Better ranking would be good. Meanwhile and also: Even with excellent ranking there will be times you need to scan more than 20. I think that's acceptable, let's just take away a pain point.
"Showing 1-20 of N matches" can be a little annoying. "Peephole" UI, looking at results in chunks of 20: Down, over, down, over. Instead I'd prefer one list: Down, down, down. I understand searching on "a" can give 13,000+ results, so there needs to be some limit, but I'd prefer much bigger than 20. Like say 200 or more. Especially if you're accessing it file:, but even via http:. I offer this small suggestion along with another compliment for how good the Racket documentation content and system already is! On Fri, Dec 24, 2010 at 4:48 PM, Neil Van Dyke <n...@neilvandyke.org> wrote: > I think that some tweaking to the ranking of documentation search results > would help. > > Oftentimes, I find that I have to scan down the search result list looking > at the small text at end end of each search result line to find an > appropriate manual, and only then look to the left at the titles. > > Here's an example... > > file:///home/neil/.racket/5.0.2/doc/search/index.html?q=port >> >> (rnrs io ports (6)): I/O: Ports in r6rs >> Attaching Documentation to Exports in syntax >> clear-output-ports (method of text:ports<%>) provided from framework >> Creating Ports in reference >> Custom Ports in reference >> Default Ports in guide >> Exports: provide in guide >> File Ports in reference >> Fine-Grained Control Over Package Imports in planet >> Garbage Collector Exports in plai >> gunzip-through-ports provided from file/gunzip >> gzip-through-ports provided from file/gzip >> Imports: require in guide >> input ports, pattern matching in reference >> Managing Ports in reference >> module->exports provided from racket/base, racket >> module->imports provided from racket/base, racket >> module-compiled-exports provided from racket/base, racket >> module-compiled-imports provided from racket/base, racket >> modules, imports in reference > > In this particular case, I would've preferred to see the hits in the "guide" > and "reference" manuals ranked higher than "syntax", "framework", and "r6rs" > ones. > > As a simple improvement, perhaps, for example, "guide" and "reference" > should be weighted more than "r6rs", in addition to whatever other ranking > is used, like TFIDF and whether there is an exact match for a language > identifier. This weighting by manual could be dependent on a "context" > query in the URL, which, when invoked from DrRacket, could depend on the > "#lang" line. (Looking at all the "require"s in effect would be a lot > trickier, but the "#lang" line is easy.) There could be a little selection > box beside the search text field, so that the user could see the context > bias and control it. > > -- > http://www.neilvandyke.org/ > _________________________________________________ > For list-related administrative tasks: > http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/users > _________________________________________________ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/users
