Incremental searching is implemented in Alpha in two ways:
via the Find Bar
via the Status Bar
This document explains how to perform incremental searches in the Find Bar
which is a new feature introduced in Alpha and is a more interactive
interface for literal searches than the Find dialog. For the Status Bar approach, see the Incremental Search
help file.
Displaying the Find Bar
Every Alpha document window has a Find Bar which is hidden by
default. To bring it up, select the command Search ↣ Show Find Bar or press the key combination ⇧⌘F.
The Find Bar should appear at the top of the text pane.
When the window is split into several subpanes, each subpane has its own
Find Bar.
Enabling incremental searching
By default, incremental searching is disabled. This can be changed at two
different levels:
at the window's level: there is an item in the Search menu
called Turn Incremental On or Turn Incremental Off
depending on the state of the current window. Use it to enable or disable
incremental searching for the current window.
at the application's level: there is a preference named Incremental Searching in the global preferences. Choose the menu item
Alpha ↣ Preferences ↣ Global Preferences and
select the Document panel in the dialog. The preference can be set
using the corresponding check box. Click here to display the Document Preferences panel.
If this option is set, every newly opened window will have incremental
searching enabled.
Executing a search
When incremental searching is enabled as explained in the previous section,
there is nothing special to do. Just type your search string in the search
field of the find bar. As you type or delete characters in the search
field, the matches are adapted accordingly.
If matches are found, there are outlined in the text
panel. To make it easier to see the matches, the text pane is dimmed,
except for the locations of the incremental matches. Use the buttons with a
left pointing and a right pointing triangle to navigate between matches.
Clicking in the text pane takes you out of the search field and
returns to normal editing state.
If you want to make replacements, click on the Replace
checkbox found near the right edge of the Find Bar. A second field
is then displayed to enter the replacement string. To perform replacements,
click on the Replace or All button.
Hiding the Find Bar
If you open the Search menu with the option key (⌥)
pressed, the Show Find Bar menu item is changed to Hide Find
Bar. Alternatively, you can press the key combination ⌥⇧⌘F or click on the Done button in the Find Bar.
Note for developers
It is possible to interact with the Find Bar from a script. See the
documentation of the [findBar] and [pasteboard] commands.
To enable or disable this functionality, see the key incrementalSearching in the [getWinInfo] and [setWinInfo] commands.
