History of incremental searching

History of incremental searching

[Alan Mackenzie]

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?

I think it is a truly remarkable idea, surely worthy  of a p***nt (please
excuse my language here) if any software idea is.

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Munich, Germany)
Email: aacm@muuc.dee; to decode, wherever there is a repeated letter
(like "aa"), remove half of them (leaving, say, "a").

Re: History of incremental searching

[Jesper Harder]

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".

-- 
Jesper Harder                                <http://purl.org/harder/>

Re: History of incremental searching

[Barry Margolin]

In article <80ca8c.pl.ln@acm.acm>, Alan Mackenzie<none@example.invalid> 
wrote:

> 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?

It's been in Emacs since its original implementation on ITS at MIT, over 
25 years ago.  I don't know if this is where it originated, but there's 
a good chance, since EMACS was one of the first visual editors.

> I think it is a truly remarkable idea, surely worthy  of a p***nt (please
> excuse my language here) if any software idea is.

Well, if it were, the patent would have expired by now.

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

Re: History of incremental searching

[Barry Margolin]

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 ***

Re: History of incremental searching

[Joe Corneli]

  Incremental-Occur

Hey, that's a kind of neat idea.  Seems a bit expensive to do with
every character that's entered though.

Re: History of incremental searching

[Stefan Monnier]

> 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 

It has actually finally made it to the non-Emacs world a few yeas ago
under the name "type ahead find" or something like that.
Mozilla (and derivatives) has it, for example.

As for incremental-occur, I'm still waiting for
a gnu.emacs.sources submission.


        Stefan

Re: History of incremental searching

[David Kastrup]

Joe Corneli <jcorneli@math.utexas.edu> writes:

>   Incremental-Occur
> 
> Hey, that's a kind of neat idea.  Seems a bit expensive to do with
> every character that's entered though.

Well, you would probably start out with an initial occur pattern of
more than one letter and then shrink on the initial matches.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

Re: History of incremental searching

[Florian Weimer]

* Stefan Monnier:

>> 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 
>
> It has actually finally made it to the non-Emacs world a few yeas ago
> under the name "type ahead find" or something like that.

VIM and screen have provided it for some time, too.  And readline, of
course. 8-)

-- 
Current mail filters: many dial-up/DSL/cable modem hosts, and the
following domains: bigpond.com, di-ve.com, hotmail.com, jumpy.it,
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tatanova.com, tiscali.co.uk, tiscali.cz, tiscali.it, voila.fr, yahoo.com.

Re: History of incremental searching

[Alan Mackenzie]

Barry Margolin <barmar@alum.mit.edu> wrote on Mon, 17 May 2004 11:35:16 -0400:
> 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".

Thanks!  1974, eh?  Wow!

> 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.

There is a help facility in much commercial software, where certain
terms/sentences are listed top to bottom in a buffer.  As you type
characters in, it incrementally searches for terms anchored at BOL.
Trouble is, it doesn't allow you to search freely through the list.  It's
horrible!

> 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

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Munich, Germany)
Email: aacm@muuc.dee; to decode, wherever there is a repeated letter
(like "aa"), remove half of them (leaving, say, "a").