Re: how to control isearch for invisible text

[Stefan Monnier]

> - documenting `isearch-invisible' in the Emacs manual?
> - and the Elisp manual?
> - creating a toggle for it?
> - having `occur' and `query-replace' respect the option?

I think `occur' always makes things visible because it copies text and
overlays are not copied along, so the invisibility gets lost.
I do think query-replace should be improved to open invisible text just like
isearch does.

> Also, I'm curious why the treatment of an `invisible' text-property value of
> `isearch-open-invisible' is limited to overlays. Why shouldn't the same
> behavior hold for the property if applied directly to text (that is, without
> an overlay)?

I'm not exactly sure why isearch does it like that, but reveal-mode (which
does something similar, tho not restricted to isearch) does the same for the
reason that it's simpler and that text-properties tend to be used for
different circumstances.  E.g. overlays are used for things like outline.el
or folding.el whereas invisible text-properties seem to be limited to
smaller extents which are never-ever meant to be shown to the user.


        Stefan