Especially on mobile getting to the asterisk requires 2 extra key presses so it would speed up searching to just be able to type “sni” instead of “sni*” to find say, “snickerdoodle”
Also I’m a new Joplin user and absolutely loving it, thanks 10.7mil!
But what if someone wants to search for eg just the word “red”, and then they get many unrelated notes with words that start with “red”? Providing relevant results is tricky so that’s why currently the app lets the user specify the query precisely instead of making too many assumptions.
I thought about that too: some apps solve this by creating 2 additional headers in the search list (usually smaller text and greyed out):
----------- exact ------------
result 1
result 2
result 3
result 4
----------- partial ------------
result 1
result 2
result 3
The question is, if this is a behavior users want or not. I don't know how complicated it would be to make this optional (a setting).
For me personally it doesn't matter. I can search either way. As long as the search patterns are well defined (which they are) all is good for me. But I know that a lot of people see this differently.
How about a user setting for this? I'd also prefer to have wildcards added at beginning and end by default.
The current search behaviour is a hassle. It’s greatly different from other programs and it is not what beginning users would expect. Not finding notes with ‘cats’ in it when searching for ‘cat’ will make users turn away.
Yes, limiting the amount of returned results to something manageable is important. It is much more important, however, to find all the relevant notes first. Limiting and sorting is the second step.
Having extra syntax for what should be standard behaviour (like adding that asterisk or prefixing with slash) is not user-friendly. Use extra syntax for exact search instead. You should not just pass on the FTS of a RDBMS to normal users.
I fully support this. Search engines should be allowed to optimize their searches behind the scenes, rather than exposing them to ordinary users. It's like Google's advanced search is rarely used, but now google search is getting more accurate.
Please, add possibility at least to android application to search without asterisks. All other note apps like OneNote and Google Keep behave that way. Or at least give the option to change this behavior in settings.