Re: [htdig-dev] Porter-type Stemming Algorithms

[Geoff H. <ghu...@ws...>]

On Tue, 8 Jan 2002, Neal Richter wrote:

> 	Would anyone be interested in having the Porter-type Stemming
> Algorithms integrated as a second stemming algorithm?

Sure. There's nothing saying the current crop of fuzzy algorithms is
necessarily the final word on things. :-)

But keep in mind that the way the current Endings algorithm works is
slightly different than most "stemming" approaches. All words are indexed
as-is and then at search time, the fuzzy algorithm can add additional
"fuzzy query words" to the user query (at usually lower weight).

> Is everyone happy with the current stemming system?

There are benefits and drawbacks. One benefit is that ispell stemming
dictionaries are available for most languages. One drawback is that it's
only as good as the ispell dictionary used--and many are not exactly
designed for what ht://Dig is doing with them. (Several people recently
worked on a revised version for htfuzzy purposes.)

-Geoff