Issue 28913 - Need list of regular expressions in UI to ease "Find and Replace"
Summary: Need list of regular expressions in UI to ease "Find and Replace"
Status: CONFIRMED
Alias: None
Product: ui
Classification: Code
Component: code (show other issues)
Version: OOo 1.1.1
Hardware: All All
: P3 Trivial with 80 votes (vote)
Target Milestone: not determined
Assignee: AOO issues mailing list
QA Contact:
URL:
Keywords: oooqa, usability
: 32206 66285 (view as issue list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2004-05-07 16:41 UTC by gyaroslav
Modified: 2013-02-07 22:40 UTC (History)
3 users (show)

See Also:
Issue Type: ENHANCEMENT
Latest Confirmation in: ---
Developer Difficulty: ---


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Description gyaroslav 2004-05-07 16:41:19 UTC
We need regular expressions to find non-breaking spaces, long dashes and so on. 
This can be realized in regular expressions or in basic search expressions, but 
this must be done.
Comment 1 lohmaier 2004-05-08 21:07:01 UTC
Nothing to do with regular expressions. These are regular characters that can be 
inserted into the serach dialog
* using copy and pase
* using the "Insert Special Character" dialog (<ctrl><shift>s or rightclick-menu)
* select character befor launching the dialog.

(if you want to use regular expression you can use the character code as well)

closing worksforme.

If you "insist" on having regular expressions for this please reopen this issue
and please name what these regular expressions should look like.
Comment 2 lohmaier 2004-05-08 21:08:37 UTC
closing for now. reopen if you're not satisfied with the information given (but
please give requested details in this case)
Comment 3 gyaroslav 2004-05-09 06:13:01 UTC
How a usual user (not me) can search for non-breaking space? Copy and paste 
character? Wich? And he must know there is that character is placed in document 
before hi find and copies it to search dialog. Better to place [:non-break:] 
into search field then do that hard job. Searching must be simple as it can.
Comment 4 lohmaier 2004-05-09 21:16:56 UTC
> Copy and paste character? Wich? 

? The user should know what he is searching for (and why). If he doesn't know
that how can he look up the regular expression for that characters?

> And he must know there is that character is placed in document before hi find 
> and copies it to search dialog.

He can simply insert it into the document himself.

> Better to place [:non-break:] into search field then do that hard job. 
> Searching must be simple as it can.

How does the user know that he has to enter [:non-break:] (or any other
expression) into the search field? I think looking up the regular expression is
much more complicated that copy'n'pasting the actual character (many users don't
even know what a regular expression is). I think a regular expression search is
much more complicated than a regular search. But I'm reopening this issue.

A quick search at google reveiled that MS Office uses "^s" as regex. for
non-breaking space and "^=" for en-dash ("^+" for em-dash)
Comment 5 lohmaier 2004-05-09 21:17:23 UTC
.
Comment 6 michael.ruess 2004-05-10 10:37:23 UTC
MRU->SBA: please evaluate.
Comment 7 stefan.baltzer 2004-05-12 16:06:50 UTC
SBA: Having a look at the "Find and Replace" UI of MS Word gives a hint how to
ease the search for things like "odd characters", punctuation marks and the like. 
I think this may be a good inspiration how to ease this in OO too.

gyaroslav said above 
<QUOTE>
"Better to place [:non-break:] into search field then do that hard job.
Searching must be simple as it can."
<UNQUOTE>

 In my opinion to enhance the "Regular Expression amount" is less than half the
way to ease the Find and Replace function for average users. Hardly anyone wants
to learn "How-To-Code-What-I-Want". The best solution is always "easily finding
and clicking on what I was looking for"

Reassigned to Bettina.
Comment 8 mci 2004-05-17 08:19:13 UTC
but now: reassigned to bh...
Comment 9 lohmaier 2004-07-31 14:35:47 UTC
*** Issue 32206 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Comment 10 peschtra 2004-12-19 21:13:16 UTC
Not sure if anyone is still following this, but what is a non-breaking space?

Thanks,
Peter
Comment 11 lohmaier 2004-12-20 18:11:18 UTC
non-breaking space is what you get with <ctrl>+<space> No word-wrap will occur
at this space.
regular space:         with non-breaking space between "2" and "km"
bla bla bla 2          bla bla bla
km bla bla             2 km bla bla
Comment 12 peschtra 2004-12-21 06:06:57 UTC
That's a neat feature. :)

Kind of like the keep with next paragraph feature, but for text.

Thanks.
Comment 13 lohmaier 2006-06-09 17:44:33 UTC
*** Issue 66285 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Comment 14 stefan.baltzer 2006-12-13 13:55:47 UTC
*** Issue 72187 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Comment 15 kpalagin 2007-03-04 21:38:47 UTC
Not exactly sure if this issue has finally evolved into "Please add a list of 
common control characters with their regexes).
If it did then then we should mark 63074 as duplicate of this one.

Please comment.
Comment 16 kpalagin 2007-03-06 11:16:01 UTC
As suggested by SBA, I am changing the summary to better reflect the idea that 
Search and Replace dialog needs to have list of common regexes.
Upping priority, changing component to UI as this is not just for 
wordprocessor.
Comment 17 bettina.haberer 2010-05-21 14:54:23 UTC
To grep the issues easier via "requirements" I put the issues currently lying on
my owner to the owner "requirements".