Huh. That's a lot of weird effort and loss of cognitive focus, just to net out at nothing. As with having to hold down a key because the designer refuses to admit the mode it invokes is a mode, by modern standards this seems all not very completely thought out.

The idea of using incremental search transparently for both navigation and retrieval does appeal - I could see adding that to Emacs, as a union of isearch and occur, maybe - but we've learned a lot about interaction design in the intervening decades which leads me to feel the veneration of Raskin may often obstruct evenhanded critique of his work: as with Jobs, people seem to confuse the appellation of "visionary" with a guarantee that its recipient's vision was perfect.