If anyone's interested in adding a searchfield and Spotlight effect to OAPreferenceController, we've done this for BibDesk (BSD license). It uses a plist of search terms associated with each preference client id, and uses CoreImage for the spotlight effect.
The OAPreferenceController subclass is at:
https://svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/...ceController.m
https://svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/...ceController.h
It will also require some other classes (at least):
https://svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/...potlightView.m
https://svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/...potlightView.h
https://svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/.../BDSKOverlay.m
https://svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/.../BDSKOverlay.h
https://svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/...SKExtensions.m
https://svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/...SKExtensions.h
I think I also had to make the pref icon view header public in OmniAppKit, and we also have some Panther compatibility stuff in there (instantiating the view with NSClassFromString). Bug reports and patches can be submitted to the
BibDesk project.
This probably only makes sense if you have a lot of preferences, as BibDesk does. Personally, I'd like to see searchable prefs in OmniWeb, since there are too many options to keep track of.