> Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 12:11:48 +0100
> From: Jakob Voss <[log in to unmask]>
> 
>> My immediate feeling was that a prox-based solution would just
>> scare everyone off because, well, prox is scary.  But maybe people
>> feel the same way about relation-modifiers, too.
> 
> Proximity search is not scary but rarely implemented, documented and
> used. There are some workarounds
> 
> http://www.staggernation.com/cgi-bin/gaps.cgi
> http://www.researchbuzz.org/2004/10/ynaps_yahoo_nonapi_proximity_s.shtml

I am referring to proximity's ability to scare implementors, not
users!  :-)

>> Maybe the pragmatic approach is to introduce a new boolean, "with",
>> which is explicitly defined to nothing more or less than an
>> abbreviation of prox/unit=element/distance=0.  Then server
>> implementors can tackle "with" free of Proximity Fear.
> 
> Nobody will type in "prox/unit=element/distance=0" by hand. The common 
> expression for proximity is "near" so please don't introduce something 
> new.

I think you've missed an earlier part of the discussion.  CQL already
has nice, general syntax for the general proximity searching.  What
we're talking about here is whether a specific case of proxmity ("same
element" searching) is best expressed using proximity with a specific
set of parameters, and if so whether it merits an alias such as "with"
or "where".  For this, "near" would be totally inappropriate.

 _/|_	 ___________________________________________________________________
/o ) \/  Mike Taylor  <[log in to unmask]>  http://www.miketaylor.org.uk
)_v__/\  "[The cheese factory] beneath Covenant hung insubstantial,
	 lambent nacreous sepulchral vitriol ..." -- Mike Lessacher.