ystrot/glance — Issue #11: Make incremental search optional
Author: ystrot
Created: 2012-01-29 14:19:13+00:00
State: open

Moved from http://code.google.com/p/eclipse-glance/issues/detail?id=20

It is handy to use glance to highlight text occurences within editor to analyse sourse code. However, if user type some text within search edit box cusror position gets instantly moved to matched occurence(incremental search) which may be very confusing.
Let me explain. Lets assume You are reading source code with 1000 lines and currently viewing some method implementation on line 500. You want to check is there any useage of variable "qwe", so you type "qwe" in glance search edit box to highlight all occurences of "qwe". If the next occurence is visible to You without having to scroll editor - there is no problem - the occurence highlighted and You can continue Your analysis. If the next ocurence located, say on line 900 or 150 - cursor position chenged, editor scrolled and You loose Your focus on what You have been doing before(now You have to realize where You are now and where were You before to come back and continue Your analysis). Moreover, if there is no occurence at all - You will be moved to some random part of the sorce code(You have to type keyword letter by letter, and glance will move you first to occurence of "q", then "qw" and only then to "qwe").
I have a suggestion how to fix this usability issue. To aid this issue it would be great to have an option to disable "incremental searching", but still highlight occurences.
Here is the use case for such behaviour. You type "qwe" into glance search edit box. All occurences of "qwe" in current editor got highlighted, no moving cursor to the next occurence. To move cursor to the next occurence You press enter in search edit box(just like with standard search).
This should allow user both possibility to highlicht occurences without confusing him by jumping through source code and be able to use glance to search text occurences.