[Geany] New Release: Geany 0.8

John Gabriele jmg3000 at xxxxx
Fri Aug 11 20:14:50 UTC 2006


On 8/11/06, Nick Treleaven <nick.treleaven at btinternet.com> wrote:
>
> On 11/08/06 15:21:46, John Gabriele wrote:
> > On 8/11/06, Nick Treleaven <nick.treleaven at btinternet.com> wrote:
> >> [snip]
> >>
> >> I think you don't have case sensitive checked ;-) So [A-Z] is the
> >> same
> >> as [a-z]. It works if you use case sensitive regexes.
> >
> > Gah! Ouch. Missed that. Thanks.
> >
> > Incidentally, in a previous thread
> > (http://lists.uvena.de/pipermail/geany/2006-August/000358.html) I
> > requested that, when the user clicks that "Use regular
> > expressions"checkbox, that it might be a good idea to automatically
> > select the "Case sensitive" option too, since users will be expecting
> > that regexes start off case-sensitive by default. Nick, you mentioned
> > you didn't think it's necessary, but I think it's kinda' funny that I
> > was caught by it myself (embarrassingly, after previously bringing it
> > up!). I will now train myself to always check that option whenever I
> > select the regex option (since almost all of my regex searches are
> > case sensitive), but if you think that the majority of your users will
> > also have to train themselves like that, you might reconsider setting
> > the option automatically. Principle of least surprise and all. :)
>
> Well, the problem is twofold:
> 1. It could be surprising that the case sensitive option becomes
> checked when regexes are checked.
> 2. What to do when regexes are unchecked - unchecking case sensitive
> search could be surprising too.
>
> I wonder about having a separate checkbox for regex case sensitive -
> this would seem to fix the above problems.

Well, if the checkboxes could be arranged to look hierarchically (so
the one beneath "Use regular expressions" would be indented), I think
it would look right.

If you went that route, I might suggest the following:

0. The new option would be called "Case-insensitive regular
expressions", since the default (not selected checkbox) should be
case-sensitive, IMO.

1. When you select "Use regular expressions", "Case sensitive" gets greyed out.

2. When "Use regular expressions" is not selected, "Case-insensitive
regexes" is greyed out.

As usual with the other options, they'd remember the way you last had
them checked, though I'd have the "Case-insensitive regexes" checkbox
start off life as un-checked (not selected).

Although, at first, it may seem weird to have two similarly- and
oppositely-named options ("Case-sensitive" and "Case-insensitive
regex"), I think it makes sense. When you do a normal plain text
search, having it start out case-insensitive is closer to the norm, so
it's a good default. That is, I would think you'd want the option with
the checkbox to symbolize the *optional* and *less usual* thing the
user might want to do. You check the checkbox when you want to do more
out-of-the-ordinary thing.

By the way, you might change the text of "Case sensitive" to
"Case-sensitive", (with the hyphen) which I believe is more correct
(see http://www.answers.com/topic/hyphen).

---John



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