search options

[biohegedus]

The naming and docs for search options are not clear and/or logical for me.

[koppor]

Do you mean "Incremental" vs. "Float" vs. "Show results in dialog" vs. "Global search" or something else?

[biohegedus]

I mean exactly these.

[simonharrer]

Do you have an idea how they should be named?

[lenhard]

For the record, this seems to come from the mailing list: http://sourceforge.net/p/jabref/mailman/message/34383062/

[biohegedus]

I have not thougth about the naming yet, since I do not understand these or their logic. E.g. If these options are different types of searches why the "show results in dialog" is an option in this group. These should be two option groups. One group for the search types the other for the display type. Or if all of these options indicate some of the display option or mode of the search then checking any of them and search for a word I shuld get the same results. I ran into this, since I could not perform a search within only a given group. I was tald to perform "float" to have a search only in the given group.

[mlep]

Some ("Incremental", "Float", "Filter" "Show results in dialog") are different ways to display the results.
But some are about the scope ("Global" = all of the opened databases).
Right?

[simonharrer]

Search: query, caseSensitive, isRegex.
Search (ext): Autocomplete Words

Scope: current file or all files (global)

Display: float, filter, dialog, incremental
Display (ext): Highlight Word, Select matches (does not seem to work for me.)

Incremental is an option that is more a unix style of going through the results using a next button. I am not sure if we still need such an option.

[mlep]

Thank you Simon for the clarification.

About Incremental:

• we can ask users which one they use the most
• where is the next button?!? (as you see this is not my prefer display style)

In general, I conclude that:

• Help should be expanded.
• The search GUI should be reorganized to avoid mixing things, no?

[simonharrer]

I suggest to make it simpler by

• removing incremental search
• make float the default search and hide the other options
• bring caseSensitive and isRegex to the front as they have an impact on the search results

I do not have good suggestions on scope and the dialog option, as they are intertwined. A global search always opens up in a dialog.

[mlep]

Currently, the various possibilities take 6 lines. Let's try to keep it as compact, or even smaller
Here is the design I suggest:

• Floating | Filter | New window
  (a dropdown menu with the 3 possibilities, which displays the selected one)
• Local | Global
  (and selecting global automatically selects New window and invalidates the possibility of selecting Floating or Filter)
• RegEx (on/off)
• Case sensitive (on/off)
• Parameters
  ("Parameters" is always displayed)
  • Autocomplete (on/off)
  • Highlight (on/off)

Only 5 lines, and still explicit about the (important) choices

BTW, why not to contact our GUI specialist?

[koppor]

Minor comment: pressing ctrl+f when the focus is on the search field, the type of the search changes. I would vote to remove this functionality and just highlight the searched word as Firefox does.