"Find" text-field populates search strings from other applications

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branner
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Joined: 2017-08-06 05:33:06

"Find" text-field populates search strings from other applications

Post by branner »

The "Find" text-field populates search strings whenever a new search-string is added in other applications. That is undesirable; I wish Nisus to keep its own text-field contents until I change them explicitly. I think this is standard Apple behavior, but it's unhelpful. I don't see a way to turn it off in the Nisus preferences, though. Any ideas?

Nisus v. 3.1, OS 10.12.6.
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Hamid
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Re: "Find" text-field populates search strings from other applications

Post by Hamid »

I agree this is undesirable.
I had made a feature request for this Find option. I have Jedit Ω which has the option to not share Find strings with other apps:
Don'tShareFindStrings.jpg
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martin
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Re: "Find" text-field populates search strings from other applications

Post by martin »

There's currently no way to prevent this behavior of sharing the find expression, which is indeed standard and recommended by Apple. Hamid has requested an enhancement that we add an option to prevent this, and I'll be sure to add your vote.

In the meantime the only recourse is to use undo (eg: Command + Z) in Nisus Writer's find panel to restore your prior search expression.
branner
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Joined: 2017-08-06 05:33:06

Re: "Find" text-field populates search strings from other applications

Post by branner »

Thanks. I see that the feature is called FindScrap. In documentation for the BBEdit editor there's discussion of how to toggle the boolean controlling it here.
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martin
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Re: "Find" text-field populates search strings from other applications

Post by martin »

Ahh the find "scrap", that's a very old term from classic Mac OS 9, before the arrival of Mac OS X.

In modern times the Mac system facilitates the information exchange via something called the pasteboard, which handles not only copy-paste, but also the shared search string, drag-drop, and a few other special pieces of data. The system-wide find expression is specifically vended via NSFindPboard, which has in recent years been renamed NSPasteboardNameFind as part of Apple's efforts to standardize naming and provide compatibility for the Swift programming language.

But really all those details are besides the point. Ultimately Nisus Writer should just add a preference to control whether or not it participates in search expression sharing.
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