On Mon, 2007-01-29 at 12:51 +0100, Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen wrote: > 2007/1/29, Jean-Francois Dockes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen writes: > > Hi All, > > > > I put together a first take on formalizing an end user > search language. > > > > http://wiki.freedesktop.org/wiki/WasabiUserSearchLanguage > > - Which of OR and AND has priority ? (does (A AND B OR C) mean > ((A AND B) OR C) or (A AND (B OR C)) ? > > I guess it is standard that AND takes precedence over OR, but maybe it > makes sense to reverse that in our case.
This is a perennial problem with designing boolean query UIs for average (i.e. non-mathematically-trained) users-- they expect "and", "or" and "not" to mean the same as they do in everyday language, but often they don't. E.g.: - User asks for a list of "blue things and red things", and gets back a list of things that are both blue AND red (which in many contexts is an empty list). - User asks for a list of things that are "not blue or green", and gets back a list of things that are every colour except blue (including green). FWIW, this is why I personally prefer something like the eBay search "language" to Google's-- I always find it easier to remember how to construct more complex queries, and they never involve typing "and" or "or" :) (But of course, I'm not really your "average user" either.) Cheeri, Calum. -- CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer Sun Microsystems Ireland mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] GNOME Desktop Group http://ie.sun.com +353 1 819 9771 Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems _______________________________________________ xdg mailing list [email protected] http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/xdg
