Comment 5 for bug 1339839

It does not yet make sense to me that it is by design and if so why.

If it is by design, I don't see a straightforward way to search for results in a department other than the root dept, which seems like a severe limitation.

Here's an example that illustrates based on a scope I am writing now. It provides public transport alerts from various RSS feeds for different areas.

It picks the best feed for the user's location and makes that the root department, and then it provides other relevant feeds as departments.

For example, the root department may be Barcelona feed. Other departments may be a Madrid feed and a Catalunya feed.

So on launch, Barcelona results show, and searching works, returning matching results in the Barcelona feed.

Suppose the user wants to check the Catalonia transport alerts, so they pick the Catalonia department and Catalonia results display. Maybe there are 100 results and they want to find a particular one with search.

HERE's the PROBLEM:
the first letter entered in the search applies to the current department (Catalonia). However, starting with the second letter entered, the search applies to the root department, in this case Barcelona. This prevents the user from finding any results in Catalonia.

Is this by design?