David Balmain wrote: > This is a bug. I might get around to fixing it but I can't promise > anything. I'm focusing entirely on the C extension version of Ferret > (which doesn't have this bug).
Bummer... I've got a hack to avoid the problem for the time being, but it's _really_ ugly :-/ This brings up another issue, though, that I'll go ahead and broach... I'm kind of sad that you've made the jump to C so soon. Ferret is brimming with potential, but it still feels a lot like, well, Java. The API is still pretty heavy, and when I dig in to the underlying code it feels over-designed. I'm guessing a lot of that is due to the straight translation from Java, which while it's a good first step, it's also not surprising that it would initially result in a library that feels pretty alien. While I understand the performance reasons for using C, doing so also makes it much harder to refactor and refine the API, and my feeling is that for most problems, the pure-Ruby performance isn't a show-stopper. Putting everything in C also makes it harder for folks such as myself, who don't do much C, to hack on the internals ourselves and push patches back up to you. I hope this comes off the right way - it's open-source, and you're of course free to take the project where you will. I'm also extremely grateful for the project - it's helping me out a lot. I just have doubts about the long-term viability of Ferret within the Ruby community when an API (and underlying code) that I find I spend a lot of time fighting is getting set in stone so early. I'd hate to see you spend a lot of time on it to only have it be a prototype for a more Ruby-ish library that comes along later. I want Ferret to be the standard by which other indexing tools are measured, in Ruby and elsewhere, and I don't think that raw benchmarks are going to drive that. > PS: Sorry for the slow reply. It's been a tough few weeks here. No problem! So what exactly do you do? Are you a student? Freelancer? Employee? Astronaut? Thanks a ton for the great library, Nathaniel -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/. _______________________________________________ Ferret-talk mailing list [email protected] http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ferret-talk
