Find me all the files that begin with birthday...
>
> cake$ # Find me all the files that end in ...cake
>
>^birthdaycake\.txt$ # Exact match for "birthdaycake.txt"
> # The back slash escapes the period, because
> # punctuation has magic properties.
>
>Regex allows very complex search patterns to be used,
>perhaps patterns that overlap and "expand" to be quite
>deep. This leads to a characteristic called "unbounded".
>We can't be sure exactly when a complex Regex will complete.
>Unless you were the team that created Regex, you probably
>won't be unintentionally making those.
>
>PCRE was an attempt to simplify Regex, allowing only
>bounded behaviors, so we could get answers relatively quickly.
>
>I included the examples, just so it might jog someones memory.
>
>I don't know if Voidtools Everything.exe has Regex, but I can
>find hints that it does.
>
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything_(software)
>
> "Everything searches its index for ... a fragment of the
> target file name or a regular expression,
> displaying intermediate and immediate results
> as the search term is entered."

Another hint that Everything probably supports Regex is that under the
Help menu there's an entry called Regex Syntax. Opening that, we get the
following:

Regex Syntax:

a|b Matches a or b
gr(a|e)y Matches gray or grey
.. Matches any single character
[abc] Matches a single character a, b or c
[^abc] Matches any single character except a, b or c
[a-z] Matches a single charactor in the range a to z
[a-zA-Z] Matches a single charactor in the range a to z or A to Z
^ Matches the start of the filename
$ Matches the end of the filename
( ) Defines a marked subexpression
\n Matches what the nth marked subexpression matched, where n is a
digit from 1 to 9
\b Match word boundaries
* Matches the preceding element zero or more times
? Matches the preceding element zero or one times
+ Matches the preceding element one or more times
*? Lazily matches the preceding element zero or more times
+? Lazily matches the preceding element one or more times
{x} Matches the preceding element x times
{x,} Matches the preceding element x or more times
{x,y} Matches the preceding element between x and y times
\ Escape special character

On 20 Mar 2022 20:50:55 GMT, Frank Slootweg <this@ddress.is.invalid>
wrote:

>Ken Blake <Ken@invalid.news.com> wrote:
>> On Sun, 20 Mar 2022 16:17:38 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
>> <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:
>[...]
>
>> >I never actually owned them, but having played with them in shops and
>> >helped others with them, I thought Vista and 8 were actually backward
>> >steps. (In usability - basically, hardware requirement - for Vista, and
>> >UI for 8.)
>>
>> I agree with you about 8 (note that I said "with an occasional
>> exception"; that's the main exception to me), but not about Vista.
>> Yes, I know that many people share your view about Vista, but I never
>> had any problems with it.
>
> People who had/have problems with Vista or/and 8

I had no problem with 8. I just didn't like it.

>are wimps who should
>be forced to use - and pay for - a Mac!
>
>[...]

--
The real, original Ken Blake, not some other newcomer

On 3/20/2022 4:50 PM, Frank Slootweg wrote:
> Ken Blake <Ken@invalid.news.com> wrote:
>> On Sun, 20 Mar 2022 16:17:38 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
>> <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:
> [...]
>
>>> I never actually owned them, but having played with them in shops and
>>> helped others with them, I thought Vista and 8 were actually backward
>>> steps. (In usability - basically, hardware requirement - for Vista, and
>>> UI for 8.)
>>
>> I agree with you about 8 (note that I said "with an occasional
>> exception"; that's the main exception to me), but not about Vista.
>> Yes, I know that many people share your view about Vista, but I never
>> had any problems with it.
>
> People who had/have problems with Vista or/and 8 are wimps who should
> be forced to use - and pay for - a Mac!
>
> [...]
>

"Open the Pod Bay doors, Hal"

"Hal, open the Pod Bay doors."

[Dave Bowman, just before he bought a Mac.]

Paul

"Paul" <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote

| "Open the Pod Bay doors, Hal"
| | "Hal, open the Pod Bay doors."
| | [Dave Bowman, just before he bought a Mac.]
|

Don't you mean just after? There's even a quote for that,
from Malcom Gladswell in the New Yorker:

-----------------
The architects wanted the windows to open. Jobs said no. He "had never
liked the idea of people being able to open things. 'That would just allow
people to screw things up.' "
----------------

You're supposed to admire Jobs's art, not play with it.

I think the idea of hating versions is based in people not
viewing things as adjustable. Everyone said ME was terrible.
Why? It changed a few things. The only problem I ever
saw was that occasionally it would boot to a white screen
with red warning message instead of the desktop background.
Vista? Win7 was and is the same bloated crap. They added
a UAC slider control, but few people use it. People think 7 is
good because by then they were used to Vista and the media
told them what to think.

It won't be long before people are saying Win10 was the great
one. Today they complain that every update breaks their settings.
Tomorrow they'll be nostalgic for the days when every update
merely took over their computer, but they didn't have to scan in their
passport and drivers license, and let Cortana take a picture of their
right iris, while being subjected to an ad for Pepsi and a discount
offer for a Peloton rental.

On 20/03/2022 17:02, Mayayana wrote:
>
> "Java Jive" <java@evij.com.invalid> wrote
>>
>> You are wrong, because you do have an 'up' button.
>
> I see that now. Thanks. So subtle I didn't notice it.
>
> | > | Note also that if you do <Alt-D...
> | >
> | > I'm not interested in 19th century tricks. I just want
> | > an up button. :)
> |
> | I think you should change your sig to: "I don't want to be helped,
> | really I don't!", that would remind everyone not to bother.
>
> Sorry, Gramps. :)

Rudeness when you're wrong doesn't make you right, no matter how many
smileys you use.

> It's perfectly legitimate too use
> keyboard shortcuts. A lot of old people never got used to
> using a mouse regularly. And it's the only option for blind
> people. But most people don't use them. You shouldn't
> assume that they're a solution for everyone. Any relevant
> functionality should be accessible via mouse. And in fact,
> it turns out I need only click in the path field to get the
> path string.

You're totally missing the point, which has nothing to do with age, but
speed and convenience. To do what you prefer, you have to move your
hand from the keyboard to the mouse, move the pointer to the address
bar, and click in it, whereas pressing <Alt-D> is simply *quicker*!

Similarly ...

<Ctrl-Shift-E> is much quicker than expanding all the left-hand
navigation panels one-by-one to display the entire directory tree above
where the right-hand panel is displaying contents. This was never a
problem in Windows XP and previous, because the navigation would be
adjusted automatically, but in more recent versions it isn't, hence the
usefulness of this keystroke.

<Shift-F10> is often quicker than <Rt-Click> to get the context menu.

<Alt-Left> and <Alt-Right> are quicker at moving backwards or forwards
one place in the history, using the mouse to navigate the history only
becomes quicker if you need to move more than around two steps at one go.

<Alt-Tab> and <Alt-Shift-Tab> are often much quicker for switching
between applications than selecting them via the Task Bar. This is
especially true when you have to alternate rapidly between two program
windows, say to compare or copy information between them.

Similarly in MDI programs that correctly respect history lists
(unfortunately too many of them don't, though fortunately many browsers
allow this via a setting), <Ctrl-Tab> and <Ctrl-Shift-Tab> can often
switch between different tabs in the same program more quickly than
selection via the mouse.

Etc, etc. Keyboard shortcuts are well worth learning, because often
they are more efficient, sometimes dramatically so.

--

Fake news kills!

I may be contacted via the contact address given on my website:
www.macfh.co.uk