[comp.sys.next] A Feature that Preview ought to have...

matt@karazm.math.uh.edu (Matt Emerson) (04/11/91)

I was looking through some Adobe documentation in Preview and thought, "Gee,
it sure would be cool if Preview had a Find panel. Then I wouldn't have
to flip though every single page before I get to the windowdeviceround
operator."

It would be quite easy to implement -- just look though the file, using
the structuring comments to keep track of what page you're on, and then
only look inside of the () for strings.

If I only had the source.  Hmm...I guess I could hack on Yap...
--
Matt Emerson
matt@karazm.math.uh.edu

glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us (Glenn Reid) (04/11/91)

Matt Emerson writes
> I was looking through some Adobe documentation in Preview and thought, "Gee,
> it sure would be cool if Preview had a Find panel. Then I wouldn't have
> to flip though every single page before I get to the windowdeviceround
> operator."
> 
> It would be quite easy to implement -- just look though the file, using
> the structuring comments to keep track of what page you're on, and then
> only look inside of the () for strings.

This is a good idea, but might not be so easy.  Any application that
plays with word and/or letter spacing (many/most of them these days)
will break up words into lots of little string pieces, and searching
for words gets a lot harder.  Still, it wouldn't hurt to *look* for
it, at least.  And if you sort of "concatenated" text by ignoring the
parentheses and just looking for spaces to delineate the words, you
might get lucky most of the time.

--
 Glenn Reid				RightBrain Software
 glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us		NeXT/PostScript developers
 ..{adobe,next}!heaven!glenn		415-851-1785 (fax 851-1470)

waltrip@capd.jhuapl.edu (04/12/91)

In article <476@heaven.woodside.ca.us>, glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us (Glenn 
Reid) writes:
> Matt Emerson writes
>> I was looking through some Adobe documentation in Preview and thought, "Gee,
>> it sure would be cool if Preview had a Find panel. Then I wouldn't have
>> to flip though every single page before I get to the windowdeviceround
>> operator."
	[...material deleted...]
> This is a good idea, 
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^


	I thought so, too.  I wonder if a good approach might not be an
	application offering "search" services that might know how to search a
	fairly wide variety of formats?  The availability of these services
	might encourage writers of a lot of applications to take advantage of
	the service where appropriate.


> but might not be so easy.  Any application that
> plays with word and/or letter spacing (many/most of them these days)
> will break up words into lots of little string pieces, and searching
> for words gets a lot harder.  Still, it wouldn't hurt to *look* for
> it, at least.  And if you sort of "concatenated" text by ignoring the
> parentheses and just looking for spaces to delineate the words, you
> might get lucky most of the time.


c.f.waltrip

Internet:  <waltrip@capsrv.jhuapl.edu>

Opinions expressed are my own.