I would like to see L&L create a default setting for project search and replaces so that I can make the dialogue box default to “whole word.”
It is too easy to type in a string–for example, to change a character’s name, say, from Con to Ron–and overlook that the dialogue box is set to “begins with,” so that Scrivener changes not only the name but every instance of words beginning with Con, so that I end up with ronfused, rontemplate, ronsidering, and so on, through a 100 000 word document.
If the feature I request were available, I would leave the default on “whole word” all the time–which is the safest setting–and only change it for special cases.
I agree; Scrivener preserves the last used setting–until it is shut down, then it defaults to “Contains,” and if a person does a search and replace without setting it to “Whole Word,” then the catastrophe I meantioned can easily happen. Yes … I can try to program myself when firing up the program to immediately set the default to “Whole Word,” but I believe the coders could make it default as requested.
In my test just now, the “Whole Word” and other Project Replace settings survived a shut down. It’s a project-specific setting, though: a new project won’t have the previous project’s setting.
Could you tell me which version of Scrivener you have, please, and with which version of Mac OS? Are any other settings lost between sessions?
On mine, even if I have the project search and replace set to “whole word,” on shutdown, it always restarts in “contains.” I know of no other settings that change between sessions.