[Geany] incremental search backward revisited

[John Gabriele]

Last year I brought up the topic of Geany having an incremental search
backward feature. Nick mentioned
(http://lists.uvena.de/pipermail/geany/2007-September/001665.html)
that it might eventually get implemented.

Since then, when using Geany, I've tried using Ctrl-F to move focus to
the search bar (incremental search forward), Shift-Ctrl-g to go
backward, and Ctrl-E to bring focus back to the editor. The problem
though, is that it still feels quite clumsy to me. So, I've got 2
ideas for improvement:

1. Since Geany is a GUI editor/IDE, and it's got a toolbar, how about
having a (possibly optionally visible) checkbox widget associated with
the Search field, such that when checked, does the search in the
opposite direction? That would seem to be an easy way to provide
incremental search backward. If you think it looks like an ugly hack,
you could always leave the checkbox's visibility off, by default, and
then provide a sub-checkbox for "Prefs --> Toolbar tab --> Items
section --> Show Search field" to make it visible. As long as users
could toggle the checkbox (while visible) by hitting an Alt key combo
(like other GUI parts), it would speed up editing a lot, IMO.

2. When I do an incremental search for something that's already
visible on the page, and the cursor gets there, I don't think Geany
should automatically scroll to center the view. The reason is, when
you're using incremental search to move around on the page, you've
usually already got the location you're headed to in the corner of
your eye. If the view scrolls while you're on the way there, it's
jarring. Also, I may just be going there to set a bookmark, and then
heading back to where I was. Having the screen flop all over the place
while just moving around the visible view is disorienting. :)

2.A. Incidentally, I think that using Ctrl-. and Ctrl-, (moving
between bookmarks) should behave the same way (as described above)
when the target bookmark is already visible on the screen.

Thanks,
---John