Re: [racket-dev] Roogle?
On Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 11:13 PM, Robby Findler ro...@eecs.northwestern.edu wrote: So I wonder if anyone has a positive experience with this kind of searching in an in anger kind of setting? I've had positive experiences searching by type signature in Hoogle. I've wished I could do the same for the Racket docs every time I try to remember the name of the function with this signature: (a - [b]) - [a] - [b]. It's the first result in Hoogle, even if you get the order of arguments backwards. _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] Roogle?
Three minutes ago, Noel Welsh wrote: In conclusion, I think adding full text search (e.g. Lucene/Solr) would have the largest impact on the existing search and this doesn't even require much implementation work. Pick the low hanging fruit! Changing from a simple JS search that can be installed with Racket to a search server is not something that hangs low... -- ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x))) Eli Barzilay: http://barzilay.org/ Maze is Life! _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] Roogle?
With the power of asynchronous requests (aka ajax) it is. I've gotta fix Myna first; maybe then I'll have a spare moment to implement it. [Either add a stage to the build process so docs.racket-lang.org gets a different search to the local docs or do an Ajax request to the full text server and, update the JS index results with the full text results if the request completes.] (There are a bunch of really interesting problems here for machine learning or NLP inclined people who want to work on real systems.) N. On Fri, Aug 5, 2011 at 8:01 AM, Eli Barzilay e...@barzilay.org wrote: Changing from a simple JS search that can be installed with Racket to a search server is not something that hangs low... _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] Roogle?
About a minute ago, Noel Welsh wrote: With the power of asynchronous requests (aka ajax) it is. I've gotta fix Myna first; maybe then I'll have a spare moment to implement it. That doesn't help with the goal of standalone docs. [Either add a stage to the build process so docs.racket-lang.org gets a different search to the local docs or do an Ajax request to the full text server and, update the JS index results with the full text results if the request completes.] Oh, you mean running something *different* on docs.racket-lang.org? That still requires some non-low-hanging hacking of the build process and the organization of stuff on the server. (And the search can be solved in an even easier way with a google custom search.) -- ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x))) Eli Barzilay: http://barzilay.org/ Maze is Life! _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] Roogle?
On Fri, Aug 5, 2011 at 8:12 AM, Eli Barzilay e...@barzilay.org wrote: About a minute ago, Noel Welsh wrote: With the power of asynchronous requests (aka ajax) it is. I've gotta fix Myna first; maybe then I'll have a spare moment to implement it. That doesn't help with the goal of standalone docs. Sorry, don't understand this. Oh, you mean running something *different* on docs.racket-lang.org? That is one possibility. The other option is to always make an ajax request to the full text search. It's asynchronous, so it won't stop page rendering, and if it doesn't return successfully (no Internet connection, for example) the user experience won't be affected (beyond not having the full text results in addition to the current javascript index results). (And the search can be solved in an even easier way with a google custom search.) Ok. I thought there were issues with Google, but, yeah, if it works it is certainly easier than setting up Lucene. N. _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] Roogle?
About a minute ago, Noel Welsh wrote: On Fri, Aug 5, 2011 at 8:12 AM, Eli Barzilay e...@barzilay.org wrote: About a minute ago, Noel Welsh wrote: With the power of asynchronous requests (aka ajax) it is. I've gotta fix Myna first; maybe then I'll have a spare moment to implement it. That doesn't help with the goal of standalone docs. Sorry, don't understand this. Having the documentation available through your installation, off-line, and holding documentation of misc packages that you installed. Oh, you mean running something *different* on docs.racket-lang.org? That is one possibility. The other option is to always make an ajax request to the full text search. It's asynchronous, so it won't stop page rendering, and if it doesn't return successfully (no Internet connection, for example) the user experience won't be affected (beyond not having the full text results in addition to the current javascript index results). Ah, if you mean a way to have both kinds of searches work on your installation, then that's certainly a solution. (But my guess is that it'll be even more difficult to set up.) (And the search can be solved in an even easier way with a google custom search.) Ok. I thought there were issues with Google, but, yeah, if it works it is certainly easier than setting up Lucene. Well, the issue was exactly the dependency on an on-line connection and no user-specific docs. -- ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x))) Eli Barzilay: http://barzilay.org/ Maze is Life! _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] Roogle?
