Search enhancements

[codemer]

I make heavy use of the search tool, and have missed a couple of features that Vim supports.

 

I would like to have a quick search key that uses the word under the cursor as the search term.

 

The "highlight all" search feature available in Firefox and Vim would make a nice addition. I would like to be able to toggle "highlight all" on searches. This should highlight all matching search terms. Among other things, highlighting all matching terms helps me find cases where I'm over using a term or punctuation, or start several paragraphs the same way.

 

Thanks,

IF

[Steve E]

I agree. I've been making do with the Spotlight feature. A counter for those highlighted items would be good too.

 

And as long as we're making work for Steve (yes, I'm smiling) we could enhance the search function to include styles, tabs, paragraph markers, wild cards, found strings and so forth. Include this in Replace and you've enhanced your Search capabilities an order of magnitude. E.g., Replace "letter-period-space*-letter" With "found1-period-space-space-found4" in order to end each sentence with a double-space after the period, as is the common style.

 

The Unix GREP standard (or the searchmonkey utility) is a good source of ideas in this area but is, quite frankly, overbuilt. Still, at what point can you ever say that you'll never need a particular feature? (I wouldn't mind a Search feature that would find my car keys!)

[Steve]

I agree. I've been making do with the Spotlight feature. A counter for those highlighted items would be good too.

 

And as long as we're making work for Steve (yes, I'm smiling) we could enhance the search function to include styles, tabs, paragraph markers, wild cards, found strings and so forth. Include this in Replace and you've enhanced your Search capabilities an order of magnitude. E.g., Replace "letter-period-space*-letter" With "found1-period-space-space-found4" in order to end each sentence with a double-space after the period, as is the common style.

 

The Unix GREP standard (or the searchmonkey utility) is a good source of ideas in this area but is, quite frankly, overbuilt. Still, at what point can you ever say that you'll never need a particular feature? (I wouldn't mind a Search feature that would find my car keys!)

 

Isaac: Having a quick search hot key or context menu item is a great idea, and in retrospect, obvious. I'll add it. Let me think some about the "highlight all" feature. Emacs (my religious-war-inspiring editor of choice) also supports something similar and I use it all the time. My primary use when writing fiction would probably be to search for those nasty adverbs

 

Thoth: Go right ahead and make work! Regular expressions support such as you find in grep are quite powerful (and programmers are especially fond of them). They are also quite confusing for non-technical users. However, there must be a way to present it them in the interface that won't scare folks.

[codemer]

Isaac: Having a quick search hot key or context menu item is a great idea, and in retrospect, obvious. I'll add it. Let me think some about the "highlight all" feature. Emacs (my religious-war-inspiring editor of choice) also supports something similar and I use it all the time. My primary use when writing fiction would probably be to search for those nasty adverbs

 

Thoth: Go right ahead and make work! Regular expressions support such as you find in grep are quite powerful (and programmers are especially fond of them). They are also quite confusing for non-technical users. However, there must be a way to present it them in the interface that won't scare folks.

 

Steve, nobody's perfect, but the Vim community will still accept you when you're ready to convert.

 

If you add regex support (yeah, please!), I suggest that it be a check box option on the search dialog. I happen to use regex all the time, but most of the time, if I'm searching for "foosball.", I meant a period and not a wild card.

 

Can't wait to see what you come up with.

[Steve E]

I wonder if a number of our search and lisitng concerns could be solved by being able to search (Plot, Character, etcetera) Sheets through Spotlight using a field label. E.g., Find POV Character.

 

This could, potentially, grab labels like Timeline or Event or Glossary or Prop, and turn this into a list.

 

Just a thought.