Bilara: find/replace UI

[sujato]

User story

Jill wants to find stuff on Bilara. She also needs to do find/replace, sometimes over a large amount of cases.

This happens a lot when translating, as the segment matching is only useful at a segment scale. Checking terminology and so on requires constant searching, so a very fast and intuitive UI is required.

Feature description

Here i propose a rather radical approach to search, which stems from my experience using Pootle. Usually i would have a separate browser window open just for searching, and be constantly swapping windows. But what if we could build a cool window into the system?

Search is a persistent third column

Create a third column on the page just for search. It can be toggled. (narrow screens will need a different approach, but for now let's leave that.)

At the top of the column are two text fields: Find and Replace. Results are underneath.

Results are displayed in an infinite list that scrolls independently from the text columns.

Each result is linkified. Click and it opens the relevant sutta on the text columns. Same window. Go back using browser. (Sutta text display is not necessary for editing. It is just for checking context.)

Search features

• Terms may be entered by writing, but in addition, highlighted terms in the text columns are automatically added to the Find field (especially handy for long Pali words). Focus is also automatic, so highlight + enter gives you results right away.
• Also, there should be a simple way (either GUI or shortcut or both) to search for:
  • translated string
  • root string
  • any of the suggestions
• By default match string, not whole word. Results should be inclusive.
• Treat root and target as a single piece of text, i.e: "eva" + "hear" = "evam me sutam :: thus have I heard".
• Find/replace must, however, match only exact string of translation.
• Match caps by default for find/replace.
• Present results using order of segment ID numbers (as in pootle).
• Must have an "undo".
• The scope is "all texts in your language" by default. Add a filter at some point.
• Enhancements: (for future) alias diacriticals, match case, whole word, regex.

Shortcuts

Shortcuts are grouped with the main shortcuts:

https://github.com/suttacentral/bilara/issues/15

[sujato]

This feature is implemented. Future features can be added in new issues.