Currently, search for standalone non-text characters like hyphens and underscores fail.
They return “no results found”. But it would be very helpful if they were found, when they exist.
MOTIVATION
It would be nice to know everything I need to know when writing a UI article.
It really would!
But there are often questions. I need to make note of them somehow, and make sure to get answers before the article goes out the door.
The best way to do that, in my experience, has been to mark those areas with underscores. (Dashes would work, too, if they weren’t used in so many compound words.)
I’ll often use sequences like this:
“__TBD: The interface lets you do this...__”
“Learn more in __Link:That article__”
At times, I might also use underscores without a prefix, in a fill in the blanks manner:
“Click __button__ to do something”
“__VIs that how it works?__”
In short, there are many times that I need to mark “information to be provided later” in such a way that:
a. It stands out from the text, instead of blending in (to make it easy to spot)
b. It lets me capture my thoughts & phrasing while I’m there, thinking about it.
c. I can FIND it again later.
I’m so used to that way of doing things that my final clean-up step is to search for double-underscores.
The double-underscore search typically finds all of the idioms listed above, and any others I’ve forgotten to list.
Intercom is the first publication system I’ve used (of many) in which that search fails.
That’s not to say that I’m wedded to the idea of using underscores. Maybe I could mark such things with a double-asterix, or double exclamations points, or anything else that Intercom can find with a Content search.
The KEY is that the mark-up mechanism stands out from the text, so it’s visible on a casual inspection.
Most other systems let me color text, so I will often put such things in bold, red, so they fairly leap out from the page. I’m not asking for that --it adds work in the editor, which needs to be 100% solid and reliable.
But surely search can be improved.
thanks for listening!
eric
