[Geany] find and replace

[John Gabriele]

Hi,

Just downloaded and built the latest from svn, and the "Find" and
"Replace" dialogs really look great. :) I think the dialog that pops
up to ask you if you want to wrap the search is good also, since, with
other editors, sometimes you're clicking through too quickly and lose
track if you've wrapped the search or not. The small dialog makes it
noticable just the right amount, IMO.

But in the pursuit of finely-tuned perfection, here are some hopefully
constructive comments:

In both the "Find" and "Replace" dialogs, you might change the text
"Match only word start" to "Match only at start of word" and then
provide a tooltip (is that the correct term? "popup help" maybe?) that
says, "Only finds words that begin with the pattern you're searching
for."

Actually, in both dialogs, you might consider disabling (greying out)
"Match only a whole word", and "Match only at start of word"/"Match
only word start" when the user selects "Use regular expressions", as
those choices should make no difference when using regexes since the
user would just use \b (erm... \< and \> I guess) if that's indeed
what they wanted.

I see that you do provide the option of case insensitive regexes
(which works nicely), though I suspect that the user will probably
*expect* regex searches to be case sensitive by default -- thus you
might consider making sure the "Case sensitive" checkbox gets flipped
true (if not already selected) whenever the user selects "Use regular
expressions". I think it would save the user some head-scratching.
POLS (principle of least surprise) and all. :)

With regard to the "Replace control characters", I see that this
means: if you put one of these 2-character patterns in your replace
string (like \t), you'll actually get the control character when the
replace happens (instead of the two separate '\' and 't' characters).
It may be an error that this option is in the "Find" dialog, correct?

Also regarding the "Find" dialog, it might be useful for the user to
have a checkbox to "keep this dialog window open", since you might
like to change one or more search options during a search. Maybe just
my personal preference though. I see that I could just hit Ctrl-f to
get that dialog up again if I need it.

Finally, with "Replace", a user might find it desirable to be able to
replace a given bit of text, but then not automatically go on to the
next occurrance (say you've got a large file with long stretches in
between matches, not all of which you want to replace). It might be
useful to have separate "replace" and "replace and find next" buttons.
"find" could possibly even be changed to "find next" for extra
clarity, but that's, again, maybe just personal preference.

Thanks for the great editor. Keep up the good work! :)
---John