On Fri, Aug 5, 2011 at 8:45 AM, Eli Barzilay e...@barzilay.org wrote: Ah, if you mean a way to have both kinds of searches work on your installation Yes. Well, the issue was exactly the dependency on an on-line connection and no user-specific docs. For the first, the ajax request should get around it. For the second: m'eh. You'll still get the JS index results. One could transmit the set of installed packages to the full text server, but the great is the enemy of the good, and it just needs to be good enough. N. _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] Roogle?
Noel is absolutely right. We live in an era where Search Just Works. I do dozens of Google searches on most days. To go from there to Help Desk is an incredibly jarring experience. I have to load new instructions into my head: stick to one word, stem!, etc., that I haven't had to use on search engines since the late 1990s. Even though I like to program on flights and trains, where Eli's concerns apply completely, I am also fully aware that I cannot get various services while disconnected. What is unconscionable is that I can't do *better* while connected to the internet. Shriram _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] Roogle?
It was my Diplomarbeit finished in 1983, so that makes it 28 years now. On Aug 5, 2011, at 12:17 AM, Shriram Krishnamurthi wrote: This idea is proposed roughly every 2-3 years for at least 30 years. I am not aware of anyone having made this idea fly. Shriram On Fri, Aug 5, 2011 at 12:13 AM, Robby Findler ro...@eecs.northwestern.edu wrote: I too tried it (ages ago) and ended up roughly where Eli is, but I didn't want to judge since I wasn't actually trying to use it for something useful (and, as we all know, that can change how you use things and how well they work for you). So I wonder if anyone has a positive experience with this kind of searching in an in anger kind of setting? Robby On Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 9:08 PM, Eli Barzilay e...@barzilay.org wrote: 6 minutes ago, Asumu Takikawa wrote: A few of us in the lab today were discussing how the Haskell community has this nice tool called Hoogle (http://www.haskell.org/hoogle) that lets you search Haskell docs by type. Are there any *practical* uses for that thing? (Not a flame, I tried it a few times, and it looked like i might be useful in a language where you use point-free style to compose functions -- so you might know the type that you need `(a - b - c) - (b - c - a)' but not the `flip' name. But such serches don't see, to work. So from this shallow scan, it looks like one of these things that sound cool on paper, but are useless in practice.) Is it at all feasible to supplement Racket's doc search to display contracts That won't be hard in itself, but the real problem is huge blocks of text in the results which would make it much less useful. and/or search by contract? (or type for TR) That would be more difficult, since the search will need to do a lot more work. I'm also guessing that given that we have much more *text* in contracts (as in integer and resolved-module-path?), it will make searching show way more false positives. -- ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x))) Eli Barzilay: http://barzilay.org/ Maze is Life! _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] Roogle?
I suspect your related work section missed a few. (-: On Fri, Aug 5, 2011 at 10:06 AM, Matthias Felleisen matth...@ccs.neu.edu wrote: It was my Diplomarbeit finished in 1983, so that makes it 28 years now. On Aug 5, 2011, at 12:17 AM, Shriram Krishnamurthi wrote: This idea is proposed roughly every 2-3 years for at least 30 years. I am not aware of anyone having made this idea fly. Shriram On Fri, Aug 5, 2011 at 12:13 AM, Robby Findler ro...@eecs.northwestern.edu wrote: I too tried it (ages ago) and ended up roughly where Eli is, but I didn't want to judge since I wasn't actually trying to use it for something useful (and, as we all know, that can change how you use things and how well they work for you). So I wonder if anyone has a positive experience with this kind of searching in an in anger kind of setting? Robby On Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 9:08 PM, Eli Barzilay e...@barzilay.org wrote: 6 minutes ago, Asumu Takikawa wrote: A few of us in the lab today were discussing how the Haskell community has this nice tool called Hoogle (http://www.haskell.org/hoogle) that lets you search Haskell docs by type. Are there any *practical* uses for that thing? (Not a flame, I tried it a few times, and it looked like i might be useful in a language where you use point-free style to compose functions -- so you might know the type that you need `(a - b - c) - (b - c - a)' but not the `flip' name. But such serches don't see, to work. So from this shallow scan, it looks like one of these things that sound cool on paper, but are useless in practice.) Is it at all feasible to supplement Racket's doc search to display contracts That won't be hard in itself, but the real problem is huge blocks of text in the results which would make it much less useful. and/or search by contract? (or type for TR) That would be more difficult, since the search will need to do a lot more work. I'm also guessing that given that we have much more *text* in contracts (as in integer and resolved-module-path?), it will make searching show way more false positives. -- ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x))) Eli Barzilay: http://barzilay.org/ Maze is Life! _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] Roogle?
