Nisus Writer Pro - Manual (Page 321)

Polishing & Managing Documents 301
Using PowerFind
PowerFind gives you powerful yet easy-to-use tools that extend the Normal Find and Replace
functions in Nisus Writer Pro. There may be times when you need to find or replace text which
conforms to a complex description or which varies from place to place in your document. For
example, to find and highlight every paragraph that contains a semicolon. Searches of this type
would be impossible using conventional find-and-replace methods, but are quite simple using
PowerFind. In general, anything you can describe in words, you can find with PowerFind.
Everything you’ve learned about finding and replacing text with Normal Find applies to PowerFind.
In addition, what you learn about PowerFind serves as the basis for the more advanced PowerFind
Pro.
In this part of the documentation, you’ll learn what types of tasks you can do with PowerFind. You’ll
also find complete instructions for using both methods, along with plenty of examples of useful
“find” expressions for your convenience.
PowerFind is easy to use, and performs all the complex find and replace procedures available in
PowerFind Pro. PowerFind is “Menu” or “Browser” driven. You can type real words in the PowerFind
text edit box, but all of the power of PowerFind comes from the Find/Replace menus or Browser,
which are available from the “Gear” button and the Show PowerFind Browser… command at the
bottom of its menu in the Find/Replace window as illustrated in Figure 332 on page 303.
In PowerFind Pro you can enter the same expressions as with PowerFind, but you can also use
the keyboard to enter them.
When the Find/Replace window is in PowerFind mode the expressions of the PowerFind
Browser enter the Find/Replace window as “bubbles”.
When the Find/Replace window is in PowerFind Pro mode the expressions of the PowerFind
Browser enter the Find/Replace window as text.
About PowerFind
Use PowerFind to increase your productivity and simplify tedious writing and editing procedures.
Here are just a few ways to use PowerFind
• find all telephone numbers or addresses—even if they’re not all in the same format
• find all UPPERCASE or Capitalized words.
• change the sequence of words
• to find all underlined words
As you experiment, always remember to back up your document before trying any new procedure.
You may have already used Nisus Writer Pro’s standard Find and Replace feature to perform simple
substitutions—for example, replacing one word with another throughout your document.
Sometimes, however, you need more flexibility in what you search for, or you may want to do more
complex substitutions. PowerFind allows you to include variables, and parenthesized expressions in
your Find Expression to narrow the search down to exactly what you want. Should you reach the
limits of PowerFind’s flexibility, you can move on to PowerFind Pro for virtually unlimited find and
replace capability.
This section has an example to show you how easy it is to use PowerFind to find phrases that
contain variables. It also explains the parts of a find expression and the logic Nisus Writer Pro
follows to complete a find procedure. In the example, you’ll also convert the PowerFind expression
that defines the search to a PowerFind Pro expression. This step gives you an idea of the difference
between these two search types.
PowerFind terminology
A good understanding of the terms and concepts described below will help you learn to use
PowerFind (and, later, if you want, PowerFind Pro) more effectively.
A metacharacter is a PowerFind command or symbol.
10 Metacharacters denote a specific character
or set of characters and can represent variables, number of repetitions, and so on. PowerFind
displays the metacharacter symbols in a user-friendly manner using natural language words and
phrases in a “bubble”. You can customize the color of these as explained in the section “Determine
the color of various aspects of your Nisus Writer Pro working environment” on page 378.
10 The term “metacharacter” refers to the character standing for something beyond the “normal” “literal” or “usual”
meaning of the character (similar to the use of the word “metaphysics”).