Spotlight feature

Joeyci · Sentinel Joined: May 16, 2010 Posts: 20

Not sure if this is worth your time, but I would like to see spotlight built in to neooffice, similar to the way it works with preview (allowing you to search through single documents via spotlight). Just a thought...

pluby · The Architect Joined: Jun 16, 2003 Posts: 11949

Your new feature request sounds very similar to the new feature that Oracle's OpenOffice.org engineers are working on. They are working on adding a search box in the toolbar area. I full description of what they are working on is on the OpenOffice.org developer blog website.

While this may seem different than what you are requesting, in most Mac OS X applications the "Spotlight search" box is really just a text field with rounded borders and the "spotlight" icon in it. The application merely does its own internal search functionality when you type in the application's Spotlight search box.

In my quick look at what OpenOffice.org is doing, implementing your new feature would basically be take their new toolbar search box code, tweak the code so that the search box uses the standard Spotlight search look and feel, and backport the code into the NeoOffice code.

Is what I see sound like it is more or less what you are requesting?

Patrick

Joeyci · Sentinel Joined: May 16, 2010 Posts: 20

Thanks for the info. The feature being worked on for Openoffice LOOKS similar to what I was requesting, but it seems to be limited in functionality to what the find and replace can already do (it's just a little more convenient). I was more interested in a search that will find every occurrence of the part/whole word entered, as it's entered; with a list of hits ranging from most relevant to least relevant. It would also be nice if it could search picture/pdf files as well (as spotlight can).

I don't know how much experience you have using the spotlight search on a large pdf file via preview, but it's really amazing powerful. Again, I don't know if this feature appeals to many people besides me (I am constantly searching through various long documents for very specific subject matter, some of which contains documents that have been scanned in).

Thanks again.

ovvldc · Posted: Tue Jun 22, 2010 11:33 pm Post subject:

You seem to mean a sidebar with all results such as you can get in Preview.

According to the blog post Patrick referenced, the functionality you are looking for may be added later. Adding a separate windows or frame for such stuff is not a trivial task in a codebase as convoluted as OpenOffice.org..

best wishes,
Oscar