>No. I too have reservations about these and about fuzzy queries, both
>because they make the query syntax even more complicated, and because they
>make it easy for folks to compose really expensive queries. What are your
>thoughts on the matter?
My general thoughts on this sort of thing, after having been through the
same process many times in other O/S projects, is that there should be a
mandatory one-month discussion period ("cooling-off period"?) before adding
new syntax to the query language. I realize that sounds a little silly,
but the alternative is (a) a proliferation of syntax, which complicates the
project and its use, and (b) a poor choice of syntax, as the "good" symbols
get grabbed first, regardless of whether, for example, curly braces would
be better and more intuitive for some other feature.
This has been a huge issue in the WebMacro group, and I've lately taken the
"Read my lips, no new syntax" position, which, despite lots of moaning, has
actually caused us to find much better solutions once the knee-jerk option
is removed.
I don't want us to lose sight of the fact that the query language should be
easy to use by beginners. Any syntax that has the chance of being confused
by a beginner is probably a bad syntax. The +, -, and quote syntaxes are
good; the ^ syntax is more confusing but less likely to be accidentally
used; I'm less sanguine about the braces and brackets, and even less so
about question marks.
That said, I wouldn't mind seeing a syntax for modifying the slop factor in
a phrase query ("Lucene" within 10 words of "search") :)
--
Brian Goetz
Quiotix Corporation
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: 650-843-1300 Fax: 650-324-8032
http://www.quiotix.com
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