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Re: When can Mathematica have a decent Find dialogue?

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg107496] Re: [mg107478] When can Mathematica have a decent Find dialogue?
• From: bsyehuda at gmail.com
• Date: Sun, 14 Feb 2010 08:24:57 -0500 (EST)
• References: <201002141057.FAA25962@smc.vnet.net>

I fully agree with Undo and also agree that a better implementation of the
Find utility will be helpful.
A workaround not to find and replace over output cells is possible.
Alt+left click on a cell bracket selects all cells of the style of the cell
you clicked on its bracket. Then the find/replace works only on the selected
cells.
That is, if you Alt+Select a text cell only these cells will be scanned and
replaced

I hope this tweak would help

yehuda

On Sun, Feb 14, 2010 at 12:57 PM, BernieTheJet <berniethejet at gmail.com>wrote:

> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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?
>
> Bernard
>
>

• References:
  • When can Mathematica have a decent Find dialogue?
    • From: BernieTheJet <berniethejet@gmail.com>