Bug 140996 - Find and replace
Summary: Find and replace
Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 38261
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Writer (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
7.2.0.0.alpha0+
Hardware: All All
: medium normal
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2021-03-13 09:02 UTC by Elmar
Modified: 2021-03-13 16:58 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
example document (26.98 KB, application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text)
2021-03-13 09:24 UTC, Elmar
Details

Note You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.
Description Elmar 2021-03-13 09:02:18 UTC
Description:
Find and replace function is impossible to figure out

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Ctl+h
2.attempt to replace paragraph ("Enter") with Line feed (Shift+Enter)
3. click replace all

Actual Results:
nothing happens

Expected Results:
Until LO 5 there was an "alternative find and replace", this stopped working in v6.
in v7 it seems to work sometimes.


Reproducible: Always


User Profile Reset: No



Additional Info:
[Information automatically included from LibreOffice]
Locale: en-GB
Module: TextDocument
[Information guessed from browser]
OS: Linux (All)
OS is 64bit: yes
Version: 7.2.0.0.alpha0+ / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: f66a479225b35e9f1fd3621eef7496462088308a
CPU threads: 8; OS: Linux 5.4; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3
Locale: en-GB (en_GB.UTF-8); UI: en-GB
TinderBox: Linux-rpm_deb-x86_64@86-TDF, Branch:master, Time: 2021-03-05_09:50:07
Calc: threaded

LO is designed for "normal people" who have no tech knowledge, nor are they interested and this feature is totally incomprehensible even to me.

Help does not help either. Nor do the instructions if you google.

You may think that this is an enhancement. I think most of LO users will differ, after all, one of the quality attributes is "usability", and this is definitely a failure. See Karl Wiegers, Steve McConnell, let alone IEEE/ISO standards
Comment 1 Elmar 2021-03-13 09:24:58 UTC
Created attachment 170452 [details]
example document

To get the poem lines to line up one has to replace each one individually using the keyboard.
Why is this a problem?
If you copy an paste 1,000's of lines from a PDF, this is a mission.
Comment 2 V Stuart Foote 2021-03-13 16:58:19 UTC
Just verified that the "Alternative Find & Replace for Writer (AltSearch)" [1] oxt 1.4.2 build extension installs and still functions correctly with LibreOffice 7.1.1 release. But it could use some dev attention.

Other than that there is no mechanism in the Find & Replace dialog--RegEx mode--to replace the paragraph ends (found with $ entry) with a replacement string resulting in the carriage return (as from <Shift>+<Enter>).

The ask.libreoffice.org resource has multiple threads on the issues.

General improvements to LO Find & Replace dialog RegEx handling is bug 38261, including dupe of incorporating the AltSearch extension into LO core (bug 139585).

=-ref-=
[1] https://extensions.libreoffice.org/en/extensions/show/alternative-dialog-find-replace-for-writer

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 38261 ***