[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by theducks

One size does not fit all
I would love a 'replace picker' tool, where you search, BUT you are presented with a LIST (instead of a Single replace button) that yo click on the pattern (you set those up) as you step thru the Founds (this, instead of doing multiple passes, each with a new term. More like Spell check, where you pick from the suggestions.

Yes, I've suggested this idea earlier this year.

I called it the "'Spellcheck List' For Search":

What Features or Tools does Sigil Still Need Yet?

Originally Posted by davidfor

I will use "Replace all" and have a look at the differences window. If I can see some I don't want to change, then I revert the changes and do it one at a time. But, it would be great to have option in the difference window to reject individual changes.

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It would also be nice to have a viewable list, then you could mass accept/reject.

Currently, I see pieces of this functionality in various programs:

1. Notepad++ has a "Find All", which gives you a list + shows you the locations in context:

Attachment 185761

(See very bottom part of the image where I searched for all italics: <i>.+?</i>.)

But sadly, you can only mass SEARCH and get a list... you can't replace.

But you can click on each item, then jump to that exact location within the file + see the match with its surrounding context.

2. A tool like Bulk Rename Utility allows you to mass search/replace filenames:



You fill out your parameters below.

Then you select which files you want to apply it to (Ctrl+Click/Shift+Click).

It puts green highlight on the files that'll actually change, and shows you the before/after in 2 columns.

3. Currently, I use Beyond Compare in order to mass apply/reject changes:



I use this when I have two different versions of an ebook.

I extract the HTML, then compare both sets of files against each other.

You can then push changes from:

• the Left -> Right file
• the Right -> Left file
• Directly type/correct text in either text document.

Note: One disadvantage though... Beyond Compare was meant more for actual code, where lines are small. So in ebooks, you can only replace "whole paragraphs" at a time. Fine if there's 1 simple change in a paragraph. Not fine if there's dozens, where I might want 9/12 changes.

And everything is compared at the file-level... it would be nice to do something like:

• "Hey, I only want to focus on the differences with numbers."
• "Hey, I only want to focus on the differences with -our -> -or."
  
  • British -> American
• "Hey, I only want to focus on the differences with italics <i>."

Then you could go through in passes of accepts/rejects/ignores.

Complete Side Note: I made a similar argument in 2018: "Does Tool Exist to Spellcheck/Grammarcheck by Category?"

I explained the replace one-by-one workflow compared to the category/list workflows.

Spellcheck Lists in Sigil/Calibre completely dwarf the crappy one-by-one spellchecking in Word/LibreOffice. I'll never be able to go back!

(Now, we just need this expanded to grammarchecking + Find/Replace! )

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Having a Calibre/Sigil "Spellcheck List"-type thing, where you can run complicated Find/Replace actions, then visually see them in a searchable list form would be extremely powerful.

And then adding a way to mass accept/reject would make it into a super tool.