Text editors with "smart folder" / "saved search" / filter functionality

Posted by Lucas
Sep 10, 2015 at 10:11 PM

So as not to interrupt the thread about org-mode, I figured I should start a separate thread to respond to MadaboutDana’s comment about Ulysses. For reference, the discussion started here:

http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/6003/0/beginning-to-see-the-light-with-org-mode

I took the opportunity to mention some thoughts about how I would like to see a text editor with “smart folder” or “saved search” functionality. And MadaboutDana mentioned Ulysses as a good implementation.

Perhaps I wasn’t clear or my terminology may be imprecise, but what I am actually looking for is a “smart folder” or “saved search” (or “filter”) that collects not files but rather lines of text that meet certain conditions. Ideally it would be possibly to specify whether to search a given document or various documents, but in either case the results would be displayed as lines of text meeting the given conditions. Some text editors, such as UltraEdit, do make it possible to save searches or filters, but they do not, as far as I know, allow for multiple saved searches/filters to be displayed statically in the folder pain, whereby one could click on them directly and organize them as needed. Rather, of the implementations I have seen, they all require selecting saved searches/filters from a drop-down list.

(I believe Scrivener does this, but then it doesn’t save in plain text.)