On Fri, Aug 5, 2011 at 4:44 PM, Stephen Chang stch...@ccs.neu.edu wrote: For online, full-text search, couldn't one just use google and add site:docs.racket-lang.org to the query? Yeah, that seems to do it. The ordering of results is a bit odd sometimes. I don't know the details but Google offers site specific search under certain conditions. I think the site specific search is basically equivalent what you suggest. N. _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] Roogle?
2011/8/5 Stephen Chang stch...@ccs.neu.edu For online, full-text search, couldn't one just use google and add site:docs.racket-lang.org to the query? The Google stemmer is well-suited for natural languages. It sucks for Scheme/Racket identifiers. Try for example to find cons* or list? . /Jens Axel _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] Roogle?
6 minutes ago, Asumu Takikawa wrote: A few of us in the lab today were discussing how the Haskell community has this nice tool called Hoogle (http://www.haskell.org/hoogle) that lets you search Haskell docs by type. Are there any *practical* uses for that thing? (Not a flame, I tried it a few times, and it looked like i might be useful in a language where you use point-free style to compose functions -- so you might know the type that you need `(a - b - c) - (b - c - a)' but not the `flip' name. But such serches don't see, to work. So from this shallow scan, it looks like one of these things that sound cool on paper, but are useless in practice.) Is it at all feasible to supplement Racket's doc search to display contracts That won't be hard in itself, but the real problem is huge blocks of text in the results which would make it much less useful. and/or search by contract? (or type for TR) That would be more difficult, since the search will need to do a lot more work. I'm also guessing that given that we have much more *text* in contracts (as in integer and resolved-module-path?), it will make searching show way more false positives. -- ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x))) Eli Barzilay: http://barzilay.org/ Maze is Life! _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] Roogle?
This idea is proposed roughly every 2-3 years for at least 30 years. I am not aware of anyone having made this idea fly. Shriram On Fri, Aug 5, 2011 at 12:13 AM, Robby Findler ro...@eecs.northwestern.edu wrote: I too tried it (ages ago) and ended up roughly where Eli is, but I didn't want to judge since I wasn't actually trying to use it for something useful (and, as we all know, that can change how you use things and how well they work for you). So I wonder if anyone has a positive experience with this kind of searching in an in anger kind of setting? Robby On Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 9:08 PM, Eli Barzilay e...@barzilay.org wrote: 6 minutes ago, Asumu Takikawa wrote: A few of us in the lab today were discussing how the Haskell community has this nice tool called Hoogle (http://www.haskell.org/hoogle) that lets you search Haskell docs by type. Are there any *practical* uses for that thing? (Not a flame, I tried it a few times, and it looked like i might be useful in a language where you use point-free style to compose functions -- so you might know the type that you need `(a - b - c) - (b - c - a)' but not the `flip' name. But such serches don't see, to work. So from this shallow scan, it looks like one of these things that sound cool on paper, but are useless in practice.) Is it at all feasible to supplement Racket's doc search to display contracts That won't be hard in itself, but the real problem is huge blocks of text in the results which would make it much less useful. and/or search by contract? (or type for TR) That would be more difficult, since the search will need to do a lot more work. I'm also guessing that given that we have much more *text* in contracts (as in integer and resolved-module-path?), it will make searching show way more false positives. -- ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x))) Eli Barzilay: http://barzilay.org/ Maze is Life! _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] Roogle?
