Searching in the Blame window and compare

[agallero]

Problem description

Imagine I do a blame of a large file. I am looking specifically for the changes in the method "potato()", so inside the blame I fo ctrl-F and type potato.

Instead of searching for the code in the blame window, a global "Find" windows appears, replacing the blame window and making me lose all status. If I press esc to go back, I go back to the commit page, not to wherever I was in the blame.

Something similar happens when staging a big file with many changes. I might want to search for a specific change in the file, but if I press ctrl-F, a new global find window appears.

Preferred solution

I believe a lot of the problems here are because sublime merge is trying too hard not to use modal dialogs. Sometimes a modal dialog with is associated context switch is the best solution, because it is what we want to do: switch context from the main window to a specific task: I am now reviewing this file, or I am now blaming this file.

I would like to see the blame dialog to be modal: Once I am blaming the file, ctrl-F searches inside the file I am looking at, etc.

For the main window and the panel at the right where you can see the diffs, I would like a "open in external diff" button, where the external diff might be sublime merge itself, but as a separate window. So I can search, modify, and do whatever I want inside the diff window.

Alternatives

If adding some modality is out of the question, at least I would like a shortcut for finding inside the text editor, whenever the cursor is inside a text editor. If I have the cursor inside a diff view Ctrl-F should search for the text inside the text view, not call the global search.
Another alternative would be to have a different shortcut like shift-ctrl-F for searching inside textboxes, but I believe this is less discoverable.

Maybe some "search" textbox like here:

[augu8346]

Well, I would prefer key-remapping for this.

[lperrin-tower]

+1

[franksands]

I frequently need to search in Blamed files, this would be extremely useful

[rotanov]

+1; would also like to perform search in whatever is on the screen now, with results highlight and F3/Shift+F3 navigation, like Ctrl+F in sublime text does. I understand it conflicts with Ctrl+F hotkey for when you want to perform a search in terms of a whole git repo. May be remap full repo search to Ctrl+Shift+F (kinda synonymous to Find In Files) and make Ctrl+F do what described above?

[micnil]

Another option could be to make the "Open in Editor..." command open the contents of the file you are viewing (if it is an old version of the file). Then atleast we could search in the editor instead.

Currently, when blaming an old version of a file and the "Open in Editor..." command is used, the most recent version on disk is opened instead.

Edit: saw that this is already a proposed change #49

[GerardMT]

+1

[reuben]

Would love to see this fixed!