Result ordering: entries where match is earlier in string should be favored

[birgersp]

Lets say you have multiple windows open. These are their titles (screenshot from my panel):

Now when you launch rofi in "window mode", and you enter "bar" in the search, the preferred match should in my opinion be the "bar" entry.

But, alas, this is not necessarily the case;

(sorry for the ugly photo, "print screen" is disabled while the rofi menu is showing)

I propose that when entries have an equal ordering score (which I assume these two entries have?), the one where the index of the search string is lesser, should win. My rationale is that the user probably prefers this match.

For what it's worth, the "bar" is the top match if it is the most recently active window. IMO the "search is a the beginning of match" should outweigh it.

(To produce my screenshot I made two folders on the Desktop, and opened each of them in separate windows of the file browser)

[DaveDavenport]

rofi has a build in print screen function you can use.

Can you pastebin your configuration and rofi version?

[DaveDavenport]

I mostly wanted to know if you had sorting enabled and what sorting method.
Version can also be relevant if you are on a very old version.

[birgersp]

Version: 1.7.3

FWIW here is my config:

// ~/.config/rofi/config.rasi
configuration {
	show-icons: true;
	icon-theme: "Papirus";
}
@theme "/usr/share/rofi/themes/Arc-Dark.rasi"
element {
    padding: 8px;            // increases vertical padding
    spacing: 10px;           // space between icon and text
}
element-icon {
    size: 32;                // actual icon render size
}

The command I use to open rofi (bound to Super+Space):

rofi -show window -sort

BTW "git-cola" is installed from flatpak, so the command is flatpak run com.github.git_cola.git-cola, perhaps this is what's "messing up" the ordering

[DaveDavenport]

You can try if sorting method fzf is better.

Sorting is a completely non-trivial problem. Humans have an intuition of how they 'expect this', but translate this in an algorithm that matches this 'intuition' for all situations is very hard.

[birgersp]

I'll try fzf

I've worked a little bit with sorting results in a UI before (sorry if I'm out of my depth here) and there the logic to select the strongest candiate was as follows, comparing A and B:

IF A.startsWith(SEACH) AND NOT B.startsWith(SEARCH)
  return A

IF B starts with SEARCH:
  return B

// continue "regular" sorting method

Would you be willing to merge a (optional, enabled in config) feature where sorting is done in such a manner?

[DaveDavenport]

A good patch is accepted, I doubt it will work for the above example.