++ Searching The Wiki


+++ To search inside a page

CTRL-F or F3 turns on IncrementalSearch.
CTRL-R brings up the "Find and Replace" dialog.


+++ To search all pages: Fast search

The toolbar contains a little search field. Just enter text you want to search for (you can use regular expression syntax), hit return and a list of matching wiki pages pops up.
The list has a little title bar. As soon as you move the list a bit by dragging the bar it will no longer automatically close if you click outside of it.
Use the small close button ("X") to close it.

At the bottom there are buttons "As Full Search" or "As Tab" to convert the small list to a full blown search dialog (see below) or to a tab.


+++ To search all pages: Full search

CTRL-ALT-F brings up the search dialog for the entire wiki.

The dialog is non-modal, this means you can edit your wiki while the dialog is open.

The nearly same dialog also appears if you want to define a custom set of pages to publish, export or print. In this case the dialog is modal, has "OK" and "Cancel" buttons instead of a "Close" button at the bottom and the "Order Pages" entry at the bottom is not grayed out.

If "Order Pages" is available you have following options:
    * "Alphabetically"
    * "Natural" tries to order in the way the user would expect
      the pages to be ordered (well, more or less). If you have
      created your own list of wikiwords, the "natural" order keeps
      them as they are sorted by you. "Natural" is the second
      slowest order mode. 
    * "As Tree" tries to sort as words would appear in the main
      tree of WikidPad. This is the slowest order mode.
    * "Unordered" uses the internal order of the database and is
      the fastest possible way.

The dialog consists of two tabs: "Search text" allows to search for a particular piece of text in the pages, tab "Set page list" allows to search for pages matching a regular expression or having a special parent-children relationship.


++++ Tab "Search text"

The whole right side of the tab shows the search results, the left side allows to control how to search.

From top to bottom:

+++++ Search text

*Text field "Wiki Search"*
Enter the pattern you want to search for. You can use regular expressions here. Below you can set exactly how the pattern should be interpreted.

*Simple regex*
Choose this if the pattern contains only a single RE

*Boolean regex*
Choose this if the pattern contains multiple REs connected with boolean operators. See [/BooleanRegex] for details.
Some operations are not available in boolean regex mode, especially replacing of text.

*As is*
All characters are taken as they are.

*Case sensitive, Whole word*
Choose here if case matters for the search pattern and/or if only whole words should be searched for

*Button "Find"*
Starts search process. If finished, a list of matching pages is listed on the right, optional with the number of occurring matches in parentheses and/or a few characters of context if set in the options.

+++++ Replacing

*Text field "Replace By"*
Enter here with which a found pattern on a page (or all pages) should be replaced. This field and the following three buttons are only available for "Simple regex" mode.

*Button "Find Next"*
Find the next matching part of text in current page or next page in the search results and select it.

*Button "Replace"*
Replace current selection with content of "Replace by" and go to next matching part.

*Button "Replace All"*
After asking for confirmation, replaces all occurrences matching to the search pattern by the replacement in all pages in the search results. At the end of the operation you will be informed about the number of done replacements.


+++++ Storing/Loading Searches

*List of "Saved Searches"*
Contains the titles of all searches stored in this wiki. The saved searches can also be seen in the tree after expanding "Views" and therein "saved searches" (only presented if searches exist).

Expanding one of the searches starts the search operation.

*Button "Save Search"*
Saves the current content of the "Wiki Search" field and the settings below (not the replacement) in the wiki. First you are asked for the title of the search. If the title already exists, you must confirm to overwrite the previous search with this title.

*Button "Delete Search(es)"*
Delete the searches selected in the list after confirmation

*Button "Load Search"*
Loads selected search into the searching area.

*Button "Load and Run Search"*
Same as hitting "Load Search" and "Find" button subsequently. Double clicking in the list has the same effect.


+++++ Other

*Copy to clipboard: Button "Page names"*
This copies the content of the result to the clipboard as text containing a list of .

*Button "As Resultlist"*
Convert dialog to a small resultlist to save screen space.

*Button "As Tab"*
Convert it to a tab.

*Button "Options"*
Starts a dialog to set options for the searching:

    Context *before* and *after*
    Chooses the number of characters to show before and after
    a found match as context. For an "anded" regex, the beginning
    of the page is shown with so many characters as the sum of the
    "before" and "after" values. Using context may slow down the
    searching a bit.

    *Count Occurrences*
    Counts how many matches a page contains and shows this number
    in parentheses after each page name. This option slows down
    searching.

    *Fast search defaults*
    Control default settings to use for the fast search field.
    They have the same meaning as in the large search dialog.


*Button "Close"*
Close the dialog, same as hitting ESC key. This button is replaced by "OK" and "Cancel" if using the dialog to define a set of pages for exporting or printing.


+++++ The result list on the right

Each item in the result list consist of the page name, one or two optional numbers in parentheses behind the name (one number: Number of occurrences, two numbers: currently shown occurrence, then "/", then number of occurrences or a question mark if unknown)

In the result list, double clicking on an item (not on its blue bar!) brings you to the page and (if existing) to the matching occurrence shown for the list item. If the page was already loaded, a double click brings you to the next occurrence on this page.

If a particular occurrence is shown in the list, you can select this item and press F3 or click on the little blue bar on the left to show the next occurrence on this page.


++++ Tab "Set page list"

Similar to the "Search text" tab it has some option fields in the left half and mainly a large list on the right, called the "preview".

At first you should choose the criterion the pages have to fulfill:

+++++ All Pages
All pages will be in the page list

+++++ Page names matching regular expression
All pages their names match a regular expression pattern are in the list

+++++ Pages in list
All pages mentioned in the list on the left of the dialog are in the resulting page list. You can also define if children of these pages should be in the result. If the level is 0, no children are taken, for 1 direct children are taken, 2 means to take also grandchildren and so on. If the field is -1 or empty, the level is seen as indefinite.


+++++ The left list
There are a lot of possibilities to give you precise control of the content and order of this list.

To the right of the actual list box there are the buttons "Up" and "Down" with which you can move the currently selected item in the list. With "Sort" the whole list is sorted alphabetically (the sorting algorithm depends on the option settings, see OptionsDialog#*Sort# order* ).

Below the list box is a text field in which you can add new list items. To add them, hit enter in the field or click on the "Add" button to the right of the field (there is another "Add" button below).

Below the text field there are the following buttons:

    * "Clear List" to remove all entries from the list
    * "Del" to delete the currently selected entry
    * "Copy" to copy all list entries to clipboard. They are copied as text, one wiki word per line, each in brackets. So you can insert them as link list into any wiki page.

You have also possibilities to *paste entries from clipboard*. Simply copy text which contains some wiki words to the clipboard. When pasting, at first the wiki words are extracted from the text in the order of appearance (be aware that the recognition of camel-case words and [Footnotes] depends on the settings of the currently open page and the wiki). With the extracted words the following can be done:

    * "Add": Add words to the current entries 
    * "Overwrite": Remove previous list entries and replace them by the new ones
    * "Intersect": Remove entries from current list which are not in the extracted words


+++ The right result list
When you hit the button "Preview", this list shows which pages *currently* match the criteria chosen on the left side. When defining a page list e.g. for a saved search, the pages matching the criteria may change over time when the wiki database changes.

The "Copy" button above the preview copies the content of the preview to the clipboard in the same way as it is done for the left page list.



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