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Thoughts on interface improvement [message #5] Thu, 27 August 2009 01:31 Go to next message
Atlas
Messages: 140
Registered: August 2009
Senior Member
Okay, I'm starting this thread because it frustrates me that Foxtrot's
powerful search capabilities are wrapped in such a cumbersome
interface. Yes, there are many praises to be said about the
simplicity of the layouts, but I also think there is a lot of room for
improvements.

Any thoughts? I will expand more on my inputs later.
FoxTrot Search Server 2.5b4 private beta testing [message #8 is a reply to message #5] Sun, 06 September 2009 13:21 Go to previous messageGo to next message
CTM info
Messages: 179
Registered: September 2009
Senior Member
Greetings,

At last, please find a new build of FoxTrot Professional Search 2.5
(beta 4, hopefully the last private beta build before going public beta
next week):

(client)


(server & admin) - expiry date November 15th, 2009

Instructions on installation of the server can be found at:



This version has been extensively tested, but is NOT PUBLIC - the next
planned release should be public beta.

Kindly use as a destination for
your feedback. We look forward to a short acknowledgment that you have
installed successufully.

Best regards,

jean michel/ctm qa

------------------------------------------------------------ ---------------
CTM FoxTrot Search (Personal, Professional and Server) are products of
and (c) 2003-2009 CTM Development - www.ctmdev.com

PowerMail for Mac OS X is a product of CTM Development - www.ctmdev.com
------------------------------------------------------------ -------------
Re: FoxTrot Search Server 2.5b4 private beta testing [message #10 is a reply to message #8] Thu, 10 September 2009 17:32 Go to previous messageGo to next message
thejames
Messages: 7
Registered: September 2009
Junior Member
I have downloaded and installed both FoxTrot Professional and FoxTrot
Server. FoxTrot Professional is installed on Intel and PowerPC Macs
all running 10.5.8. FoxTrot Server is installed on an Xserver running
10.5.8 server.


Install went fine, FoxTrot used the previous settings and index
without issue.

We still have problems with the index disconnecting during Updating
and occasionally on searches. But it is not any worse than FoxTrot
2.0.4 was.

One bug with FoxTrot 2.5 is that when you manually start an index it
remains grayed out and unavailable for searches until you click off
the index, then on it again. This happens with both the server and
professional.

The connection to the FoxTrot Server is unstable when you first
connect, but it seems to stop disconnecting after a short period of
time.

There is a large difference in the size of the index made by the
Professional and Server of the same volume. And a small difference in
the number of files found.
FoxTrot Professional - Indexed files: 463,541 Index Size: 951MiB
FoxTrot Server - Indexed Files: 463,930 Index Size: 259MiB
Re: FoxTrot Search Server 2.5b4 private beta testing [message #11 is a reply to message #10] Fri, 11 September 2009 19:20 Go to previous messageGo to next message
thejames
Messages: 7
Registered: September 2009
Junior Member
I have noticed other issues as well.

The files found in a FoxTrot Server index can't be opened by double
clicking, previews of images don't work, and you can not open the
enclosing folder. This works normally with a local index using FoxTrot
Professional.

When using FoxTrot Professional to index mounted network volumes. It
does not handle the volume being unmounted well. The index shows a
negative number of files and when you reconnect to the network volume,
Foxtrot will want to reindex the entire volume.
Re(2): FoxTrot Search Server 2.5b4 private beta testing [message #12 is a reply to message #11] Sat, 12 September 2009 00:02 Go to previous message
CTM info
Messages: 179
Registered: September 2009
Senior Member
Hello again

On Fri, 11 Sep 2009 10:20:44 -0700, thejames wrote:

>
> I have noticed other issues as well.
>
> The files found in a FoxTrot Server index can't be opened by double
> clicking, previews of images don't work, and you can not open the
> enclosing folder. This works normally with a local index using FoxTrot
> Professional.

In order for this to work, you will need to have clients mounting the
indexed volume, also making sure that the users have the same access
rights as the indexer for the documents and folders they are tring to view.

> When using FoxTrot Professional to index mounted network volumes. It
> does not handle the volume being unmounted well. The index shows a
> negative number of files and when you reconnect to the network volume,
> Foxtrot will want to reindex the entire volume.

Without being unsupported, indexing of mounted volumes is not the best
possible avenue, given that depending on the file system of the foreign
volume some information may be incomplete or missing. This is precisely
why we've developed FoxTrot Server: to be able to index and answer
queries from the file server machine itself. Another benefit is
performance, since you would not be extracting text for indexing across
the network but locally.

This being said, there may well be room for improvement of indexing
external volumes, we do not have a vast enough knowledge (yet) of all
file system configurations and cases in that scenario.

Kind regards,

jean michel/ctm qa
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