Re: Simple isearch concerns

[Augusto Stoffel <arstoffel@gmail.com>]

On Sat,  3 Apr 2021 at 19:45, Ergus <spacibba@aol.com> wrote:

> Yes. IMO the difference with CTRF is minimal; probably nothing that
> couldn't be implemented in isearch with a couple of custom variables and
> bindings more or less without too much effort.

FWIW, I've worked on something like that a while ago:

https://github.com/astoff/isearch-mb/

It's a minor mode that makes Isearch read the search string from the
minibuffer instead of hijacking typed characters.  This makes it easier
to edit the search string and harder to quit the search.

It has some advantages over Ctrlf, such as not hanging on large buffers
and retaining the fancy wrapping of Info-mode.  Alas, it doesn't work
out of the box with every third-party Isearch extension (e.g.,
consult-isearch, loccur-isearch or pdf-tools).

If there's interest to bring something like isearch-mb into Emacs, I'd
suggest to integrate it into `isearch-edit-string'.  Thus, among other
things, `C-s' and `C-r' would search without quitting the minibuffer.