Re: [refbase-talk] search of two or more words ?

[Matthias S. <re...@ex...>]

Hi,

extending a bit on the topic of possible search improvements, below is
an excerpt from a previous email to the developer list. I'm interested
to hear any opinions about it.

Best, Matthias


On 10-Mar-2005 at 15:48 +0100 Matthias Steffens wrote:

> below are some future ideas that would enhance search capabilities in
> refbase.
>
> 1. Capability, to search all/main fields at once.
> 
> Currently, you can't search e.g. the title, keywords and abstract
> fields at once. To do so, we could provide an additional popup menu
> entry (called "Anywhere" or something similar) at the top of each
> search field selector. A global setting in 'ini.inc.php' (or maybe
> better a user-specific setting) could define, which fields would be
> searched by this entry.
> 
> Of course, if a user is able to choose the fields that would be
> searched by "Anywhere", the name 'Anywhere' is somewhat confusing.
> Any other naming ideas?
> 
> 2. Provide a Google-like search syntax:
> 
> Currently, refbase uses the WHERE ... RLIKE ... syntax for most of
> its SQL searches. This is cool for folks who are familiar with the
> regular expression syntax used by MySQL. But, obviously, most users
> don't even know about regular expressions (and would find them
> daunting, if they'd know them).
> 
> If, for example, a user enters
> 
> "Steffens Karnesky"
> 
> into the quick search field on the refbase main page, he most
> certainly expects refbase to find all entries whose author field
> contains the words "Steffens" AND "Karnesky". But instead, refbase
> will only return those entries which contain the literal string
> "Steffens Karnesky".
> 
> Obviously, it would be great, if refbase would have a help page
> explaining its search syntax. In addition, we could include a popup
> on the main search pages saying something like:
> 
> Find words:  +--------------------+
>              | All                |
>              |--------------------|
>              | Any                |
>              |--------------------|
>              | Exactly as typed   |
>              |--------------------|
>              | Regular expression |
>              +--------------------+
> 
> with "All" being the default option. (Of course, I'd like to be able
> to choose the existing RegEx syntax as default option for myself ;-)
> 
> 3. A customizable search page that can optionally restrict searches
>    to a user's own literature set
> 
> I think, it would be very helpful to offer the user a search page
> which will be (a) customizable and (b) will (optionally) only search
> his own literature set. The user could edit (in 'user_options.php')
> the list of fields to be displayed on this user-specific search page.
> Additionally, he could specify whether this search page shall search
> the full database or just his own literature set.