[bt-devel] Search dialog changes

[Eeli Kaikkonen]

Martin Gruner wrote:
> Hi Eeli,
>
> I find the current solution confusing. AND adds something between the words, OR 
> doesn't and you can use a special syntax there? To be consistent and intuitive 
> we probably need to have three modes:
>
> -"all words" (adds AND, removes OR)
> -"some words" (adds OR, removes AND)
> -"free search" (no changes, syntax help)
>
> And it should remember my decision. :D
> An alternative to removing AND/OR in the first modes, you could switch to "free 
> search" whenever clucene syntax items were detected.
>
> What do you think?
>   

I, too, am not completely satisfied with the current one. The problem 
stems from the default clucene interface (which BTW is not recommended 
IIRC - custom user interface using the clucene library API is 
recommended instead). Mixing it with a GUI is quite difficult. But your 
suggestion sounds quite good. Then we should decide if we remove all 
syntax elements (or non-alnum or non-word characters, whatever clucene 
ignores when indexing) from the string. Or which elements we should 
detect when changing the search type automatically.

Not changing the type automatically would have one advantage: instead of 
removing the AND/OR words we possibly could surround them with quotes. 
Then the user could search for "and" and "or" without typing quotes. All 
other syntax elements should still be removed.

Remembering the selected type is a natural enhancement, I just didn't 
want to see the trouble yet before knowing if this is good at all.

--Eeli Kaikkonen