Search++: A work in progress

Coises

I noticed a bug regarding the default style which is wrongly changed why you simply left clicking on any option

Then, I right click in the search zone of Search++ and chose again the bla word.

Now, the first command used changes the default setting !

Thank you for noting this. I can reproduce it. Any right-click in a Find or Replace box causes the next click on a search command drop-down or the Tools menu to behave as if it were a right-click.

I will figure out why that is happening and fix it.

If I understood you correctly, when the Bookmark lines when marking text option is unchecked, Search++ ignore totally the Bookmark feature. Thus, it just up to you to add / remove MANUAL bookmarks to some lines, if needed !

Right. The one exception is Synchronize bookmarks to marked text, which works whether Bookmark lines when marking text is checked or unchecked.

My intent is that people who don’t typically want Search++ disturbing their bookmarks can still use Synchronize bookmarks to marked text after a Mark command, rather than having to change a setting before the Mark, which they would then have to remember to change back. However, I think the lack of an option to add bookmarks but not remove any might limit its usefulness, so I might change it in one way or another. It honors the every line / first line policy, so perhaps it should honor add/synchronize too, but then it would no longer be always a synchronize, and it would do nothing if the Tools option were “Do not add or remove bookmarks”…

There’s definitely a design flaw here.

Now, basically, a Mark command :

Case 1 : can mark text
Case 2 : can mark text and bookmark lines
Case 3 : can un-mark text
Case 4 : can un-mark and un-bookmark lines

Thus, I suggest this new dialog :

 Search++: Configure bookmarks

 ☑  Bookmark lines when marking text.

  Bookmark policy

    ◉ Bookmark every line containing marked text.

    ○  Bookmark only the first line of each match or selection.

  Tools menu

 ☑  When a Mark command adds existing marks to text, also add bookmarks.

 ☑  When a Mark command removes existing marks from text, also remove bookmarks.

 Invert option policy

    ○  Invert the marked text and bookmark the concerned lines

    ◉  Invert the bookmarked lines and mark the concerned lines

                        [OK]           [Cancel]

What is your feeling about it ?

The existing When a Mark command removes existing marks from text, also remove bookmarks check box applies to Mark commands when Always unmark all text before Mark command. (Otherwise add to existing marked text.) in the Settings dialog is checked. That’s the only time a Mark command ever removes marks from text. It’s possible this shouldn’t even be an option (operating as if it were always checked) since Bookmark lines when marking text must also be checked, but I thought there might be the occasional person who would want to uncheck it.

The choice under Mark tools applies to commands from the Tools menu (except Synchronize bookmarks to marked text) and has nothing to do with Mark commands.

My wording needs more clarity; or possibly the problem is that the selection of available choices doesn’t make sense, and that’s why it’s hard to convey.

Regarding the proposed Invert the bookmarked lines and mark the concerned lines: the command would clear all marks from text, invert the bookmarks, then mark every character in every line that was bookmarked? Does that include or exclude line endings? What does it do if Bookmark only the first line of each match or selection is in effect?

I’m really tight on available menu mnemonics (the underlined letters) and memorable shortcut keys on the Tools menu, to the point where adding much more will mean I either have to remove something or use sub-menus (with limited shortcut possibilities): but this sounds more like it should be a separate command than a setting that changes how Invert marked text works. In that case, though, since Inverse Bookmarks is already a Notepad++ command, I wonder if something else (like Mark or Select all text in bookmarked lines) would be more versatile?

I shudder to invent yet another conditional search, but maybe Find All / Select / Mark / Show in Bookmarked lines is what is really wanted here. (And then that leads to wanting to bookmark lines containing a match without bothering with marking the text…)

I will take ideas from your dialog, but it doesn’t quite represent the options that are available now. Invert and the implications thereof I am still thinking about.

Why not make the entire menu, under an unchecked Bookmark lines when marked text option, gray, in this new dialog ?

Putting it at the top and disabling the options when it is not checked would help clarify the relationship between it and the other settings, but there is one problem: the “Bookmark policy” (”every line” or ”only the first line”) applies to Synchronize bookmarks to marked text, which works even if Bookmark lines when marking text is not checked. (Again, this could represent a design flaw.)

