Re: A better UI than perform-replace

[John Wiegley <jwiegley@gmail.com>]

>>>>> John Yates <john@yates-sheets.org> writes:

> Rather it is a question of wanting (or needing) to clean-up alignment
> _after_ replacing a token with a token of a different length. A very common
> instance is ensuring that end of line comments start at a specified column.

Ah, yes, I feel your pain now, most directly. I find myself in this same
circumstance quite often.

Personally, I think the answer is to offer a new mode targeted at "intelligent
replacements" -- beginning life in ELPA -- rather than making changes to our
current machinery. That way we can test out how it works before considering
upsetting a very old apple cart.

For example, swiper.el is a fantastic replacement to i-search in many ways,
providing not only excellent visuals, but also a nicer way to navigate hits.
However, changing the centuries-old behavior of C-s is not to be done lightly;
nor is there really any reason to, since users can always bind C-s to `swiper'
as they see fit.

John