On Nov 29, 2004, at 0:27, Ollivier Robert wrote:
value of incremental searching ;) is the advantage that you (can) write shorter search strings than you'd normally do in a find window?
No, the fact that the search begin at the first character you type and refines itself when one types more characters. Think "Spotlight" (in Tiger) or the search in Mail.app or iTunes.
But Mail/iTunes/etc. filter the contents based on the string typed. As I understand it (and currently see the iSearch plugin function) this incremental search selects a single item and does no filtering.
So this is (as I see it) realtime feedback on the string you enter in the find panel (but no new functionality).
With my typing speed I probably have the find panel open for less than a second, so incremental search wouldn't do anything for me, also because I rarely synchronize my "typing" with what's going on on the screen.
That's the reason why I asked if it gave rise to shorter find strings -- I can imagine that with lesser/no knowledge about the text searched and/or a slower typing speed and/or more reliance on the visual feedback given while typing, it could be an advantage to type letter-by-letter until observing that enough had been typed to find the desired string.
But maybe I'm overlooking something -- it would be nice to hear from users of this feature why they see it as an advantage over normal search.
Speaking in general here, I don't mind implementing features that I personally have no use for, but I do want to understand why others have a use for the feature before implementing it! :)