Coises

Search++ version 0.7.0.2 is a test of my second attempt at improved bookmark handling. Help and change log have not been updated.

@guy038, @peterjones, @astewart77 and anyone else interested, please let me know if this is better than the last attempt, and anything you would like to be different.

Fixed right-click in Find or Search box causing next left-click on a Search++ menu to act as if it were a right-click.
Some changes in the wording and organization of the Configure bookmarks dialog.
Separated Invert and Synchronize into sub-menus on the Tools menu, with all sub-menu choices now independent of the Configure bookmarks settings.

Hopefully the Configure bookmarks dialog is a little more clear now. I rearranged it as @guy038 suggested, putting the Bookmark lines when marking text check box at the top and disabling everything when it is not checked, and I made some changes in wording:

In version 0.7.0.1, the Invert marked text and Synchronize bookmarks to marked text commands on the Tools menu were affected by some settings in the Configure bookmarks dialog but not by others. It was confusing.

In version 0.7.0.2 the dialog is more explicit about what commands respond to the settings in the bottom box. The commands that were previously exceptions are now on sub-menus, Invert marks or bookmarks and Synchronize marks and bookmarks. Each sub-menu has several options, none of which depend on settings in the Configure bookmarks dialog.

A downside to this is that there are no keyboard shortcuts for the items on the sub-menus. (There are only a couple available shortcuts left, and I can’t see how I could prioritize one over another.)

The sub-menu options that are qualified with “excluding line endings” mark entire lines to match bookmarks, but avoid marking the line ending characters.
“Add (book)marks” vs “(Book)Mark only” distinguishes adding to preexisting marks or bookmarks from clearing them first.

All feedback is welcome and appreciated.

guy038

Hi, @coises,

Yesterday, I did not have time to thoroughly test your 0.7.0.1 release. So, today, I downloaded your last v0.7.0.2 release that I’m presently testing !

See you later, in the evening ( in France ! )

BR

guy038

guy038

Hello, @coises,

For, the tests below, I needed, of course, to un-check the Always unmark all text before Mark command. (Otherwise add to existing marked text.) option in Settings

Regarding the present Synchronize marks and bookmarks sub-mneu, below :

Add a bookmark to each line with marked text
Add a bookmark to the first line of each span of marked text

Bookmark only lines with marked text
Bookmark only the first line of each span of marked text

Bookmark visible lines

Add marks to all text in bookmarked lines
Mark only text in bookmarked lines

Add marks to all text in bookmarked lines, excluding line endings
Mark only text in bookmarked lines,excluding line endings

Two observations :

1 I don’t think that the options which mark only the first line of each span of marked text are really useful. Actually, the goal is more to mark all the lines that meet a certain criterion, in order to navigate between these lines, copy / cut theses lines for pasting in a other location or file or deleting these ones !

2 With native N++, whatever you use the ^.* or ^.*\R regex to mark AND boomark lines, then using the Copy Bookmarked lines of N++ and pasting in an other document, even with an other kind of EOL, just paste the bookmarked lines according to the EOL of the pasting document

So, most of the time, taking the line-breaks in account is not necessary ! However, adding the line-breaks characters is useful as it also includes the true empty lines !

Thus, this would simplify the Synchronize marks and bookmarks sub-menu to the following one :

Bookmark only lines containing marked text
Clear all bookmarks, then bookmark only lines containing marked text

Bookmark visible lines

Mark all text and EOLs of the bookmarked lines
Clear all marks, then mark all text and EOLs of the bookmarked lines

Now, regarding the present Invert marks or bookmarks sub menu, below :

A Invert marked text
  Invert marked text, excluding unmarked line endings

C Invert marked text and sync bookmarks
  Invert marked text, excluding unmarked line endings, and sync bookmarks

B Invert bookmarks
D Invert bookmarks and mark only bookmarked lines
  Invert bookmarks and mark only bookmarked lines, excluding line endings

This time, I would avoid any option that excludes the EOLs and I propose this new sub-menu :

A Invert only the marked text

B Invert only the bookmarks

D Invert bookmarks, then mark all text and EOL of the bookmarked lines

C Invert marked text, then bookmark all lines containing marked text

Remarks :

The letters preceding the options serve to link this present submenu to the future possible submenu !
Note that running, consecutively, the A and B actions is equivalent to the D action
Note also that in these two sub-menus, I specified, when necessary, the two consecutive steps to make it easier to understand :

