[Geany] find and replace

[Alexandre Moreira]

2006/8/4, Nick Treleaven <nick.treleaven at btinternet.com>:
> 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.

Just thought it would be nice to mention, that one of the personal
patches I will try to do with my own Geany (whenever I have the time
too, which is short these days) is to create alternative find/repleace
dialogs based on a bottom bar (much like Firefox's)... to match the
confort I have with gvim's search/replace (my editor-of-choice)

> >
> > 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
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Regards,
Alexandre Moreira