[Wasabi Proposal] XML desktop query language

[Fabrice Colin]

On 1/17/07, Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen <mikkel.kamstrup at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2007/1/17, Jean-Francois Dockes <jean-francois.dockes at wanadoo.fr>:
> > Not sure we understand each other here. I was referring to the simple
> > search language from
> http://wiki.freedesktop.org/wiki/WasabiDraft, and I
> > meant that there should be a way for the user to express her wish for an
> > exact match, with no transformation of the search term. The backend will
> > then do its best. I don't see how the *language* feature could be
> optional,
> > not having it would unnecessarily cripple the capabilities of engines
> which
> > can switch stemming on or off. Maybe we could simply say that terms
> > enclosed in double-quotes are not to be stemmed if possible ?
>
> Ah, sorry. I was still thinking about the xml language, I see now that you
> wrote *user-level*  language :-)
>
> Regarding the user-level language now. Perhaps "flying Dutchman" would mean
> the unstemmed phrase (if supported), and 'flying Dutchman' (single quotes)
> could allow for stemming. This is not completely standard, but it doesn't
> break user expectation in horrible ways (as far as I can see).
>
I think it does. Double quotes usually express a phrase search.
My opinion is we'd better leave stemming (and diacritic sensitivity) out and let
each back-end play its specific strengths as it likes to find the best matches.

> We have a tie :-) What do you other guys think? I see two arguments for the
> xml language in both simple and live:
>
>  - Common api between live and simple interfaces
>  - Both apis can have the powers of both the user-level and the full xml
> languages, while still having an easy way of doing direct user queries
> without much parsing.
>
I don't mind either way.

Fabrice