Trying to understand part search...

[Tokamak]

I'm kind of bewildered as to how the search box for the part list in the VAB/SPH actually works. It doesn't seem to actually search by name. Like, if I go to the appropriate category I can view parts that do not show up in a search. Example:

I have a number of inflatable parts, with "inflatable" or a variation in the name. Here I show the "Inflato workshop"

But when I search for "inflat", here are the results:

*One* of the parts with "inflato" in the name shows up, but not the others.

Even weirder, if I search for "inflato":

... I get one "inflato" part, one part (the heat shield) that has "inflatable" in the name, but not "inflato", and three other parts that seem to have nothing to do with the search at all, as far as I can tell.

 

Clearly I am fundamentally misunderstanding how this is supposed to work. Can someone help me understand? This does make it pretty hard to find parts.

 

[Klapaucius]

Interesting. At first I thought maybe it was a mod issue, but I tried doing the exact same search and got the photovoltaic panels as well (as well as the inflatable airlock and heatshield), but only after typing inflat.  So then I tried just "flat" and got them again--but not the airlock.  You would think since the word "flat" is part of "inflatable" that the airlock would have remained.  I cannot find any keyword in the solar panels that would make sense of this, so maybe there is some metadata keyword in the background?  Or there is some leftover artifact from an earlier version of KSP that Squad has not caught?

 

In the case of your inflato parts, I wonder if there is some metadata in the background that is not included in the mod?

 

Otherwise, I have had no issues with the search at all--but I have only stock parts.   I think you found a bug.

Edited May 19, 2020 by Klapaucius

[OHara]

17 minutes ago, Klapaucius said:

I wonder if there is some metadata in the background

Aha! That's it.  I looks like there is a 'tags' entry in each .cfg file, and the search mechanism looks at each part for
+ a word in the part's 'title' that begins with what you typed, or
+ a word in the part's 'tags' that matches the beginning of what you typed,
ignoring upper/lower case.

The inflatable airlock has, in the English version of KSP,
  tags = berth capture connect couple dock fasten join moor shield socket

"Inflato Workshop" must have something odd about the 'title' of its parts, or their entries in the translation dictionary if it uses translations.

[Tokamak]

19 hours ago, OHara said:

Aha! That's it.  I looks like there is a 'tags' entry in each .cfg file, and the search mechanism looks at each part for
+ a word in the part's 'title' that begins with what you typed, or
+ a word in the part's 'tags' that matches the beginning of what you typed,
ignoring upper/lower case.

The inflatable airlock has, in the English version of KSP,
  tags = berth capture connect couple dock fasten join moor shield socket

"Inflato Workshop" must have something odd about the 'title' of its parts, or their entries in the translation dictionary if it uses translations.

Huh. That makes sense, though it is not the way i would have expected it to be done. While that is a neat feature, it seems as if there ought to be a way to just include the displayed part name in the search.

[OHara]

18 hours ago, Tokamak said:

it seems as if there ought to be a way to just include the displayed part name in the search

The 'title' is the displayed part name, so yes the intention was to include the displayed name in the search. (I found the more details in the thread linked below)

Something is going wrong with that system and your installation of that mod with the inflatable parts.

I noticed that the displayed name of the solar panel in your screenshot is is different to mine: this is the OX-STAT where your screen shows IX-STAT  --- Edit: or maybe that is the version from Near_Future_Solar

 

[Tokamak]

5 minutes ago, OHara said:

The 'title' is the displayed part name, so yes the intention was to include the displayed name in the search. (I found the more details in the thread linked below)

Something is going wrong with that system and your installation of that mod with the inflatable parts.

I noticed that the displayed name of the solar panel in your screenshot is is different to mine: this is the OX-STAT where your screen shows IX-STAT  --- Edit: or maybe that is the version from Near_Future_Solar

 

I can at least say that the issue isn't _just_ with the inflatable parts. It does happen with an awful lot of parts. MKS's Karibou rover parts, for example, do not come up when searching for "karibou" or any substring.

[OHara]

Part-search works for me with mods, including your Tokamak parts.

Maybe some other mod you have is getting involved in the parts cataloging system.

[Tokamak]

1 hour ago, OHara said:

Part-search works for me with mods, including your Tokamak parts.

Maybe some other mod you have is getting involved in the parts cataloging system.

Really? Huh. I'm not sure how I'd even begin to troubleshoot that, since there is nothing weird in the console.