Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 23630
Problems with space characters in Find and Replace
Last modified: 2013-08-07 14:38:26 UTC
In version 1.1.0, extraneous space characters appear in the Search For field of the Find & Replace box. This causes problems if you want to find double spaces throughout a document and Replace All with single spaces. Problem can be demonstrated as follows. 1.Open new word processor document and type text for testing, (with blocks of around 10 spaces separating the repeated word “testâ€) like this: “ Test test †2.Press Ctrl+Home. The cursor returns to the beginning of the text. 3.Press Ctrl+F. Find & Replace dialogue box appears. 4.Type Test in the “Search for†field and press Enter. The word “Test†is found. 5.Press Esc. The dialogue box closes. 6.Press Ctrl+F. The Find & Replace dialogue box opens with the word “Test†still in the “Search for†field. 7.Press space bar twice. Two spaces should replace what is already selected in the "Search for" field. 8.Press Enter to operate the button in focus, “Findâ€. The search doesn't find two consecutive spaces, as it should, but it does find five consecutive spaces.
Reassigned to SBA
I tried this in Windows'98 (Open Office 1.1.0) and couldn't reproduce this (it does find two consecutive spaces here). This problem might be Windows XP- specific?
Maybe it doesn't happen in Win98. Now I've tried it on Win2000, too, and get the same problem. I'm sure this is obvious, but for anyone else testing this, in my instructions to reproduce the problem I should have begun by saying: "Choose View, Nonprinting Characters. Space characters become visible." Could you try once more with this test line? Test test One two three four five six In the above line, the word "test" is followed by one space each time. Then "One" is followed by one space; "two" is followed by two spaces and so on. This just helps to make clear how many spaces are being found. (I don't know how to make them visible in the above line when entering them on the web.) I have tried a variation on the original test. This is to carefully delete all contents from the Search For field. The buttons dim when it is completely empty. Then press the space bar just once. When I do this, the Find function then finds three spaces in the text, but not one. As you press the space bar once, selection highlighting suggests that more than one space (apparently three) have been inserted in the previously empty Search For field. It would be good if you could try this, too. I get the same problem on both Win2000, running on a Pentium 2 350 MHz, and XP Home, running on a Celeron 2.3 GHz.
SBA: I can't reproduce this. Whenever I open the F&R dialog, the Search string is highlighted and entering something replaces the selected string. It is true that the amount of entered spaces is invisible in the dialog, but I think that's not the subject here. SBA->AJR: OOo 1.1.2 RC as well as OOo 2.0 Pre-Alpha builds are available. Please verify your findings and comment. Can anyone else confirm this problem?
SBA: Unless there will be further information soon, this one will be closed. Set to "Worksforme"
I've now established what's happening here. This is a usability issue. I think the software is actually working as intended. What happens is that the Find dropdown list (the Search For field) saves previous searches. So if you've done a previous search for, say, five spaces, that search term is saved in the dropdown list (though not visible unless you click on the down arrow.) If you subsequently do a search for two spaces, the Search For field uses its predictive text function to automatically jump to the five-space search term. But it is not obvious that this has happened because the space characters are not displayed; there is simply a blue highlight showing that something has been selected, though whether it's two spaces or five is not obvious. So when you click on Find, it finds five spaces, rather than two. The software is doing what's intended by the designer but not what the user may be expecting. The key issue here, for those interested in this usability issue, is that for a long time the Windows (and before that, Mac) standard has been that selected text is replaced by what is typed. So if you have the word "Test" selected in a field and you type two spaces, you expect the two spaces to replace the word "Test". This doesn't happen here. Instead, the predictive text function intervenes and instead of two spaces replacing the word "Test", five spaces appear (as long as you've previously done a search for five spaces.) I think this is only a problem for non-displaying characters. With any other characters, the predictive text would be obvious. Maybe space characters (and any other typically hidden characters) should be displayed when used with predictive text. So, in conclusion, I think the software is working. But advice from usability experts would be helpful. Many thanks for persisting with this issue as I was baffled by it for quite a while.
SBA-> AJR: Thanks for the clarification. For those who really have to deal with this, it is possible to get the desired result.Also concerning usability, this is a small and rarely occurring issue. Given the fact that there will be "bigger fish to catch" for the foreseeable future, I will close this one. There is no point in keeping such issues open for years to come. Thanks for your comprehension.