[Alpine-info] word search in index limited by screen width

[Mike Miller]

On Thu, 10 Jul 2008, Dallas Trinkle wrote:


> On Thu, 10 Jul 2008, Mike Miller wrote:

>

>> I understand where you are coming from and it might be a great idea to 

>> have that kind of search option in the menu -- it would do a ";ta" 

>> (text all) search of every field in every message.  But, there is a 

>> really good reason to leave W alone (and it really is just "W" and not 

>> Control-w): That "whereis" search works the same way in all sorts of 

>> screens:  Help, Setup Configure, Addressbook, etc.  To make it work 

>> differently in indexes than in other screens might cause some 

>> confusion.

>

> That's not true.  If you go into Addressbook, Whereis has exactly the 

> functionality I expected in index (I just tried it out)--in fact, it 

> finds entries "hidden" in distribution lists as well as those cutoff by 

> finite column widths.  The Setup/Configure screen Whereis seems to act 

> as the Index Whereis.  So Whereis is already inconsistent (beyond the 

> difference behavior of Whereis in the editor)... so I suppose that I'm 

> suggesting that Whereis should everywhere function as in the 

> Addressbook, which will also make it consistent across alpine.  Thanks; 

> --d



Good point, Dallas.  You are right about the address book.  I should have 
known better.  It seems to find things in every field.

How about this as a better kind of whereis functionality:  When the screen 
is an index, whereis works much like "grep -il" by searching for the next 
record that contains a the matching string in any field.  When the screen 
is text (help, configuration), it jumps the cursor to the next line 
containing the matching string.  That would actually make more sense as 
default behavior -- more in line with expectations of a new user.  To 
rever to the old whereis behavior for indexes could be an option.

Thanks.

Mike