[Libreoffice-bugs] [Bug 138758] New: Find and replace is too coupled between documents

[bugzilla-daemon at bugs.documentfoundation.org]

https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=138758

            Bug ID: 138758
           Summary: Find and replace is too coupled between documents
           Product: LibreOffice
           Version: 7.0.2.2 release
          Hardware: x86-64 (AMD64)
                OS: Linux (All)
            Status: UNCONFIRMED
          Severity: normal
          Priority: medium
         Component: Writer
          Assignee: libreoffice-bugs at lists.freedesktop.org
          Reporter: luke.kendall at gmail.com

While waiting for the ability to search for styles to be implemented, I'm
resorting to finding by attribute in one document, to find all text of a
specific character style in a copied document, so I can set the style
correctly.

I'm in the process of making the smaller paperback edition of my book (with a
smaller font size throughout).

(Incidentally, this task was made harder because the user defined character
style information was not copied from one document into the other.)

However, finding each use of my user defined character style is made especially
tedious because using F&R with specific attributes (font size 10 in my case) in
the source document also turns that F&R option on in the F&R panel in the
copied document.
This means when I search in the copied document for the text I found by
attribute in the source document, you can't find it, because the copied
document has no text with that attribute, and the F&R panel in the copied
document switches mode when you change it in the source document.
So you have to:
1) click No Format in the copied doc F&R,
2) enter some of the found text to search for in the copied doc
3) find the text and set the attribute,
4) then go back to the source document and click in its F&R panel
5) clear the text from the Find area because the search in the copied-doc wiped
out the text entered in the Find field in the source doc F&R Find field
  (That 'Find text' can either be no text, which is unreliable; or ".*" and
  regexp enabled which is less unreliable) 
6) click on the Format button in the F&R panel in the source doc and navigate
through to choose the format you're after
7) find the next piece of text with that format
8) Repeat steps 1-7 for every piece of text with the user-defined character
style in the source document.

It's a massive usability failure.
Especially because defining and using a character style makes the F&R
unreliable. It seems to find random pieces of text with that format, and fail
to find others.

Nor does the pattern of success and failure to find text by format seem to
relate to direct formatting. Not unless DF can creep in via even more
operations than I'm aware of.  I also note that DF is nowhere fully described
or explained in the user guides.

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