Finding note containing search term vs finding in the note?
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Scenario: I want to find my notes on a particular topic in a file whose name does not have the keyword; the keyword is mentioned in the body text.
This means I have to search for keyword to find the note (Cmd-L, "keyword"), hit return to open it, then search again (Cmd-F, "keyword). Often I forget to hit return and hit Cmd-F with focus still in the search bar, which just beeps.
Since this is a very common way for me to find where I want to be, it'd be nice if it were smoother, e.g. if Cmd-G (Find Again) grabbed the search bar term to search for in the file? And/or if appearances of the term in the search bar were auto-highlighted? (These are somewhat different--generally I need to jump to the location so if it's out of view, highlighting it is not so useful.)
PS: Unrelated but probably not worth its own post--how about Undo for accidentally creating a file? E.g. if you searched for something in the search bar and accidentally hit return but didn't want a file with that name?
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1. I pass find requests to the textview from the notes list, but when the search bar is active, macOS disables the find menu bar commands. I've tried to override this behavior, but no success yet. It would still require that you had a specific note selected, which won't happen if your query doesn't match the beginning of a note. So, regardless it won't seem to help the exact use case you describe, since there is no way for nvUltra (or me) to know which note you actually mean to look inside if it's not already selected.
2. I have thus far not found a way to change the default text in the find bar, *unless* the find bar is displayed. Which means that you have to start with "Find" to change the find query, before "Find Again" will use that new query. So, you have to do the Cmd-F before Cmd-G will do what you want.
3. I experimented with having the Find Bar perform a search when opening the note in order to highlight the matches automatically. There were two problems with this. 1) It didn't really work quite properly 2) I don't like it. ;) I'll look back at this periodically, but no guarantees.
In short, the thing to remember is that all you have to do once you have "entered" a note is Cmd-F. It will automatically fill the find query with whatever you last typed in the search bar. Once you're searching, Find Next and Find Previous work as expected.
As for Undo when creating a file -- I probably won't implement this. Undo is a bit weird in this circumstance because the Undo behavior depends on what "mode" you're in (editing a document, typing in the search bar, navigating the notes bar.) So Undoable actions are very limited and can be confusing.
Also, one of my overriding concerns is unintentional data loss. An undo action that deletes a file is potentially dangerous. An undo action that restores deleted files is potentially important (even though nvUltra doesn't actually delete files -- it moves them to the trash so that they can be recovered easily by the user.) So that is the one undoable action I have added to the Notes List so far.
And finally, I'm not sure that it's necessary. You can delete files from the notes list already, so using Undo to perform the same action doesn't really add much, and offers less control.
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Thanks for investigating and the long response! I'll work on my "hit return then Cmd-F/G" muscle memory.
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