Re: [External] : Re: Indicate better the current use of the echo area / minibuffer [was: Controlling Isearch from minibuffer]

[Daniel Martín]

Daniel Mendler <daniel@mendler.net> writes:

>
> The echo area/minibuffer distinction comes up from time to time in
> discussions with new users. I know that I had been confused for a while
> with the Isearch behavior. The Isearch use of the echo area is
> unexpected. Users expect to enter a search string into a separate input
> form as is common in many other programs. In Emacs this input form is
> the minibuffer.

It's unexpected if you come from other applications, but I don't think
it's a bad UX.  Once you get used to how Isearch works, in my opinion
it's much more efficient than using the minibuffer.  For example, it's
very common to use incremental search to navigate to a particular place
in a buffer, and, once you are in the desired position, do something
like C-n, C-v, or C-p to move the point further and end the search at
the same time.  This use case wouldn't be as convenient if incremental
search used the minibuffer.  Try it in the CtrlF package, for example.

>
> I would welcome the changes by Augusto. The minibuffer-controlled
> Isearch makes entering the search string more robust with regards to
> various editing commands as mentioned before by Kévin Le Gouguec.
>

I wouldn't like them.  If you want to edit the search string, you can
just 'M-e' or click on the echo area.  You can also type 'C-M-d' to
delete individual characters, instead of using 'backspace'.

> There exists the ctrlf package on MELPA which also uses the minibuffer,
> but it feels hardly justified to install an extra package only to get a
> minibuffer-controlled search mode. I also don't want to replace such a
> tightly integrated component like Isearch with an external package. If a
> minibuffer mode can be added to Isearch with small effort and in a
> reasonably clean way, why not do that?
>

That's the problem.  Given the amount of subtle use cases currently
supported by Isearch, I think that even adding a separate option to use
the minibuffer would not be a simple implementation (for example, you
can perform an incremental search in the minibuffer itself, etc.).

To be fair, I see some good things about using the minibuffer (for
example, it'd be simpler to perform certain actions, like scrolling the
window, without exiting the search), but all the things that we'll lose
or will change don't quite justify the new feature, IMHO.