I can consistently find citations by searching for their number, but not under other circumstances. It doesn't matter if the citation was added during this editing session.
The search seems only to take the number and the name attribute (if it has one) of the reference into consideration.
Yes, searching the content of the reference would be very convenient.
I've gone back to the creation of PreviewWidget, and it looks like it never actually used the CE rendering, which we assumed it did: https://github.com/wikimedia/VisualEditor/commit/db2ed0b1282e41f558987225fdab4b9706101176#diff-de3066494436ef8a305ab69f3805373a
The connection to PreviewWidget (now PreviewElement), is that the index is built by creating previews of each reference and running them through jQuery.text. It was assumed that some rendering will be available synchronously from the CE node, but that CE node was never actually appended to the PreviewElement.
Looks like this regressed some time ago.
Change 389729 had a related patch set uploaded (by Esanders; owner: Esanders):
[VisualEditor/VisualEditor@master] Actually use the CE node while waiting for the DM render
Change 389729 merged by jenkins-bot:
[VisualEditor/VisualEditor@master] Actually use the CE node while waiting for the DM render
Change 389901 had a related patch set uploaded (by Jforrester; owner: Jforrester):
[mediawiki/extensions/VisualEditor@master] Update VE core submodule to master (bf37a87d2)
Change 389901 merged by jenkins-bot:
[mediawiki/extensions/VisualEditor@master] Update VE core submodule to master (bf37a87d2)
@Esanders I still can't find anything? I'm looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvator_Mundi_(Leonardo)?action=edit and am trying author surnames, source titles, part of the article titles etc. Also, I'd appreciate knowing what that field can find, generally speaking, so that it can be properly documented somewhere. TY!