On 2011-08-05 00:08:03 -0400, Eli Barzilay wrote: Are there any *practical* uses for that thing? It could be useful if you have an idea of the name of the thing you're looking for and then want to narrow it down by type. Or you know you want a higher order function that works on a list but don't know where it is (so you look up (a - b) - [a]). The first example on Hoogle for that search is in GHC.Exts so if that's what you wanted it would be harder to find by browsing. That said, I'm not a heavy Hoogle user so I don't know. That won't be hard in itself, but the real problem is huge blocks of text in the results which would make it much less useful. I think this would be a more useful feature than the searching. Maybe it could display optionally or truncated if it's too long. Another nice thing Hoogle does is search Hackage, but I think that's been discussed here before (and probably depends on how packages end up?). Cheers, Asumu _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] Roogle?
10 minutes ago, Asumu Takikawa wrote: On 2011-08-05 00:08:03 -0400, Eli Barzilay wrote: Are there any *practical* uses for that thing? It could be useful if you have an idea of the name of the thing you're looking for and then want to narrow it down by type. An important difference is that we often use the same names in the contracts. Or you know you want a higher order function that works on a list but don't know where it is (so you look up (a - b) - [a]). (Yes, that's the use case that I thought would be common, but I doubt that it's used for that in practice.) That won't be hard in itself, but the real problem is huge blocks of text in the results which would make it much less useful. I think this would be a more useful feature than the searching. Maybe it could display optionally or truncated if it's too long. Even tiny contracts tend to be big, so a good UI will be challenging. Another nice thing Hoogle does is search Hackage, but I think that's been discussed here before (and probably depends on how packages end up?). Yes. -- ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x))) Eli Barzilay: http://barzilay.org/ Maze is Life! _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] Roogle?
Shriram Krishnamurthi wrote at 08/05/2011 12:17 AM: This idea is proposed roughly every 2-3 years for at least 30 years. I am not aware of anyone having made this idea fly. If you have a info retrieval method with useful precisionrecall, but the barrier to adoption is the user's overhead in invoking the feature... you might help it fly by not requiring user to invoke it. For general example, something done automatically, context-sensitive, that user can perceive in subtle visual annotations, or by glancing into another part of the window, or something. For more specific, and potentially quite simple example: your editor/viewer/browser knows what bits of text you're editing or looking at (cursor, what's visible in window, document, movement, maybe even gaze-tracking), and in some little window provides a ranked list of info (perhaps document links/excerpts) it thinks might be relevant at the moment. People including myself have used this approach successfully for IR problems. -- http://www.neilvandyke.org/ _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] Roogle?
8 minutes ago, Anthony Cowley wrote: On Fri, Aug 5, 2011 at 1:22 AM, Eli Barzilay e...@barzilay.org wrote: That's not surprising -- the question is how much the search-by-type feature is used vs the plain by-name searches. Search-by-type is the main useful feature. Another search engine, hayoo, often does better on name-based searches covering hackage. Some people run local instances of hoogle as it is relatively straightforward to hook into emacs and will index all the types and names from all the packages you have installed locally. OK, that sounds closer to what I asked... (And on the positive side.) We already have that kind of exploratory searching, since types in the contract system are real functions. I guess that this is another way to make the point: in Haskell and other statically typed languages types are second-class, but in Racket they're first class so looking for a type name will get you information because it's also a binding. (And the same goes for TR, only those are not runtime values.) Searching by type names and aliases works fine: http://www.haskell.org/hoogle/?hoogle=String Yes, what I'm saying is that in Haskell, if you have a tool that searches for bound values, you won't get types, therefore you need to have a specific tool (or extension of one) that can search types. In Racket, then contract type is `string?', which is something that you can look for even without a special by-contract search. Hoogle really is quite good, don't sell it short! I'm not -- the above point is in no way saying anything bad about it, it's just an observation about the differences between the two language worlds. -- ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x))) Eli Barzilay: http://barzilay.org/ Maze is Life! _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
