Nice idea. Let me try and tweak the patch to work in this way. I want to  
test it and see how it feels.

Thanks, Gideon.

On , Juri Linkov <juri@jurta.org> wrote:
> > Anyway, please review it and if there is any interest in it merge it.



> Thanks for proposing a useful feature.



> I suggest to implement more simple and clean design that is

> based on well-known Emacs features:



> 1. On the next matched strings display numbers counting from 1.

> You could try doing with tooltips that will look like in Conkeror,

> (this might be too slow, but worth trying).

> This is easy to do in `isearch-lazy-highlight-update'



> 2. Add a new numeric argument `count' to `isearch-repeat-forward' (`Cs')

> and `isearch-repeat-backward' (`Cr').



> This would allow easy navigation with eg `C-8 Cs' for the 8-th match

> in forward direction.



> 3. For backward matches we could display negative numbers,

> and `Cs' will treat negative arguments like `C- C-8 Cs'

> as positive counts for backward search.



> Also `Cr' would treat positive arguments like `C-8 Cr' as positive

> counts in backward direction. A negative arguments for `Cr' like

> `C- C-8 Cr' would go to the 8-th match in forward direction, naturally.