Wouldn't this be best addressed by requesting specific enhancements of the package/s relating to the language/s that you are interested in?

The maintainers of those packages provide feedback channels for a reason.

Vaguely saying 'ST should be better' is fine but it is not as helpful as talking to the developer of your favourite Java (for example) package and saying 'How hard would it be to implement this hint that I liked on NetBeans and is not currently part of what you offer and is there anything I could do to help make that happen?'

I have never seen this happen and it seems quite odd.

Most problems I ever see people having are related to the having selected 'match case' or 'regEx' or some other settings without realising.

I take it when you mention the 'selected text' option that you mean that NONE of the search modifiers are enabled?

If all the modifiers are disable then perhaps the word you want is before the cursor and you have 'wrap' disabled?

There are so many ways to make simple mistake that would fully explain what you are reporting without any bug being demonstrated that you will have to deal with each and all of them before your issue can be treated as a report of a bug.

Assuming that is true then some more details are going to be required to address your problem

What version of ST?

What OS?

What type of file?

What is the exact search criteria (including any modifiers) being used?

Etc?

If you write code for money then you must be aware of what you need from a user to track down a bug. You need to supply that here.

Yep because everyone wants the core ST to be crufted up with your Java stuff, and Fred down the road's Haskell and Mary's C++ and my Perl, and whatever other 15 languages they don't use and don't care about and...

The nice thing about ST is it supplied a strong base that you build on to add what you want and not what you don't.

The dedicated Java IDEs like Eclipse and NetBeans and the rest are out there, if they better meet your needs why aren't you using them? There are no medals for self sacrifice in Software Engineering.

Have you looked at the various Java packages in Package Control?

Do none of them meet at least some of your needs or wants?

I run ST2 and ST3 in Ubuntu (maybe 10% of the time) without encountering this problem so I wonder how much this is ST and how much is KDE' or Gnome' or whatever windowing engine being finicky? Just wondering not trying to allocate blame or defend anyone, I don't know enough to do either.

As part of the research, does the same issue arise if you use the keyboard shortcut to 'Find Next'?

You should be able to hit that as fast as click the mouse. Can you get the issue to present that way?

Does 'GOTO  Anything' (Super + T) not achieve this in a more general way?

I am assuming both folders you are referring to are children of a folder in the sidebar? (If not why not?)

Have a look at the settings in [Preferences -> Settings - Default]

You are looking for these lines:

    // Set to false to disable detection of tabs vs. spaces on load

    "detect_indentation": true,

    // Calculates indentation automatically when pressing enter

    "auto_indent": true,

    // Makes auto indent a little smarter, e.g., by indenting the next line

    // after an if statement in C. Requires auto_indent to be enabled.

    "smart_indent": true,

While it is hard to know what exactly it is you are describing it sounds like you don't like how "auto_indent" and/or  "smart_indent" is working.

So open your user settings file [Preferences -> Settings - User] and paste the above lines into there.

When ST looks for what settings to apply those in the user file 'override' those in the default file so what you put in your user file becomes the relevant setting without you:

1 - making a mess of the defaults; or

2 - having the next ST update wipe away all your preferred settings with a new copy of the default file

Now try setting some to false and see if you can find a setting that better matches your preferred way of handling indenting of new lines.

Are you referring to ST2 or ST3?

In my quick playing around I seem to experience what you are reporting in ST2 but not in ST3 but not sure if my settings are identical between the two.

But all in all it seems your problem may be addressed by ST3.

If you have a ST2 licence try the ST3 beta and see if your milage is the same as mine.

By 'drag a file' do you mean drag the tab of a file already open in ST?

Or something else?

If the former then I see the tiny win in not having to hit a key combo to create a new layout with an empty column before starting the drag but it is so tiny that I would prefer no to clutter the UI with it. The current way of getting a file into a new column is elegant and simple so I'd prefer to see ST stick with that.

Not saying your idea is wrong for you, just wrong for me.

So has this ever worked?

Was it working in ST2 and stopped in ST3?

Was it working in an earlier build of ST3 and has stopped with 3021?

I never use pro fonts so I have no idea and your post leaves me almost none the wiser about what is happening in that space.

Some more details would help us all understand whatever it is you are trying to tell us or ask for.

I very much like the ability to set up my tools using JSON and XML rather than using GUIs which is one of the long list of reasons I prefer ST to UltraEdit (which I own and use). But if we were all the same what a horribly dull world it would be.

From the content and tone of your post it seems that you are happy with  UltraEdit and are getting good value for money for your UltraEdit licence so perhaps the best thing to do is to be happy that you gave ST a try and go back to UltraEdit where you are happier.

There are no prizes in life for making yourself unhappy by making yourself use a tool you don't like.