On Tue, 12 Nov 2019, Ben Bullock wrote:
> Perhaps this practical example from today's inputs might give some insight
> from one potential user what kind of problems I'm facing:
Thanks.
> Using the [online] idsgrep, there doesn't seem to be
> any way to insert text directly into the left/right boxes, which would be
> useful for me,
If you click "Tools«", it'll expand to reveal among other things a small
text box with an equals sign. Type a character there and then drag from
the equals to the query area, and it'll add the character you typed as an
element in the query. You can also click where in the query you want to
put it - at which point that element should become highlighted with a
heavy border - and then click the equals sign, instead of dragging.
One gotcha with the equals tool is that the contents of the associated
text box need to be exactly one character. It's easy to type something in
and have it appended instead of replacing the current contents of the box,
leaving you with a two-character text that won't work. I'm not sure yet
what I can do to make that easier. Options might include automatically
emptying the box whenever it's used; just using the last character of the
text; making the box wider so that it'll be easier to at least see the
mistake; and so on.
> and it's hard to see how to delete an entry from the boxes as
> well,
I don't know if you're asking how to do this, or just commenting that it's
not obvious enough, but in case of the former, there are several ways:
* Drag the query element you want to remove onto the recycling symbol,
which will appear when you start dragging.
* Drag the question-mark "match anything" operator, which is the first
one, shown in the "Op»" category that is opened by default, onto the query
element you want to remove.
* Click the query element to remove, it will become highlighted with a
heavy border, then click the question mark. Note that this, and the drag
from question mark to query area, can also be used to replace an existing
query element with a different one (not only the question mark).
* Query elements can also be removed as a side effect of removing other
things - for instance, clicking the "X" to remove an operator like ⿰ will
remove whatever was inside it, and you can start over completely by
reloading the page.
Regarding the image in your attachment, I constructed the query ⿰月⿱?夂
and found U+6718 【朘】⿰月⿱允夂 as the only matching structure for which
my browser has font coverage. There is also U+8127, with seemingly the
same structure, in the compatibility range. But although it's not in
my browser's font config, so I see it only as a placeholder, the query
also returns U+26744 【𦝄】⿰月⿱圥夂 and that seems pretty close to what
your user drew.