For example :

Clear all bookmarks, then bookmark only lines containing marked text
Clear all marks, then mark all text and EOLs of the bookmarked lines
D Invert bookmarks, then mark all text and EOL of the bookmarked lines
C Invert marked text, then bookmark all lines containing marked text

It’s easier to see the first action done : on the bookmarks OR on the marks

BR

guy038

Again, I forgot to thank you for the fix when you do a first right-click within the Find or Replace boxes !

guy038

Hi, @coises,

Oh…, my God, I’m just realizing that I did all my previous tests with the main Bookmark lines with marking text option OFF, so with the Search++ Configure bookmark dialog all greyed !

Thus, my tests are quite incomplete :-(( I’ll continue testing … !

BR

guy038

guy038

Hello, @coises and All,

Thus, I chose these options within the Search++: Configure bookmarks dialog :

And ultimately, given the chosen options, the only differences are :

When you mark something, it automatically bookmarks the associated line
When you unmark something, it automatically removes the bookmark of the associated line

Best Regards

guy038

Coises

@guy038 said:

And ultimately, given the chosen options, the only differences are :

When you mark something, it automatically bookmarks the associated line

When you unmark something, it automatically removes the bookmark of the associated line

Yes, that is one of the changes from 0.7.0.1 to 0.7.0.2, that Invert and Synchronize (previously commands, now sub-menus of commands) are no longer affected by the Configure bookmarks settings at all. That made it sensible to put all the settings under Bookmark lines when marking text. and disable them when that option is unchecked.

Coises

@guy038 said:

For, the tests below, I needed, of course, to un-check the Always unmark all text before Mark command. (Otherwise add to existing marked text.) option in Settings

I don’t know if it’s clear, but that only affects Mark search commands. It doesn’t affect any commands on the Tools menu.

There are two times when a successful Mark search command unmarks existing text first. (A command that doesn’t find a match never unmarks.) One is when that option is checked: in that case, all Mark search commands clear existing marks before marking matching text. The other case is Mark in Marked text. When that command is chosen or defaulted, existing marks are cleared before marking the first match regardless of whether Always unmark… is checked, because otherwise the command could not accomplish anything: it would only be marking text that is already marked.

The Configure bookmarks option Mark commands that unmark before searching also clear bookmarks. is related to this. If either of the above cases applies and that box is checked and Bookmark lines when marking text is checked, bookmarks are cleared as well as marks.

Hopefully that does what most people would want and expect without them having to think through all those details.

Regarding the present Synchronize marks and bookmarks sub-mneu, below :
Add a bookmark to each line with marked text
Add a bookmark to the first line of each span of marked text

Bookmark only lines with marked text
Bookmark only the first line of each span of marked text

Bookmark visible lines

Add marks to all text in bookmarked lines
Mark only text in bookmarked lines

Add marks to all text in bookmarked lines, excluding line endings
Mark only text in bookmarked lines,excluding line endings
Two observations :

1 I don’t think that the options which mark only the first line of each span of marked text are really useful. Actually, the goal is more to mark all the lines that meet a certain criterion, in order to navigate between these lines, copy / cut theses lines for pasting in a other location or file or deleting these ones !

Yes, I have wondered if any of that, in the Synchronize sub-menu or in the Configure bookmarks dialog, is useful. It was how I expected bookmarks would work with search and that’s how I first implemented it; then I saw that Notepad++ doesn’t just bookmark the lines where each match began, it marks every line containing any part of a match.

I suspect it’s a lot less common to search for matches that span multiple lines than for matches contained in a single line, so maybe few people even notice the difference.

I think I would either leave it in both the Configure bookmarks dialog and the Synchronize menu or take it out of both. I left it out of the Invert sub-menu because I couldn’t figure out a way to make it make much sense when doing inversion with bookmarks.

2 With native N++, whatever you use the ^.* or ^.*\R regex to mark AND boomark lines, then using the Copy Bookmarked lines of N++ and pasting in an other document, even with an other kind of EOL, just paste the bookmarked lines according to the EOL of the pasting document

So, most of the time, taking the line-breaks in account is not necessary ! However, adding the line-breaks characters is useful as it also includes the true empty lines !

