The plugins do not contain any special handling for this, but I have no problems searching for FITS or XISF files on my system inside the open file dialog. Globally, or within the subfolders of the currently selected folder. I have the plugins installed of course.
I can search FITS and XISF files by name, from within this dialog, and I can search by other attributes, e.g. if I select the FITS file type at the top right of the dialog, then click the + button and select "Detector temperature" - "is less than" and enter "-30", it will only show me the FITS files that were obtained with my CCD at less than -30 degrees celcius. I can even hit Command-I while having a file selected in the dialog, to quickly inspect some of its metadata with the Finder's Show Info window. Or I can hit the spacebar, to preview it before actually opening.
just to be clear, are you talking about from within Observatory or within PixInsight? because after installing observatory and making sure the finder plugins are working, PI is still unable to find xisf or fits files from its own open file dialogs. maybe you are running Sierra and the problem does not manifest there.
as an aside, my images are all stored on a NAS and unfortunately observatory seems to want to read every file in the catalog whenever a view change is made (for instance, sort by date to sort by name), or when i scroll a viewport containing thumbnails, which results in the program slowing down a lot as the read bandwidth is on the order of 50MB/sec. i probably have 20,000 fits files from my STT-8300M, but i have only loaded about 1600 into observatory. i guess to support slow disks a whole lot more caching of image metadata is going to be necessary.
rob
Hi Rob,
I was indeed describing the PixInsight "Open File" dialog. I am still on El Capitan (10.11.6). I can search for FITS and XISF files without problems from within that "Open File" dialog, and use the advanced features that the plugins offer as described above.
I did an experiment, and believe I figured out what the culprit is of the PixInsight "Open File" dialog search issue. I did the following:
a)
1. Created a Virtual Machine of 10.11.6 using VMWare Fusion
2. Dragged my copy of PixInsight in it, as well as the license, and a few images
3. I confirmed that search did not work in the "Open File" dialog
4. I reset the Spotlight index
5. I once again confirmed that search did not work in the "Open File" dialog
b)
1. Same as above
2. Same as above
3. Same as above
4. I installed Observatory
5. I ensured OS X picked up the plugins. OS X is supposed to do that within 30 seconds, but I found that it sometimes takes much longer so I just rebooted the Virtual Machine.
6. I once again confirmed that search did not work in the "Open File" dialog
7. I reset the Spotlight index
8. Now search is working in the "Open File" dialog. You may need to wait a bit, to give Spotlight time to reindex. I didn't have to because of the clean install of everything and the few images I tested it with.
So, I believe that
1. It only works when you have Observatory. I suspect because Observatory has Spotlight plugins for FITS and XISF files.
2. You do need to reset your Spotlight index after installing it.
To reset the Spotlight index for a drive:
1. Choose System Preferences
2. Select "Spotlight"
3. Click the "Privacy" tab
4. Click the "+" button and add your drive. Spotlight will warn you that this will prevent you from searching the drive. Click "OK"
5. Now select the drive you just added to the list
6. Click the "-" button. This will cause Spotlight to completely reindex that drive. When its done, it should work.
Rob, please ensure that your NAS is not in the "Privacy" list. If it is, then you cannot search it, not even from the Finder.
As for your second issue:
When you first import images into Observatory, it will only create thumbnails for those images that you see in the window. As you scroll through or sort the images, it will create additional thumbnails as needed. It does cache all these thumbnails. You can force it to create all thumbnails for the whole library at once by choosing "File - Optimize Library…". You can see this menu item by pressing the Option key while opening the File menu.
If you still see it accessing the NAS when you just scroll through the images, then please let me know by sending an email to support@codeobsession.com.
