Hi Ian,
you bring up some good ideas (i have missed some of them as well) and
the best way to bring them in the product is to submit feature requests.
Macros are good for rapid prototyping and for special user related
functions. But you requested very common features and it would be best
to integrate them in the existing functonality, implement them in C++
and integrate them in the existing find&replace dialog and/or extend
this dialog.
From a macro or component perspective you would have to repalce the
existing dialog with a new implementation or create a second special
find&replace dialog for the new feature which of course would be
confusing from a user experience perspective.
So please attach your macro to the feature request that the people who
will write the specification get an idea how it should work exactly.
The anomaly of \n is simply a bug from my point of view and you should
submit an issue for that
Thanks Juergen
Ian Laurenson wrote:
To make life easier for people migrating to OpenOffice.org and to get
around some of the limitations in the find and replace I have written a
macro called IanndFindReplace available from:
http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/hillview/OOo/
The instructions for installing in OOo2.0 need updating but if you look
at the instructions for installing libraries for the KeyHandler, you
should be able to work it out.
However, I think that it is time that my macro is retired and that
similar features be part of standard OOo. Namely:
* Ability to select regular expressions so that they don't have to be
remembered or looked up in help;
* Work across paragraphs and not just within paragraphs;
* Fix the anomaly of \n being line breaks in Find but paragraph breaks
in Replace;
* Ability to search for and replace character and paragraph styles at
the same same time as an expression for text;
* Define the styles for the replaced text. E.g. If replacing a paragraph
break be able to say which paragraph style the resulting merged
paragraph will have - the first paragraph or the second.
My macro can't do the following but these features should be included:
* Extend the concept to any formatting e.g. be able to find H2O where
the 2 is subscripted as opposed to all H2O or conversely to find H2O and
to apply the subscript in the replace;
* Include groups in replace. (A group is a bracketed expression in a
regular expression and this would allow you to find some text but only
change a part of it within the found context).
* Change the API so that Find can work on a text range.
I hope that this message will generate some discussion around the issue,
so that a clearer picture of what people want for Find & Replace and how
it could work. Maybe my macro could be a starting point for discussing
some alternatives.
Then maybe I (if I can find the time) or someone else can implement a
well thought out and discussed improvement.
Thanks, Ian
On Tue, 2005-12-20 at 13:36 +0000, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
In the "Find and Replace" function, there is no way to replace
paragraph breaks. I know you can do the remove paragraph marks from
one-line paragraphs in the Autocorrect feature, but that is not what I
mean.
Often, I find myself working with documents that have extra line
spacing below the paragraph in place of Twp paragraph marks. This is
not suitable for posting to many web sites or bulletin boards, wheer
double line feeds are required.
In Word, WordPerfect, Appleworks, etc. it is possible to replace
single paragraph marks with double ones in the "Find and Replace"
feature. For OpenOffice to be "ready for prime time" basic features
such as this need to be available. In fact, one should be able to do
this with all formatting characters. For example, manual like breaks
often have to be either deleted en mass or replaced with paragraph
marks. Neither of these is possible in OpenOffice.
As a professional writer and editor, I need these features and cannot
work effectively without them.
Thanks,
James E. Smith
João Pessoa, Brazil
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
