In February, I submitted a patch to enable scrolling commands to be used
from within isearch mode without aborting the current search.  RMS
responded as follows:

On Sat, 1 Mar 2003, Richard Stallman wrote:

>    The entire new feature is enabled by a customization switch
>    (isearch-allow-scroll).  I set it enabled in my patch, but it could
>    (should?) be disabled by default.
>
>I have no objections to it if it is disabled by default.
>

Here is an (almost) complete version.  To enable this facility, set the
customizable variable isearch-allow-scroll to a non-nil value.  (It is
set to nil by default.)  The enclosed patch to search.texi explains how
it works.

I'm not entirely happy with my documentation patch to search.texi.
Possibly parts of the "Configuring scrolling" page really belong in the
elisp rather than the emacs info pages.  I'm not brilliantly happy at
using the @table command to get a list without separating blank lines.

The only thing which is missing from this set of patch is the setting of
the isearch-scroll property for the pertinent functions.  I think this
would best be done (at least for those which are written in lisp) inside
the files.el where the functions are defined.  I don't know how best to
set the property for the pertinent primitive functions.  Here is a list
of the functions to ease experimentation:

(if (fboundp 'scroll-bar-toolkit-scroll)
    (put 'scroll-bar-toolkit-scroll 'isearch-scroll t))
(if (fboundp 'mac-handle-scroll-bar-event)
    (put 'mac-handle-scroll-bar-event 'isearch-scroll t))
(if (fboundp 'w32-handle-scroll-bar-event)
    (put 'w32-handle-scroll-bar-event 'isearch-scroll t))

(put 'recenter 'isearch-scroll t)       ; Built-in
(put 'reposition-window 'isearch-scroll t) ; reposition.el, autoloaded
(put 'scroll-down 'isearch-scroll t)    ; Built-in
(put 'scroll-up 'isearch-scroll t)      ; Built-in

(put 'beginning-of-buffer-other-window 'isearch-scroll t) ; simple.el
(put 'delete-other-windows 'isearch-scroll t) ; Built-in
(put 'split-window-vertically 'isearch-scroll t) ; window.el
(put 'end-of-buffer-other-window 'isearch-scroll t) ; simple.el
(put 'scroll-other-window 'isearch-scroll t) ; Built-in
(put 'scroll-other-window-down 'isearch-scroll t) ; simple.el
(put 'list-buffers 'isearch-scroll t)   ; buff-menu.el
(put 'enlarge-window 'isearch-scroll t) ; Built-in
(put 'balance-windows 'isearch-scroll t) ; window.el

(put 'universal-argument 'isearch-scroll t) ; simple.el
(put 'negative-argument 'isearch-scroll t) ; simple.el
(put 'digit-argument 'isearch-scroll t) ; simple.el 

I'd appreciate this amendment being considered for installation in Emacs.

I'd appreciate cc's of any followup correspondence.

Thanks in advance.

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Munich, Germany)
acm@muc.de