VLM TechSubs wrote:
We are exploring the search (ctrl-f) function in Writer. We see how to
search for many things, but not yet for special characters (em dash,
ellipsis), invisible characters (end of paragraph and the like), character
styles, or for, say, markers of a given type.
You've lumped some concepts together that involve different approaches.
* Special characters: You can always enter the literal character you
want to search for, although it can be a challenge to enter characters
that don't appear on the keyboard.
You can open the Insert > Special Character dialog for most text entry
fields with a shortcut (Ctrl+Shift+S on Linux & Windows), but not every
character can be entered using the Special Character dialog, unfortunately.
* Invisible characters: Most of these are literal characters in the
document and work as described above. You can search for any actual
character that appears in the document by entering it in the Search For
field--as long as you can figure out how to type it.
Here's a couple of examples:
Tab -- Can't be typed in a dialog, although it can entered by its
code in Linux, but not Windows. You can copy it from your text and paste
it into the search box on any platform.
The special characters under Insert > Formatting Mark all work
similar to tab.
There are two that are 'almost characters': line breaks and paragraph
breaks. They behave in some ways like actual characters in the text,
even though they aren't literally characters in the text. You have to
search for these using OOo's "regular expressions" (wildcard patterns).
Set the Option > Regular expressions: ON.
You can search for line breaks using the pattern \n, or paragraph breaks
with $. Line breaks almost always behave like simple characters;
paragraph breaks only behave like simple characters if you search for
the pattern $ all by itself.
Regular expressions also provide codes for other special characters
either by name (tab: \t) or by character code (tab: \x0009)
Character Styles: There is no way to search for character styles by
name, although you can search for the formatting they specify (Options >
Including Styles: YES).
You can support adding this feature to OOo by registering and voting for:
Allow search and replace of character styles in "Find and Replace"
http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=2997
You can search for paragraph styles by name.
I do see the checkbox for "Search for Styles", but this seems only to make
available paragraph styles and nothing else.
It works for formatting derived from character styles as well.
Because the Find and Replace dialog tries to be 'smart' about adjusting
itself to the type of search you want, getting the desired combination
of options and settings can be a challenge. It seems to depend on the
exact order that you select things and what (if anything) is in the
Search for box.
I feel certain we are simply missing something. How can we conduct such
searches?
One unusual feature of OOo's Find and Replace is that it is "non-modal."
I.e. you can switch between the dialog and the document at any time.
This leads to some very handy functionality that isn't built in to the
F&R dialog itself.
E.g. you can search for a pattern of characters, click "Find All", then
simply set the formatting for each matching text using the normal Writer
interface.
You can also do combined searches by using the "Current selection only"
option. E.g. you could search for "the first word of all level 2 headings".
Here are two good sources of information for Regular Expression use and
syntax:
Regular Expressions in Writer
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/How_Tos/Regular_Expressions_in_Writer
Regular expression samples
http://www.oooninja.com/2007/12/example-regular-expressions-for-writer.html
I'm sure there is an issue for adding "MS compatible" wildcard support,
but I can't find it.
Many things that you can't directly search for can be located using the
Navigator (F5): graphics, tables, frames, links, etc.
Some things, e.g. fields, have special navigation buttons in their
settings dialogs that allow stepping through each occurrence in the
document.
I agree: the user interface for all this is rather disorganized and
awkward in many places, but there is a lot of good functionality once
you know where to look.
<Joe
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