Roman Korchagin said in a previous post: "The replace functionality at the moment is limited to replacing text within one text run. We do plan to improve to make it full featured find and replace and we will allow obtaining the replacement count at that time."
This seems to be the standard Aspose partyline regarding this feature (over the past 2 years). I understand there are some difficult technical barriers to accomplishing it and there is probably a lot of sexier new development to be worked on. A search through Aspose forums shows questions about this feature dating back to 2003 from prospects and customers. I know that it would solve a wide range of much needed server-side Word document processing.
So my question is, can someone give a real answer as to the priority and reality of Aspose implementing this feature at some time in the near future? I’ve been holding out and checking the blogs every couple of months, but I’d really appreciate a statement from someone who knows what is going on. Even if the answer is, "No, it isn’t a priority at this time."
Thanks,
James
Find and replace functionality
Hi James,
Aspose.Word was barely on the market for 1.5 years yet for the amount of people working on it delivered a lot of good features, all driven by demand from users like you.
We are a small, efficient and self managing group of very motivated and enthusiastic developers with zero count of project managers or any other types of bosses that require formal timelines or roadmaps and delivery according to those milestones.
I used to promise almost any feature in 2-3 months and was delivering most of them initially, but when the amount of the tasks in the pipeline grew, this promise stopped working and we had to switch to the now famous “next few months” partyline.
The way we work now seems to be the easiest for us (with best quality and fastest time to market), although it means we are not able to give customers any reasonable promises when a particular feature could be delivered (unless it is already being packaged into a release).
Find and replace is a priority, but the real problem seems to be there is a dozen or so features of roughly the same priority and its extremely hard to pick the next feature to work on knowing that some customers will miss out again.
Sorry if it does not help you, but we are doing the best we can.
Roman,
I apologize if it seemed I was disparaging you or Aspose. I am a customer of yours and love your products. I am also a software developer and know the ins and outs of the business.
My goal in sending that message was to get a clear idea of whether or not it was a priority and really planned for implementation. I know what it’s like to have features to program that are just hanging out and they will continue to hang out for an unforseen amount of time. Also, I obviously have my own agenda and hope that sending you another note will just bump it up even if only a hair on your mental list of priorities.
Thanks for all the hard work and good intentions. As I said, I love your products.
James
PS - When I post in the forums I always check the box that says “Email me replies to this post” and I haven’t gotten an email. Might be something to look into.
So far, OUTSTANDING!! Way to go guys. Find and Replace works awesome. This will definitely result in a sale for this component. Having some trouble doing doc to pdf conversions, but given your level of responsiveness, will probably buy and implement that despite minor glitches.
Thanks for all the hard work!
Another satisfied customer,
James Vitale
Roman,
Just FYI, I still don’t get emails when someone updates a thread in this forum. I always check the “Email me replies to this post” box and I still don’t get them. For example, your reply in this thread above, I saw it because I came back on my bi-monthly checkin to see if the feature was implemented so I could stop automating word (which is just starting to be a scalability bottleneck… so good timing).
James