[Geany] find and replace

Nick Treleaven nick.treleaven at xxxxx
Fri Aug 4 11:19:18 UTC 2006


On 04/08/06 06:52:51, John Gabriele wrote:
> 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."
OK, I'll do this after the 0.8 release.
> 
> 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.
Just noticed that these options don't work when regular expressions are  
enabled (as well as being redundant), so I'll disable the options as  
you suggest.
> 
> 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. :)
I think this is not necessary - once the regex-irrelevant options are  
disabled, it will be more obvious that the case sensitive checkbox does  
apply to regexes.
> 
> 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?
No, what if you want to find lines with a certain indentation? Also it  
can be used to find Unicode characters by their code.
> 
> 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.
By coincidence I thought about this yesterday, and now you mention it I  
think the Find dialog should not be hidden after clicking Find, so I'll  
leave it up to the user when to close the dialog.
> 
> 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.
I see the problem that the user might like to verify that the correct  
text was replaced. I will either have 2 replace buttons as you say or  
I'll add a checkbox to choose the behaviour - but this item may be done  
after 0.8.
> 
> Thanks for the great editor. Keep up the good work! :)
Thanks for the suggestions :)

Regards,
Nick



More information about the Users mailing list