"Find and Replace..." to be more like MS Word

lsropia · General User Joined: 08 Feb 2005 Posts: 29

Sir,

I am a great admirer of linux & OpenOffice and using this for last 3 years and not used the MicroSoft Word(MSW) since. Back then, I remember that MSW was very friendly to search for special characters like new line, form feed, new paragraph, and many others. We could either select the desired characters through check boxes or could do simple copy-paste. The formatting was much easy and controlled by such search. I wished such facility was available in OO too.

But a long time has passed and the waiting seems to be unending. The search through the regular expressions in OO is meaningless as it doesnot give the result. OO is wonderful in every aspect except this search function.

If it amounts to the stealing the idea of the rivals, we must do it. Let us make what we are using a better product.

Alex

Kaaredyret · Posted: Thu May 04, 2006 4:12 am Post subject:

Usabilitywise OOo is far behind. Regular expressions... thats a nerd feature. A good one, that is. For the hard core user. But really, who else knows how to use it. The approach used in Word works; something similar MUST be added to OOo, or else a lot of people will be cut off from searching for soft hyphens etc. etc.

If the developers can come up with something better than Microsoft, then good. Regular expressions only is a crazy idea, sounds like something made BY programmers FOR programmers.

We don't have to do everything like its done in Word, but if we really dont have a better idea, or an idea that can match it, then why not copy the idea. The important thing is to think of the USERS.
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esperantisto · Posted: Thu May 04, 2006 4:43 am Post subject:

If they simply copycat MS Word's find&replace, it'll be a great imporvement in usability.

Angel Blue01 · Posted: Thu May 04, 2006 9:26 am Post subject:

There needs to be a way to search for line breaks, tab marks, etc. regardless. If it can be done better than Word that'd be great Smile

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Ed · Super User Joined: 28 May 2003 Posts: 1040

The search feature in MSO is currently better than that in OOo, but it's still possible to do a lot better than that.

It would be far better to design something better than to mindlessly rip off someone else's work (along with it's limitations).

RonIA · Posted: Sat May 06, 2006 2:23 am Post subject:

Agreed, regular expressions is very powerful, but not very approachable for the non-techie who has more modest skills and more modest needs. Emulation of good usability from MS Office is not neccesarily copying.
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Ron from Iowa, USA

Weatherlawyer · Posted: Sat May 06, 2006 3:43 am Post subject:

RonIA · Posted: Sat May 06, 2006 4:36 am Post subject:

KInd of eerie, I was going to post a similar poll about 2 days ago and had not gotten around to it yet...
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Ron from Iowa, USA

lsropia · General User Joined: 08 Feb 2005 Posts: 29

Sir,

We agree on what is needed to make OO a better and more usable product. Now, from here on, how do we make the develpoers work in this direction. I think, they would not take much time to do this, once they start it.

Those who are in the charge OO, are they noticing this poll and feel like doing developement of this?

Alex

RonIA · Posted: Sat May 06, 2006 2:27 pm Post subject:

I'm not an expert with Issuezilla, has anyone looked to see if this issue is part of the suggestions for the suite?
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Ron from Iowa, USA