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Re: When can Mathematica have a decent Find dialogue?

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg107494] Re: When can Mathematica have a decent Find dialogue?
  • From: Albert Retey <awnl at gmx-topmail.de>
  • Date: Sun, 14 Feb 2010 08:17:48 -0500 (EST)
  • References: <hl8kvg$pb5$1@smc.vnet.net>

Am 14.02.2010 11:57, schrieb BernieTheJet:Hi,

> I don't know how many times I have muttered under my breath that
> someone should complain about the lousy Find in Mathematica... but now finally
> I have decided to take some action for the greater good of all.

on this, I have to absolutely agree :-)

> First, instead of like the Find in other math softwares I use, Mathematica
> requires I hit three (actually six) keys just to do what they do with
> a Ctrl-F or an F3 key: Ctrl-C, Ctrl-F, Ctrl-V.  Jeez, what a pain.
> Why do I have to copy the expression I want to search for myself?
> 'F1' somehow is smart enough to select the entire word, why can't
> Find?

> Then, there is no 'Find whole word' option.  Very annoying.  Every
> little fragment of a word has to be pondered.

Good point, I also wonder whether it would be very difficult to provide
the Expression-Pattern-Search that is available in the Workbench,
actually a real highlight of the workbench that hardly gets any coverage...

> Then, there is no 'Undo', so that if one accidentally hits 'Replace
> All' instead of 'Replace' one might as well just throw away the entire
> notebook and start over.
> 
> Then, there is no option to skip Output and just search Input, so
> every instance of a symbol that really doesn't need to be corrected
> must be considered.
> 
> Then, the Find dialogue drops below the searched notebook whenever one
> switches over to do some edits so that unless one has two screens one
> is forced to do Ctrl-F again to get it back.
> 
> Then, the dialogue doesn't remember values all the time when switching
> back and forth so that if one goes back to Copy some other value, for
> a replacement value for example, the first value might revert to
> whatever value was there when it opened.
> 
> Then, there is no 'Find First' - a pretty standard operation, no?
> 
> And finally, the layout of the buttons is a bit non-ergonomic and
> confusing.  Really, if they just copied the Find from another leading
> competitor we'd all be better off.
> 
> Am I wrong?

I don't think you are wrong and hope someone with the possibility to
change the Find will listen...

cheers

albert



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