Width of find/replace dialog in KWrite/Kate

[Stefan Monov]

On Saturday 31 May 2008 03:16:56 Andy Goossens wrote:
> On vrijdag 30 mei 2008, Chusslove Illich wrote:
> >   http://caslav.gmxhome.de/image/kde4-searchbarpower-05.png
>
> For my personal taste, the searchbar and replacebar are too complex. That
> is also the reason why we now struggling to position all their widgets.
>
> I took a look at 3 programs (Firefox, gedit and IntelliJ IDEA [1]) to get
> inspiration on how we can improve searching (and replacing) in KWrite and
> Kate.
>
> First, we can drop options that aren't necessary:
>
> * "highlight all": this looks so useful to me that I wonder why there even
> is an option for it. Enable it by default and remove the option. gedit and
> IntelliJ IDEA do it by default.
I had never used this one, tried it now and it does seem useful, and not
immediately irritating, but I could easily see it distracting some people.

> * "from cursor": all 3 tested programs do not have this option, only
> IntelliJ IDEA shows it in the replace dialog. By default, they all start
> "from cursor". This is also a candidate for removal if we enable it by
> default.
I never understood this option anyway. If I wanted to search from the
beginning for some reason, I'd hit ctrl-home first.

> In Firefox and IntelliJ IDEA the searchbar is a sort of toolbar, which
> enables them to save space by using toolbuttons instead of regular, full
> sized buttons. According to the KDE HIG guidelines, we cannot consider this
> to be a toolbar because it contains complex input widgets.
Hm, maybe we shouldn't let the HIG hobble us in this one. Will toolbuttons
really confuse anyone?

> As KWrite is meant to be a simple text editor, wouldn't it make more sense
> to hide the "Escape sequences", "Regular expressions", "Use Placeholders"
> and "Add" widgets in KWrite, but show them in Kate?
Mmm no. Let's keep Kate and KWrite consistent in all their logically shared
parts.

> [1] IntelliJ IDEA is closed source Java IDE. Their searchbar looks like
> this: http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/img/version7/quickFindEditor.gif
Oh, I like how they say "regexp" rather than the verbose "regular expression".
People who would care will understand both, and Joe Schmoes won't be misled
into trying to parse "regular expression" as an English phrase.

Stefan