Thus, this would simplify the Synchronize marks and bookmarks sub-menu to the following one :
Bookmark only lines containing marked text
Clear all bookmarks, then bookmark only lines containing marked text

Bookmark visible lines

Mark all text and EOLs of the bookmarked lines
Clear all marks, then mark all text and EOLs of the bookmarked lines

I have to think about this some more. I can agree that having line endings / no line endings variants in those menus makes them more complex to read and use.

Inverting marked text can yield some strange results. For example, say you matched a full line, but not its line ending, so it alone is marked and bookmarked. Now you Invert marked text and sync bookmarks. The line ending on that line wasn’t marked, so when you invert marks it is marked; since there is a mark on the line (though you can’t see it if you don’t show line endings), the line is also bookmarked. Every line in the document is now bookmarked, including the originally marked and bookmarked line that now has no visible marks (they’re hidden along with the line endings).

Though I don’t think I should ignore line endings on the programming side — as per my example above — it could be that I can “hide” the unexpected behavior from users so they don’t have to think about it. The tricky bit is being confident that I really have covered all the cases that would be confusing to a user if I don’t force them to think about line endings.

Coises

@guy038 said:

This time, I would avoid any option that excludes the EOLs and I propose this new sub-menu :

A Invert only the marked text

B Invert only the bookmarks

D Invert bookmarks, then mark all text and EOL of the bookmarked lines

C Invert marked text, then bookmark all lines containing marked text

Note that running, consecutively, the A and B actions is equivalent to the D action

No, it isn’t. If you search for something using the Mark command, only the text that actually matches is marked. Invert marked text marks everything that wasn’t marked and unmarks everything that was marked, so it marks the text surrounding the matches but leaves gaps where the matches were. Potentially useful if you want to search only text that the last search didn’t match.

If you had Bookmark lines when marking text checked when you did that Mark command, there will have been a bookmark on every line that contained any marked text. If you then Invert bookmarks, the bookmarks will be only on lines that had no marked text at all.

Put the two together and you’ll have marked text with gaps where the original matches were, and bookmarks only on lines that have no gaps.

Invert bookmarks and mark only bookmarked lines would bookmark the same lines as the above process, but every bookmarked line (that is, every line that originally contained no part of any match) would have all its text marked. The details of which parts of lines matched and which didn’t would be completely lost.

An additional complication is zero-length matches. It is impossible to mark a zero-length match; but when marking with Bookmark lines when marking text checked, the lines containing zero-length matches are still bookmarked.

When you invert bookmarks, a line containing one or more zero-length matches will then not be bookmarked. If you invert bookmarks first and then mark the bookmarked lines, that line won’t be bookmarked or marked. If you invert the marks and the bookmarks separately, the line will be fully marked (because it had no marked text), but not bookmarked.

You might have meant to say that A followed by B is equivalent to C, rather than D. However, in the zero-length match case, option C would bookmark the line that previously contained only zero-length matches (since it would now be fully marked).

I’m still not sure what will be useful and what won’t be; I just wanted to note that it does make a difference whether you invert marks and bookmarks separately or whether you invert one and then derive the other by synchronizing.

And of course, if you have marked text that wasn’t marked with bookmarking on, or if you added or removed bookmarks by hand, that would also lead to different results for the various operations.

Coises

@guy038 said:

Now, regarding the present Invert marks or bookmarks sub menu, below :

A Invert marked text
  Invert marked text, excluding unmarked line endings

C Invert marked text and sync bookmarks
  Invert marked text, excluding unmarked line endings, and sync bookmarks

B Invert bookmarks
D Invert bookmarks and mark only bookmarked lines
  Invert bookmarks and mark only bookmarked lines, excluding line endings

This time, I would avoid any option that excludes the EOLs and I propose this new sub-menu :

A Invert only the marked text

B Invert only the bookmarks

D Invert bookmarks, then mark all text and EOL of the bookmarked lines

C Invert marked text, then bookmark all lines containing marked text

Since Notepad++ already has an Inverse Bookmarks command, what would you think of going back to a single Invert marked text command (no sub-menu) and just leaving it to users to use the Notepad++ command and/or follow up with a command from the Synchronize marks and bookmarks menu if they want one of the other results?