From: gideon.stupp@gmail.com
To: Tassilo Horn <tassilo@member.fsf.org>,
Gideon Stupp <gideon.stupp@gmail.com>
Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
Subject: Re: Re: [PATCH] Conkeror like hints for incremental search
Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2012 10:09:45 +0000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <bcaec517a790a90bc704b743585c@google.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <87aa5dmt54.fsf@tsdh.uni-koblenz.de>
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Hi Tassilo, thanks for taking the time to the the patch!
On , Tassilo Horn <tassilo@member.fsf.org> wrote:
> Gideon Stupp gideon.stupp@gmail.com> writes:
> Hi Gideon,
> > This patch adds Conkeror like hints to incremental-search's currently
> > matched strings.
> > This way it is possible to choose one of the highlighted possibilities
> > without completing the search string (useful when using incremental
> > search for navigation).
> isearch is my main navigation feature, so I've just given your patch a
> try. Here's my feedback:
> - The characters inserted in front of matches are somewhat baffling
> (First I've thought: Why do I have all those typos?!). At least in
> X11 frames, I'd make them smaller than the usual text, maybe even
> superscript.
Agreed. Maybe the face should be customizable.
> And it would be nice if the hint chars where appended
> to matches in forward isearch but prepended in backward isearch.
> That way, the hint char would indicate the position of point when
> selecting that match.
Interesting. I played around with various possibilities and finally decided
to always put the hints at the beginning because that is what Conkeror
does. Again,
maybe it should be customizable.
> - Concerning navigation speed, I don't feel that those type hints help
> me. It might do so if the visible buffer portion contains tons of
> matches, but in my regular use, there are only ~3 matches, so
> hitting Cs or Cr repeatedly is faster for me than switching my
> finger to some other key.
As you say, the usefulness of the hints is really for those infrequent but
annoying cases where there are more than a few matches. There are two
typical scenarios where I find myself using them. The first one
is when I need to jump to a position on the screen that is not unique. For
example lets say I am editing isearch.el and I see call to
function "isearch-toggle-hints" that I want to change. Since searching
for "isearch" is futile, I can search for "toggle", hopefully reach the
correct line and then go back a word. But it seems easier to start the
search with Cs Cf, type in a few characters of the prefix of "isearch" (3
characters are usually enough) and then use the hint if necessary. The
second even more annoying use case is when I am searching for a string that
I believed to be unique, but turns out to have multiple hits. In this case,
instead of cancelling the search and starting a new one I can just press Cf
and use the hints to jump to the correct place.
> - I think Cf (and all other keys normally used for navigation) is a
> bad choice, because that's what people usually use for leaving
> isearch. Maybe Mh would be ok. It has some mnemonics, and its
> usual binding of `mark-paragraph' isn't too useful in isearch.
Understood. Still it would be nice to be able to start a hinted search
without switching between the control key (for Cs) and the Meta key.
> Bye,
> Tassilo
Thanks again, Gideon.
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2012-01-24 10:09 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 12+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2012-01-23 17:52 [PATCH] Conkeror like hints for incremental search Gideon Stupp
2012-01-24 7:55 ` Tassilo Horn
2012-01-24 10:09 ` gideon.stupp [this message]
2012-01-24 17:39 ` Stefan Monnier
2012-01-24 18:47 ` Gideon Stupp
2012-01-24 19:12 ` Stefan Monnier
2012-01-24 11:44 ` Juanma Barranquero
2012-01-24 22:55 ` Juri Linkov
2012-01-25 11:03 ` gideon.stupp
2012-01-25 11:29 ` Juri Linkov
2012-01-25 11:59 ` gideon.stupp
2012-01-25 14:00 ` Stephen J. Turnbull
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