Ugh, well, yes, this would be nice.

But, sadly, probably more work than feasible in my Z39.50 parts of the
search.

But, yes, if it was a more "important" project these would be the ideals.

The "fuzzy" search is still a possibility I guess (with ispell).

The ranking would be the expensive part.

-Ross.

Jason Etheridge wrote:

> Ross Singer wrote:
>
>> What do you think is more appropriate (and intuitive) for a search
>> engine if the user gives no boolean, "and" or "or"?
>
>
> As a user, I'd expect for both to happen.  But the hits that include all
> my search terms should be more relevant and show up first.  In fact,
> what I'd want would be even more fun for the programmer.
>
> Set of hits:
> 1) Exact phrase matches listed first
> 2) Boolean AND'ed matches second
> 3) Fuzzy/misspelled exact/AND'ed matches third
> 4) Boolean OR'ed matches fourth
> 5) Fuzzy/misspelled OR'ed matches fifth
>
> Maybe stop at any point if you have more than enough hits.
>
> I'd also want spelling correction suggestions if relevant and maybe
> related or authoritative subject terms/authors in a sidebar.
>
> As someone other than a user, I think their should be some metric for
> how "successful" a user is in finding what they want, and the ability to
> somehow manually tweak the search results for any given set of search
> terms so that in the future those terms will be more successful.
>
> Fun stuff, eh? :D
>
> But if the choice is just between AND and OR, I'd pick AND.
>
> -- Jason
> http://open-ils.org/
>