(alpha1-1, windows 7) Some "road testing" of adv. find & replace:
UI matters (mainly minor):
1.
With a document open and the Adv. F & R panel open, click on the
document to ensure the focus is there. Now click the X on the Adv F & R
panel to close it. It closes but the toolbar button remains depressed.
(But: as soon as you click back in the document, the button is released.)
2.
Menu entry "Insert > Insert Regular Expression" for consistency with the
other entries in the menu should be "Insert > Regular Expression".
3.
User's Guide: Section 6.13.3. "This is done with the context menu Insert
> Insert Regular Expression" should be "This is done with the context
menu Insert Regular Expression or from the main menu "Insert > Regular
Expression".
4.
Is there a reason for *not* having a regular expression checkbox (on the
Settings panel presumably)? It feels unintuitive to me to have all the
other settings on the two Adv F & R panels but to have to divert to the
Insert menu or right click to insert a regular expression. I think it
would fit compatibly at the bottom of the lower group of checkboxes on
the Settings panel.
5.
I find "Ignore format" an unnatural way of thinking. It is a negative
statement & clearing the checkbox gives a double negative: not ignore
format. Why not "Format sensitive" a positive statement (cleared by
default, corresponding to "Ignore format" set by default)? "Case
sensitive" is already used and the User's Guide, Section 6.13.1 (2nd
bullet) uses "format-sensitive" and "format-insensitive".
*****************
Regular expressions.
This is broken in my installation of LyX 2.3.0a1-1.
6.
Enter .* into a regexp then bold it (ctrl+B). The Code Preview Pane
(CPP) shows \regexp{\boldsymbol{.*}\endregexp{}} which suggests it is
not going to find any boldfaced *text*. But it also doesn't find
boldfaced maths.
7.1 Enter .* in a regexp and then emphasize it with the toolbar button.
CPP shows \regexp{\mathcal{.*}\endregexp{}}. Oops. (The Find pane shows
mathcal symbols.)
7.2 The emphasis button also is not depressed (on).
8. Varying the regexp to [a-z]+ with the a-z emphasized the CPP shows
\regexp{[\mathcal{a-z}]+\endregexp{}}. With Ignore format cleared,
clicking Find Next, this expression gobbled the words of my test
document *except* for the emphasized ones. This has happened three or
four times while I've been testing, but I can't reliably reproduce.
There were various other "happenings" during my testing which made me
feel the regexp part of Adv F & R was very fragile. One thing that
intrigued me was when trying to clear bolding from a regexp by toggling
ctrl+B. If the cursor is not exactly correctly positioned it is easy to
get two \boldsymbol commands in the regexp. On one occasion, by about
the third toggle, the regexp suddenly changed into an ERT-like inset,
displaying \boldsymbol, braces etc. rather than the bolded characters. I
found I could edit this and the CPP reflected my edits. People often ask
about editing the CPP. It struck me that that was what I was doing.
(Alas, I haven't been able to reproduce this particular effect.)
Andrew
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