To be clear: I still think Regex offers the most flexible solution for S&R for end-users. While a parsing S&R engine might be able to handle difficult, nested html better/easier, it's going to be limited to canned (even if slightly customizeable) scenarios by it's very nature. Want a new, highly specialized type of (x)html/xml-smart S&R?... wait for it to be added by the developers in the next version. Want some help with a multi-step regex solution to a particular problem?... ask for help on the forums and try the suggestions out immediately (and maybe pick up a thing or two along the way).
But I think it all just boils down to time and availability. If there was an open-source, highly intelligent, easily customizeable, (x)html-aware, drop-in S&R engine out there... I'm pretty sure it would already be a part of Sigil. And since I'm pretty sure there's not such a plug-n-play beast, it would seem to me that creating such a thing might actually be a bigger undertaking than Sigil itself. So I'm going to continue to use the "Open with" feature if I need to use any kind of complex parsing/editing that I can't get Sigil to do itself.
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