[Wasabi Proposal] XML desktop query language

[Jean-Francois Dockes]

Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen writes:
 > 2007/1/17, Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen <mikkel.kamstrup at gmail.com>:
 > > 2007/1/16, Jos van den Oever <jvdoever at gmail.com>:
 > >
 > > > - Stemming is a tricky business. It required language recognition and
 > > > there are a few more snakes in the grass. I'd prefer to have stemming,
 > > > if included, be optional and certainly not the default.
 > >
 > >
 > > It is in the extendedStringAttributes now. Following my previous example
 > > you would add "enableStemming" to your getExtendedFeatures response if you
 > > support it.
 > >
 > 
 > 
 > Actually the schema now says that enableStemming defults to true... Perhaps
 > it should  rather default to false...

I think that the default should be to let the engine use stemming or not
(it will be ON in most cases). Users just expect it. It would be
inconvenient, for example, no to find plurals. Google does it, Wikipedia
does it, is there any example of an engine that has stemming off by
default ? 

The user will want to turn it off in specific cases, and a clever engine
may turn it off sometimes (ie: when searching an author field).

Jos is right that this is a tricky area, but having to search for 
(example OR examples) would come as a bit of a surprise for most
people. 

jf