Re: History of incremental searching

[Barry Margolin <barmar@alum.mit.edu>]

In article <m3u0yf2j2x.fsf@defun.localdomain>,
 Jesper Harder <harder@myrealbox.com> wrote:

> Alan Mackenzie<none@example.invalid> writes:
> 
> > Just out of curiosity, does anybody here know the how, when, where and by
> > whom of incremental searching?
> >
> > When was it invented, and in which product?  Did it arise first in Emacs?
> > Whose idea was it?
> 
> This page <http://www.handykeys.com/about.htm> suggests that it was
> invented at MIT:
> 
>   this feature usually goes by the name "Incremental Search". The
>   initial idea and implementation was done circa 1974 by researchers
>   at MIT and later included in the popular word processor named
>   "EMACS" (Richard Stallman, 1979). The claim that incremental search
>   should be a fundamental part of making software easier to use was
>   argued by Jef Raskin in his excellent book "The Humane Interface".

Which of course explains why most software does *not* include this 
feature. :)

The only similar thing I've seen in commercial software is in Mac OS X's 
"Console" application, which is used for viewing log files.  It has a 
"Filter" field that's used to display lines matching a string, and it 
updates its display as you type.  If Emacs had this, I guess we'd call 
it "Incremental-Occur".

-- 
Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***