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