Matze wrote:btw, dear Nisus-team: may I recommend, that you rethink the expressions/strings in the dropdownmenu of search?
Strings as you would use it as a common writer.
- you can search for upper and lower, but why can't I search for upper and lower? I know I can, but I have to now the expression for it.
Why not give this option [[:alpha:]] as well?
I totally agree with this one. This should be added to the wildcard menu
Matze wrote:- the old NWC "." which did found letters, numbers, punctuationmarks and space, so all signs which are usually in a sentence.
This one is there. It's called "AnyTextCharacter".
Matze wrote:- regarding a "word": the actual "word" finds single numbers, too. A number is not a word, is it?
This is a well-known technical issue. "Word" here is used in the computer technical sense, which is a string of "word characters". From the computer technician's point of view word characters stand in opposition to "white-space", punctuation, and new-line/line-feed, so yes they include numbers. Nisus really can't do anything about this, since they don't really write the find/replace engine themselves (I believe). And it would break more things than it would fix.
But for yourself perhaps [[:alpha:]]+ would work as a definition of word? The real problem however is that 'word', as you think of it, is a linguistic notion, which really can't be defined in a generally satisfying way. Is "there's" one word or two? If two, is the second [s] or ['s]? In a list, A. B. C., etc. probably shouldn't be words but at the beginning of a sentence "A" is of course a word, and on and on.
Matze wrote:- why not give a "number"-string in the dropdownmenu, below the Ziffer/digit?, which finds every number: 1 13 0,234 1 Mio 2 Billion -12 3/4 sqaure-expressions Pi and what not.
Sounds like a good idea. Nisus should probably consider editing and expanding the list of predefined wild-cards. But remember that you can also save your own expressions, and you can even give them names. They will then be listed under "Saved expressions". (I keep forgetting this feature myself.)
Matze wrote:- regarding "sentences": the actual one finds "sentences" that contain tabs. It even finds parts of an URL as a sentence. Couldn't we have a sentence string, which finds everything inbetween to sentence endings but has no tabs, returns? So just a sentence. May it be descriptive or dialogue.
Sentences are a well known nightmare. Again they are a linguistic notion, so there is no satisfactory solution. But the idea of excluding tabs strikes me as a good one. Here is today's attempt at a better definition of sentence:
Code: Select all
(?:["“„'‘‚]?[[:upper:]][^\t]+?[\.\?\!]["”‟'’‛]?)(?= |$)
But of course it will still catch things that aren't sentences.
Matze wrote:- regarding "paragraphs": a paragraph contains all sentences AND the return, that seperates it from the text below. The actual paragraph string (?:^.+$) finds it without the return. When I copy such a paragraph and then paste it into some text/paragraph, it becomes part of that text/paragraph and I have to hit return to make it the paragraph it has been before.
This opens another can of worms. Maybe they did it this way because of the change to non-contiguous copy (which now adds newlines)? Again define your own (?:^.+\n) and save it as an expression. But note that this one will not catch the last paragraph in a document (unless it has an actual newline).
Matze wrote:One more major request: In NWC there was a button in f/r, that created a context list of all what was found. Can we have that back, please?
Didn't we just go over this one recently? (Did you ever try my macro?
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