Proposal to improve search

[glow12121]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
There is search functionality in the general list of notes. It is, however, not possible to jump between the highlighted search results.

Also, it isn't possible to search when in the note-editing mode.

Describe the solution you'd like
It would be nice to improve search functionality.

[appml]

To conduct search during edit mode, simply tap search icon in the tool bar. To navigate, tap the search icon again or swipe up / down at the status region as shown:

[glow12121]

Thank you. But:

1. Both the fact that the search icon is hidden in tools which itself can even be hidden -- and the up/down jumps are most counterintuitive.
2. The following error occurs on tap on the upper thing. The copied fragment in buffer is pasted, plus a cryptic message..

[appml]

Not sure what you mean by 1.

Regarding 2, it is just one of the ways to navigate search results. Please see Gesture section.

[glow12121]

It's hard to find the search icon and after you find it, there's no up/down buttons.

The message ("W: ... S: ...") doesn't seem to make sense.

[appml]

It's hard to find the search icon and after you find it, there's no up/down buttons.

The message ("W: ... S: ...") doesn't seem to make sense.

Sorry I am not sure what you mean by hard to find. Which ROM / Android version do you have?

Also there are more than one way to navigate the search results.

[glow12121]

What I mean is just - how the search icon is located is counter-intuitive (especially given where search is in the notes list) and hard to find. I don't know how else to explain.

Same with absense of up/down arrows in the search box. Additional gestures may be good but little arrows is what everyone is used to.

[GfEW]

@glow12121

It's hard to find the search icon and after you find it, there's no up/down buttons.

The message ("W: ... S: ...") doesn't seem to make sense.

I'm new to Neutrinote CE and, in the process of deciding whether it makes sense for me to start using it for real notes, browsing through its documentation and issues.

Search can also be invoked with Ctrl+F, if that helps.

The "cryptic" message you're referring to appears to give the count of words and the document size, respectively. In long notes, there may also be a third number with label 'L:' that denotes the line number of the text cursor, normally the current match.

Although all those numbers can be useful, I agree the design, place, and invocation of this little message are a bit arcane and not self explanatory yet. To say the least, the one letter abbreviations would profit from being explicated somewhere nearby.

Furthermore, word count and size are inherent properties of the document and unrelated to search, so what's the point of providing them within the search results view? It would make more sense if the (partial) line, word and byte/char counts - preferrably in that order, cf. e. g. the wc default output format - from the beginning of the file up to the current cursor position were given.

Or even better yet, expand the match count info that e. g. indicates the 6th match out of a total of 18 matches of 'search term' by

6/18 'search term'

with the partial/total counts of lines, words and bytes, as well:

12/57 lines
392/602 words
1843/5052 bytes.

The current mixed selection of total words, total size, but partial lines count (marked bold in above example) is hard to make sense of.

Also, those numbers do not make up for the lack of proper previous and next search result buttons. The search experience in NN feels incomplete without.

To quickly navigate through search results back and forth, the user should be allowed to jump to the previous or next search result with a single tap (as well as with Shift+F3 on the keyboard). The search icon already works as next (as does F3), but the icon doesn't reflect this change of meaning yet. And I've not been able to find any means to quickly jump back to previous results. @appml Is this functionality not implemented yet or only difficult to discover?

[glow12121]

I'm new to Neutrinote CE and, in the process of deciding whether it makes sense for me to start using it for real notes

I have been using Neutrinote for several years now and am not planning to switch. The main reason is that it works well with large files.

I must say I have tried several dozen notepads before stopping on NN.

Many thanks to the developer but, yes, these interface features are counter-intuitive.

By the way, what is C.E.?

[GfEW]

By the way, what is C.E.?

I don't know for sure, but CE might stand for Community Edition.

Thanks for sharing your experience, good to know NN has proven worthwhile for you over the years. I'm still deterred by a few crucial issues, with this one being only the fifth:

1. make regexes fully functional in global search
2. auto-bullet/auto-indent to continue current bullet style / indentation depth upon entering a newline
3. buttons or drop-down suggestions for global search field operators (title:, titlereg: etc.)
4. make the entire app keyboard-accessible
5. improve the in-file search UX, most importantly by jumping to the previous match by a dedicated button or shortcut Shift+F3 (part of this very issue)

I guess I'll try and file them one by one, to see if there is any resonance on improving them.

[GfEW]

@glow12121

BTW, I think

the red arrows in this screenshot

are not meant by @appml to point to the match count or search icon, specifically, but simply to indicate "swipe up / swipe down" scrolling directions.

Of course, scrolling cannot make up for the lack of previous or next buttons, either.

[glow12121]

the red arrows in this screenshot

But when you click the upper arrow area, I think, the notepad pastes the content copied in the buffer...

[GfEW]

the red arrows in this screenshot

But when you click the upper arrow area, I think, the notepad pastes the content copied in the buffer...

I can't seem to reproduce that. The area doesn't show any special behaviour here, it just puts the text cursor at the place of my tap.

[glow12121]

@GfEW I've tried this again. You are right, the copied fragment is not pasted in the text area but, in my case, rather pasted in this upper right area pointed by the red arrow.

Say, I have "bbb" in buffer.

I search "s".

Tapping on the upper right area triggers a) the box with the characters count b) unexpectedly, the buffer fragment "bbb" pasted in the upper right area itself.

[GfEW]

Tapping on the upper right area triggers a) the box with the characters count b) unexpectedly, the buffer fragment "bbb" pasted in the upper right area itself.

Oh right, I can confirm (b).
Unfortunately, search doesn't allow to reuse and adjust search patterns of previous searches. As a workaround, I always copy the current pattern before actually conducting the search, so I can subsequently repaste it and fine tune the search without typing the entire pattern anew.
That's why upto now, it looked to me as if that tiny upper right message area showed the search pattern - an interpretation that made more sense anyway than displaying, of all things, the clipboard contents there.

This latter behavior looks like a bug to me, or a very weird UI design decision.

On (a), we already agree.

[glow12121]

@GfEW Generally speaking, it would perhaps make sense to make the two search interfaces more consistent. By the first one I mean searching from the notes list (there's a logical magnifying glass icon in the top bar). By the second - searching from within a note.

[appml]

@GfEW I agree that the UI is not exposing some of the functionalities. The app was originally designed almost 10 years ago and has accumulated more than 1000 builds so far, so the priority now is to retain as much as features across iterations of Android versions (several already been dropped over the years). As you might have noticed if you follow the app's development a while, most recent new features are CLI oriented.

Ideally someone could come along and revamped the UI frontend, or carry on with all the features with something better, or fork it into an entirely new app, as the current development resource is tightly limited.

[GfEW]

@appml
I greatly appreciate your explanation, it's perfectly understandable.

Since I'm not a coder, my contribution to facilitating more active development most likely won't be on the code side of things.
However, if I find time I'll happily elaborate concise, reasonable, comprehensible improvement suggestions, so whoever may want to pick up NN development in the future already finds some ideas laid out to build on.

[GfEW]

(b) [...] displaying, of all things, the clipboard contents there [...] looks like a bug to me, or a very weird UI design decision.
On (a), we already agree.

As it turns out, that's really by design, and there is a previous/next navigation in search results already! It's all explained here.

What remains is the obvious non-obviousness of these features, in terms of a modern, self-explanatory GUI. Which only reinforces the need for a revamp.

I think that Neutrinote has invaluable potential to be a fast, focussed, lightweight alternative to Obsidian, Joplin and the likes, but as of now, there are too many rough edges desparately looking for someone to polish them, if not to give the GUI a general, systematic overhaul.