> > I don't have a capsule summary yet. Is this limited to a linear
> > range search, as Ralph was inquiring about, or are we looking for a
> > more general solution, that might require us to collaborate with our

> I don't think we necessarily need to propose an all-purpose GEO
> solution at this stage, but we do need to make sure that whatever we
> fundamentally wrong to me (as well as imposing an unreasonable burden
> on attribute-set developers) that the access-point should determine
> the interpretation of the term. Consider the searches:

We already have that to a limited extent with the = relation.

Compare:
        ccg_l5r.stat_force = "9"
        ccg.name = "Broken Sword of the Scorpion"

That said, I agree that we shouldn't continue overloading like this as =
is a special case (and no I'm not arguing that we should unoverload it, I
think that's fine)


For example, my parser won't handle correctly:
  foo.numericIndex > "1.3e10"

due to the 'e' character which it will think makes it a string term, not
numeric. (Yes this could be easily solved, but it provides an example of
a term parsing trap we already have, even without the = overload)


> It seems to me that a better approach would be to specify most of this
> information in relation modifiers -- a concept that we already have

> foo.date within/linear/date "1968-03-12 1998-03-18"
> foo.coords within/polygon/point "10,5 12,7 14,3 13,7 9,8"

> semantics, when no relation modifiers override them, as "linear" and
> "the sub-terms are either ISO-format dates or integers". Which of
> foo.date within "1968-03-12 1998-03-18"
> foo.age within "5 33"
> How does that look?

Add in a 'partial' modifier to allow for overlap as opposed to completely
enclosed within, and I think it's a winner.

I guess we need the same modifiers for the encloses relation as well, as
it can have a range term.
eg: geo.countryCoords encloses/partial/box "35N20W 34N21W"


Rob

--
      ,'/:. Rob Sanderson ([log in to unmask])
    ,'-/::::. http://www.o-r-g.org/~azaroth/
  ,'--/::(@)::. Special Collections and Archives, extension 3142
,'---/::::::::::. Twin Cathedrals: telnet: liverpool.o-r-g.org 7777
____/:::::::::::::. WWW: http://liverpool.o-r-g.org:8000/
I L L U M I N A T I