On 25/11/07 (23:16) MB said: >I was advocating that the user that had deleted the index should at >startup or even the minute the index file got missing if running >already, be prompted with appropriate information, asked to put it back >- perhaps by the asking the user where to look for it- or to rebuild it >from scratch. This whether it happened intentionally or not. If none of >the two options of relocate or rebuild was chosen, possibly by the user >canceling the dialog, PM could be used without an index. but the user >would at least be informed something needed to be done at some point. >Then at certain times for example at startup PM could remind the user >that a rebuilt index was needed to retain proper search functionality.
I agree. We were, perhaps, talking at slightly crossed purposes before; I think your main issue was with PM not alerting the user that the index was missing, whereas I was focusing more on whether PM should silently begin an automatic index-rebuild. Just different aspects of the same issue, really. I agree that PM should offer an alert if the index is missing or damaged/ out of sync. Probably at startup, and each time a search is initiated would be the best times to offer a warning to the user. An warning should the user try and manually delete the index would be nice, but I'm not sure how that would be achieved *prior to deletion* since PM does not offer the ability to delete the index from within itself; such a file deletion would necessarily be done from the Finder (or Terminal, if you like to do things that way...), and AFAIK PM would not be able to intervene *directly* with Finder operations -- it could only react to it *after* the event, when it subsequently detected that the index was missing. Which leaves the question of 'when would PM notice that the index was missing?' I assume that having PM verify the location and condition of the index on a near-constant basis is not feasible -- too many calls back and forth between PM and the file directory or something (sorry, I'm not a programmer). But maybe it should check at startup and at the start of each search... and perhaps when brought to the foreground? Then provide suitable dialogues to the user if needed. Rick -- G5 2GHz x2 :: 2GB RAM :: 10.4.9 :: PM 5.5.2 :: 3 pane mode
