simple search api (was Re: mimetype standardisation by testsets)

[Fabrice Colin]

On 11/24/06, Jean-Francois Dockes <jean-francois.dockes at wanadoo.fr> wrote:
> Here follow my impressions after reading the Wasabi Draft document.
> ...
> Ok, enough for now, my only hope here is to restart thinking about the
> query language.
>
I have given some thought to this over the weekend and here's what I reckon.

We do need a simple text string-based query language.
The way I see it, the main goal of Wasabi is to allow to plug any
personal search
system into existing applications (file managers, toolkits' file
chooser dialogs,
cataloguing software, etc...). These applications typically only have
a basic search
user interface, i.e. a text field and maybe some knobs that can be tweaked.
Once we have sorted out the dbus interface, these apps will only have to make
a couple of method calls and pass the string entered by the user. We
should try to
make it as easy as possible to run searches; any parsing/formatting
that's necessary
on the part of these apps will add complexity. The more complex it is,
the less widely
it will be adopted.
Since most end-users are familiar with the query format supported by popular
Web engines, we should go for something similar.
Leo mentioned Lucene's query language. While I agree we should avoid tying
anything to a particular search toolkit, a subset of that query language might
make sense. If need be, an ABNF grammar would remove ambiguities.

On the other hand, I agree with Jean-Francois that a more powerful
query language
is better in the medium to long term. I don't know which is the most
appropriate.

I think a dual approach, as proposed on the second draft, makes sense.

Fabrice