Can one not search on the current page?

[AnotherForumName]

Is there really not easy way - or any way at all - to search the current page, as against anything larger than that (i.e.: book, collection, etc.)? I really hope that there is. Yet, F3 and ctrl-F do not do it. I have Calibre 5.18.

[theducks]

Current page of What screen?

Ctrl-F is the search bar, which is limited to the DB (columns: those can be further limited by: Preferences:searching

A couple of Plugins actually look within Books (pretty slow as each need be opened) Do check the Index of Plugins in the Plugins section of this forum

[AnotherForumName]

Thank you for the reply.

'Current page of what screen?' I mean, I think: the text that is displayed at any given moment. Thus, in the screenshot I attach, I expect the search launched by ctrl-F to show me results only within the text that the screenshot shows. (Roughly comparable is what happens in a browser - say, Firefox - when one does ctrl-F.) However, and the screenshot shows this too, the search results range across the whole book. Doing the search does highlight a match on the currently displayed text - but only the first match on the current page, which is not ideal.

I do not understand what you mean by 'the DB (columns'.

[BetterRed]

@AnotherForumName - you posted in Library Management, but your screen shot shows the Viewer

I'll move your thread to the Viewer sub-forum.

Added:

The unit of processing is a book, not a page.

Use F3 and Shift/F3 to go to Next and Previous occurrence.

BR

[AnotherForumName]

Thanks.

I was doing two things (in my post). You spoke to only one of them.

The first thing was: asking whether the search unit can be a screen of displayed text. You have answered that question. Thank you. Your answer was: no.

The second thing was: maintaining that if the search unit cannot be a screen of displayed text, then that is bad.

So what about about that second point? If in a screen of text - say the one that I attached - I wish to find a particular word or phrase, why should I have to search the whole book? True, the search will reveal whether the screen contains the sought string, but if I press F3 to see whether the screen contains another match, then it might well be that off I go, jarringly, to another page.

So, what we have here is a feature request.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by AnotherForumName

Thanks.

I was doing two things (in my post). You spoke to only one of them.

The first thing was: asking whether the search unit can be a screen of displayed text. You have answered that question. Thank you. Your answer was: no.

The second thing was: maintaining that if the search unit cannot be a screen of displayed text, then that is bad.

So what about about that second point? If in a screen of text - say the one that I attached - I wish to find a particular word or phrase, why should I have to search the whole book? True, the search will reveal whether the screen contains the sought string, but if I press F3 to see whether the screen contains another match, then it might well be that off I go, jarringly, to another page.

So, what we have here is a feature request.

For what it's worth, when I search in a browser (tested with Edge, Chrome & Firefox), the text will be found if it is anywhere on the web page whether or not it is in a portion of the page that is currently being displayed.

The viewer search does show the chapter name (if the person who created the ebook was kind enough to include a ToC) and search is able to search in either direction, so if your search goes "jarringly" off page, you can hit the up or down arrow to return to the previous search result.

[kovidgoyal]

Sorry, I see absolutely no reason why one would want to restrict searching to the completely arbitrary "what is visible on screen". This is not going to happen. No search in any program I have ever used, anywhere, does that.

[AnotherForumName]

@DNSB, @kovidgoyal

Thank you for your replies.

What-is-visible-on-screen may be arbitrary, but what is within a single web page - compare the browser case - and is there nothing comparable in Calibre to a single web page? I thought there was, which is why, initially, I wrote of a 'page' displayed by Calibre. But I began to doubt that there were pages in Calibre, so I moved to speaking of what was visible on the screen. Yet, do eBooks not have pages?

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by AnotherForumName

@DNSB, @kovidgoyal

Thank you for your replies.

What-is-visible-on-screen may be arbitrary, but what is within a single web page - compare the browser case - and is there nothing comparable in Calibre to a single web page? I thought there was, which is why, initially, I wrote of a 'page' displayed by Calibre. But I began to doubt that there were pages in Calibre, so I moved to speaking of what was visible on the screen. Yet, do eBooks not have pages?

As mentioned for the browser case, all the browsers I tested would search the entire web page not just the visible window. In the case of an ebook, the entire book is the equivalent of that web page.

As for ebooks having fixed pages? Fixed layout ebooks (PDF, fixed layout epub3 or Amazon's equivalent) do have pages which makes them fun to try to read on a device with a smaller display size. OTOH, pages and reflowable ebooks are not an item. If I change the font size, line spacing, margins, etc. the display window can show more or less text. Then I can get into the CSS and have even more fun.