When opening the “Find” dialog box, all content from the clipboard is inserted automatically. This is a new bug from the latest RC 2.9.9.9 Beta.
I’m not sure this is a bug but more of a matter of unintended results from an overly aggressive helpful feature that is working out of its scope. I’ll explain:
Normally, search scope is limited to the character(s), word(s), object(s) you select within the program doing the search - tested in Notepad++, Libre Office, MS Office, etc., none of which automatically grab the last thing you copied to the clipboard. That said, Scrivener seems to be pulling (and accurately discriminating) clipboard data for things such as adding a link to a web page. Cool. However, this same copied data from the clipboard defaults to the Find dialog (what you are seeing) that is probably not what you want to have happened by default, especially if you just did a copy/paste of a large document and want to search for a particular word in another document or within that project. You can get around that by selecting (no need to copy) the thing you want to search for before doing Ctrl-F as it inserts that selection (and not the last clipboard contents) into the find box. But what if you do want to search for that web site address that you just used to add a link to in a document - maybe you have already added it and want to see where else it is - that clipboard data might just be useful in this case. Most Search functions start with a blank history without defaulting to the clipboard data, something that we have grown used to, but that is changing with how Search has been altered to produce instant results as we type into the search field and helpful (sometimes) autocompletion of the search term(s). I think this is a case of the overly helpful autocomplete.
I tested it and you are right about the behavior. It inserts the selected text also if not copied. That could actually be helpful, I guess. But the other way around it ALSO inserts what is in the clipboard even if nothing is selected, and that is absolutely not helpful but actually very annoying. It means that you have to delete all that copied content from the find dialogue box every time. That has to be a bug or at least, as you say, an unintended consequence of the other intention to be helpful.
The behavior has started with the latest RC so I presume it is a non intended flaw. Or at least, I hope so.
I’ve actually seen this happen in other programs, too. Notepad++ does it with currently selected text. Wordpad does it with copied text. Wouldn’t surprise me if Word did it, but I don’t have a copy to check. LibreOffice does not.
The real question is, does the Mac version do this?
I currently use Office 365 and have tested it. If no word is highlighted in Word than you open Find, the field is blank. But if you highlight a word and then click on find or even highlight a different word it changes in the field. If you then click on a blank area and start typing nothing shows there.
Just for those interested.
Mac Scrivener does not copy in the clipboard data automatically.
Jestar, thanks for checking. If Mac does not function this way, then I think it’s safe to presume the Win devs will be correcting it eventually.
Best,
Jim
Yep, that is what I would expect too. It is more of an annoyance than anything else - too greedy for the search field. It would be better to leave the field blank and allow the user to either select the word/phrase/etc. to search for, or to paste in what the user has in the clipboard.