Search/Replace Strange Behavior
Mark Swindell
mdswindell at charter.net
Fri Jul 15 12:34:12 EDT 2005
On Jul 14, 2005, at 10:47 PM, Jeanne A. E. DeVoto wrote:
> At 11:58 AM -0700 7/14/2005, Mark Swindell wrote:
>
>> I just had a strange behavior I wonder if anyone can explain. I
>> have a card with 3 fields containing many pages of narrative text.
>> They are extensively formatted with linked text, colors, etc. I
>> used the search and replace to change occurrences of two spaces (I
>> learned to type long ago on manual typewriters and can't shake the
>> habit) to only one space. I just typed in two spaces in the find
>> field, and one in the replace field. I limited the find/replace
>> function to field text. I pressed replace, and all formatting was
>> lost on all three fields. Is this a bug, or a feature? I
>> certainly didn't expect it.
>>
>
> It's a "nuance" or a "design flaw", depending on how charitable
> you're feeling. The replace command treats its parameters as pure
> text, so if you do something like
>
> replace "foo" with "bar" in field "Stuff"
>
> you'll lose all formatting in the field. Replace seems to make a
> copy of the target text, then do the replace operation, and then
> swap the target text back into the field.
>
> The find/replace dialog really ought to be using htmlText, I think,
> although then a certain amount of conniptions would be required to
> avoid replacing text in an HTML tag
It's a pretty nasty nuance, then. How's that? :)
It renders the find and replace function useless for formatted text.
And it did come as a shock, as it almost destroyed hours of work,
because it can't be undone. (No one had ever mentioned that I should
back up my stacks regularly.) This seems like a pretty big thing that
ought to be addressed by the engineering corps up in Edinborough, no?
Mark
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