Re: [anjuta-devel] Search Dialog in Anjuta 3.2?

[Sébastien Granjoux <seb sfo free fr>]

Hi Johannes,


Le 12/02/2012 13:51, Johannes Schmid a écrit :
> Find in files dialog is implemented now, you can grab it from master (if
> you use scintilla, also grab latest anjuta-extras).

That's good as you seems quite busy recently I haven't expected it for 
Anjuta 3.4.

I think the search could be even better so here are several ideas. I 
don't think that all have to be implemented.

1. It's really annoying that the search is case insensitive by default 
while almost all programming languages are case sensitive.


2. I would prefer a check box for regular expression and case 
sensitivity. I think it's quite difficult for a new user to imagine that 
he can get this option by clicking on the search icon. Moreover there is 
enough space on the right.


3. Some editors do case sensitive search if the user type upper case 
characters in the search string, this can be another option if you prefer.


4. It will be nice to be able to search in the selected text only.


5. In the new "find in files" window, the Search, Replace and Find
Files buttons are not aligned on the right.


6. I'm not sure that selecting the type of files is very useful. Most of 
the time, you have only one language in your project. Moreover as the 
syntax is different you can expect that you will not find the same 
string in several languages.


7. Perhaps we could add a way to have a custom filter. But as I have 
said above, I'm not really convince of its use.


8. Now the main point, I don't like the Find Files button. I think it 
would be better to just remove it and fill the list box below with the 
result of the search only. I mean add only the files containing a 
matching string.

It means that you cannot filter the file before the search but I think 
it doesn't matter that much because nothing is changed. It will just 
take a bit longer but I think it would still be probably faster than 
manually unchecking files.

It is more annoying for a replacement, so perhaps we can do such 
operation in two steps. First the replace button is disabled and you do 
a search only. When it's completed the replace button is enabled and you 
can replace the string in all the matching files. Before doing the 
replacement you can remove some files from the list. It means one more 
click for a replacement but I think that's fine.

As a bonus, it will hide the fact that the project manager is too slow 
too as this operation will be done at the beginning of the search. :)


9. For checking and unchecking files in the list, it should be possible 
to select a range of files.


10. It could be nice to display the files in a tree view corresponding 
to the file hierarchy. In this case perhaps checking a range of files is 
less important as you can check or uncheck a parent.


11. I think the number of occurrences is not enough. I would like to 
have the line number and the text where the search string has been 
found. Even a one line context is useful to easily see which are the 
expected matches. You can display this as children of the matching 
files. Moreover, the file could be open at the right line to see more 
context by double clicking on the corresponding line. It will even allow 
me to select which match will be replaced.


> I noticed that querying the project files takes rather long for big
> project. This seems to be a "problem" in the project manager as I do all
> the other I/O in a seperate thread to not block UI. Maybe the discussed
> project manager features (which should also filter the files in a way
> that they only appear once) help here.

I will look at this.


Regards,

Sébastien