Disable search history?

[Under the Covers]

Using the stand-alone capability of the Editor, I edit a fair number of books, but the drop-down lists (history) in the Find and Replace fields just get in my way, although I recognize that others may find this helpful.

What I would really like is to be able to set a preference to *not* remember contents of the Find and Replace fields -- also workable would be a quick and easy way (button?) to delete prior searches as I work. Is this possible? (It would be great to have this capability in the stand-alone Viewer, as well, but not as critical there.)

Kovid, I absolutely *love* the work you've done on the Editor, and I only wish I could support your work more substantively than I can -- but should my ship come in, you're on my short list.

[kovidgoyal]

Can you elaborate on how/why they get in your way. As far as I know, if you dont press the up or down arrot keys, they are never used and you can just pretend they dont exist.

[eschwartz]

It is very distracting, when you type a match and it pops up, but mostly because for some reason the cursor seems to be missing.

I would like the ability to delete them, though, to make the search history more useful. In the main GUI, it doesn't really matter so much, since you will end up with a bunch of totally different things which you can ignore, but when editing, spelling is crucial, and you may also need to just slightly tweak that regex...

I find myself with a list of 10 or 12 more or less identical regexes, and no way to tell which one is which. If I could delete them once I get the right one, only that one would be left, which would make the history useful, but right now there's just too much garbage in it.

Of course, I could edit the config files by hand, but...

[kovidgoyal]

I have fixed the problem of the cursor disappearing

[eschwartz]

Thanks!

[eschwartz]

What are your thoughts on adding in the ability to delete entries from the history?

[kovidgoyal]

Since the history list is sorted by most-recently-used entries, those that you would want to delete should naturally just drop of the list with time. So I dont really see the point of deleting entries.

[mrmikel]

Is it possible to just make it an option to pop up or not? I have to work with variations of the paragraph marker all the time but at any given time, like right now, I am working with just one. The one time searches and replaces get in the way. For me there is such a clutter of them, the choices just get into way. It takes longer to go through the list than just type it or use my macro program.

It is just a relatively minor annoyance, though.

[arspr]

As I posted in other thread what I don't like about history is that initial or ending spaces are ignored. I would really apreciate them being treated like any other char.

I use them a lot in a regex search which I use for detecting dashes joined to words (a situation which Spanish books use a lot in the way we write dialogue sentences).

[kovidgoyal]

@arspr: You should never use initial and ending spaces. For one thing, how would you know how many spaces characters are there at the start, or if there are space characters at the end? Use \s+ or if for some reason you want to match only the single space character and not tabs or other white space characters, use [ ]

@mrmikel: If you dont wish to use the list, just ignore it. I still dont see how it gets in the way.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

@mrmikel: If you dont wish to use the list, just ignore it. I still dont see how it gets in the way.

When it pops up it covers part of the bottom of the "code" window. If the text you are working on is in the lower part of that window (more likely if you have a lower-res screen) it can be annoying.

BobC

[arspr]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

@arspr: You should never use initial and ending spaces. For one thing, how would you know how many spaces characters are there at the start, or if there are space characters at the end? Use \s+ or if for some reason you want to match only the single space character and not tabs or other white space characters, use [ ]

Why Kovid? Why are spaces "forbidden"? Why are they different from any other character?

Let's explain my usage and you'll see that not using spaces is pretty weird, while using them is pretty simple and straightforward. More over spaces DO work perfectly, what doesn't work is the history saving of my strings in the Find and Replace text boxes, just because those spaces are ignored and deleted.

In Spanish books, dialogue sentences like

<p>"Bla, Bla, Bla," John said. "More bla, bla, bla."</p>

are usually written in this way:

<p>—Bla, Bla, Bla, —John said—. More bla, bla, bla.</p>

And the problem is that between "—" and "John" or "said" and "—", (or even "—" and "."), you can get horrible line wraps if you are unlucky. Dashes are considered as possible wrap points in HTML, not as indivisible punctuation marks. (I suppose HTML was thought over English grammar, not Spanish one ). And it's just a matter of pages finding one of that horrible renderings.

So I use the next two searches and replacements systematically in my Spanish ebooks (I use quotes to make spaces visible):

1. " (—[^ <]+)( |</p>)" replaced by " <span class="nw">\1</span>\2".
2. " ([^ >]+—)(\.|\.\.\.|,|;|:|&hellip;|…)? " replaced by " <span class="nw">\1\2</span> ".

Where .nw{white-space:nowrap;}

And it works, I promise you. My only trouble is that my saved strings in the history have lost the initial/final spaces. I have to re-type or fix them every single time I use them.

More over I can understood your trick in the Find string where, instead of " ", you suggest using "[ ]", but, how do I type the replacement string? Are you suggesting:

1. "([ ])(—[^ <]+)( |</p>)" replaced by "\1<span class="nw">\2</span>\3"
2. "([ ])([^ >]+—)(\.|\.\.\.|,|;|:|&hellip;|…)?([ ])" replaced by "\1<span class="nw">\2\3</span>\4".

Why should I make it so complicated in order to avoid directly typing a space? What is so "dangerous" about spaces?

[Under the Covers]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Can you elaborate on how/why they get in your way. As far as I know, if you dont press the up or down arrot keys, they are never used and you can just pretend they dont exist.

The moment I type anything, the list drops down (using Win7), and I have to hit Escape just to get past it to the Find button or the Replace box. Ignoring the list is difficult when I always have to hit Escape. Hitting Tab (out of longstanding habit from database usage) selects the first item on the list, requiring that I then stop and fix the entry before tabbing on to the next field. I do many of these search-and-replace operations over the course of editing a book, so I bump into this many times over.

My searches are for just normal text and/or scanning errors -- and I too often use surrounding spaces to quickly isolate specific instances -- something that serves perfectly in text searches. I don't use regex; I realize it is second-nature for many, but for me it has been too much of a struggle, and simple text searches serve very well for what I do.

[mrmikel]

I have the same experience in Win7 with the lists popping up.

[eschwartz]

and on linux. (Ubuntu 12.04 LTS)