[TxMt] i-search in TextMate

[otheraccount at verizon.net]

I don't know how iSearch does it, but the way things work in Emacs is 
that as you type the search string, _all_ matches are highlighted, not 
just the next one. This would be really useful for when you'd like to 
click 'replace all', but want to be sure you're not replacing anything 
you want to be... In the normal Cocoa context, in this situation you 
pretty much have to command-g your way through the whole document, 
checking each match one at a time. On the other hand, when all the 
matches are highlighted at once, you can instantly make sure you're 
matching exactly what you want to match.

Also, incremental search is useful for debugging regular expressions, 
because you'll know as you're typing precisely where things went 
wrong... This could be particularly useful when putting together syntax 
definitions.

(Speaking of find stuff, it's really great that macros no longer (as of 
a few betas ago) kill your find string...)


On Nov 28, 2004, at 7:00 PM, Allan Odgaard wrote:

> 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! :)
>
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