[TxMt] search and replace within selection ?

[Allan Odgaard]

On 5/1/2006, at 2:53, Michael Bayer wrote:

> Why cant the "replace in selection" checkbox be present in the  
> default "find" dialog like it was

First entry in the release notes which should have opened:

    [...] The Replace All Scope has been removed and instead you need to
    hold down shift (or option) when clicking the Replace All button  
(the
    label will change) -- this is consistent with how ctrl-cmd F is
    Replace All and ctrl-shift-cmd F is Replace All in Selection.

As to _why_ I change things, I do that in an attempt of improving the  
user interface. Sometimes it's for the better, sometimes it's for the  
worse. But generally I have to test this before I can be sure, and it  
needs more than two hours of use to be judged.

> and more importantly, why cant this checkbox be automatically  
> selected when I have text selected ?

Because that conflicts with a lot of peoples usage pattern:

1) select text to use as find string
2) press cmd-E (copy to find clipboard) or cmd-C (to manually paste)
3) press cmd-F to enter a replace string -- now with TextPad the  
scope would have been set to Selection which is not what is desired
4) enter replace string and click Replace All / press ctrl-cmd F

While sometimes desired, the “automatic” behavior does break  
principle of least surprise [1] in that an option you manually set to  
something, changes on-the-fly.


[1] I don't live by that principle, but this is a case where the  
behavior can be downright frustrating for some users, because they  
have to remember to manually correct the “smart” behavior of TM each  
time they want to do a Replace All.