Re: [Nano-devel] [PATCH] Implement incremental search

[Benno Schulenberg]

Op 14-02-18 om 01:30 schreef Brand Huntsman:
> When a match isn't found:
>    - beep
>    - change prompt color (see below)
>    - display "NOT FOUND" in the prompt
>    - remove highlight from the last match
>    - don't jump to start until prompt is closed

I would say: all of those, except removing the highlight.  I would
want to keep the highlight so that I can see what *was* found, and
can see what I would have to type if I want to see more of those
occurrences, and can see where the cursor will land if I decide to
hit <Enter> anyway.

> An 'errorcolor' could be added to nano that not only changes the incremental 
> prompt color when a match isn't found, but _all_ error messages that currently 
> use statuscolor.

Yes, I would like that.  It has been proposed before:
  http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/nano-devel/2015-04/msg00047.html
  http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/nano-devel/2015-04/msg00059.html
But no one responded then, so I let it be.

> If color is enabled and terminal supports color, it could default to 
> "bold,black,red",

Black on red has low contrast on my terminal.  I would choose "bold,white,red".

> if not, just use "bold,reverse" instead of the normal "reverse". This would be 
> a huge improvement across nano, as it would visually separate all the 'info' messages from actual 
> 'error' messages.

Agreed.

> > Yes, ambivalent, that's what I am too.  It's a nice feature, but...
> > unnecessary.  This is something that I would hide behind a compile
> > flag, --enable-extra.
>
> [I haven't looked at the patch yet...]
> I would never type ^I to enable it, but if it was always on then it might be 
> useful.

One can switch it on "by default" by adding 'set incremental' in one's nanorc.

> Unless it immediately searches after every key press. I would never use the 
> feature without a ~250ms delay, nano would probably lag when typing fast or 
> pasting.

In a normal file, of a few thousand lines, the lag is not noticeable.  But yes,
in huge files, with more than a hundred thousand lines, incremental search
becomes unusable, because it lags and there is no feedback -- the normal search
will display "[ Searching... ]" when searching takes more than half a second.

(Pasting with the keyboard (^U) does not cause a series of searches because
it is a single keystroke, but pasting with the mouse would cause such a series
-- at least, until bracketed paste mode is implemented.)

Benno