Resolved as Won't Fix by Microsoft on 7/12/2004 at 11:31 PM
We LOVE this suggestion. I remember the alpha chat that we had almost a year ago and remember you making the suggestion and loved it back then. As you've noticed, we have made huge progress on the Find UI since this alpha release. Unfortunately, this work didn't allow us enough time to add this suggestion. It ranks highly on our list of requests for the next version of VS and we hope to get it to you then. We're also planning a chat in the near future and hope that you can make it. Stay tuned to our team blog for details.
Thanks,
Sean Laberee
http://blogs.msdn.com/vseditor
Now, what disapoints me the most is that a year ago, they already knew this was a great feature to add, that a lot of the editors available have such a feature and it really helps development and that today VS.NET 2005 is almost a year away plus that it seems that two years apparently aren't enough to add a feature to search/replace multiple lines of text. It might be a little more complex than editorContents.Replace(from, to); but how hard can it possibly be?
A year ago I joined the Whidbey Alpha program because I thought it would give me some, maybe even a little, influence on the future version of VS.NET. Apparently not. What's the use of joining these kind of programs then? The thrill of being able to peek into the kitchen where Chef Microsoft bakes 'the next version' ? Why bother? Why invest time testing versions, supplying suggestions while all you are really able to do is looking? If you want feedback Microsoft, do something with it or tell the community to not provide feedback at all.
"We LOVE this suggestion.". So do we, Sean, for a heck of a long time already. However why on earth should we even bother with spending time on giving you suggestions? It is not as if I was late at the party giving you the suggestion, so it wasn't possible to add the feature. The whole search dialog was in development at that time, nothing was finalized.
"It ranks highly on our list of requests for the next version of VS and we hope to get it to you then.". Sean, perhaps you don't realize this, but for us, outside MS, the next version is VS.NET 2005, not VS.NET 2007
You know what I'd really love to see, Sean? Some honesty. I'd have loved the honesty from you and your team back and now why you couldn't add a multi-line replace routine in a full year and one year before shipment. Saying that you love the feature, you already did a year ago and still have it high on your list is a little hard to match with the cold reality of having a tool without a multi-line search routine. Was the feature scrapped because of the fact that it might not be that useful? It's high on lists at the moment, so I don't think that's the reason.
Is it hard to implement? Homesite is written by a single guy. It has besides multi-line search/replace with regexp's also search/replace in files. If one guy can implement it, why can't MS? Because the editor is internally very complex? I'm sure it is. I'm also sure it is hard to implement so it will work in all situations. Sometimes software development is hard, however. That's reality.
But I give up for now. I hope others have more luck with their suggestions and bugreports, or should I rephrase that to "I hope others have any luck with their suggestions and bugreports"... it seems so.
Previous Topic
