Print

---

In my last message, I objected to the proposed array of qualifier
names that Ray's considering:

titleAllTheseWords   subjectAllTheseWords   authorAllTheseWords
titleAnyOfTheseWords subjectAnyOfTheseWords authorAnyOfTheseWords
titleAdjacentWords   subjectAdjacentWords   authorAdjacentWords
titleRelevantWords   subjectRelevantWords   authorRelevantWords
titleString          subjectString          authorString
...                  ...                    ...

Now the problem here is that the qualifier, which we all sort of
assumed was the equivalent of an access point, is now being overloaded
with term-structure information.

What I propose is that instead we overload the relation (normally "=")
that separates the qualifier from the term.  We could introduce five
new "relations" expressing the kind of matching that we want done on
the term -- for example:

        =*      all of these words
        =?      any of these words
        =.      adjacent words
        =~      relevant words
        ==      exact string match

So instead of
        titleAllTheseWords="elements style"
You would search for
        title=*"elements style"

And instead of
        titleRelevantWords="grammar usage language punctuation"
You would search for
        title=~"grammar usage language punctuation" (normally "=")

Then we would need to figure out which of these is used most often,
and let that one be what you get if you use plain old
        title="lord of the"
and it seems to me that the obvious answer is "adjacent words", since
that's what everyone in the world is used to from goggle, AltaVista
and suchlike.

The advantages to this approach are at last twofold.  First, that of
brevity (relatively, at least).  And second, this is Saying What We
Mean.  Although I earlier couched this suggestion in terms of
"overloading the relation", actually, I think this stuff _is_
specifying the relation.  I certainly don't see any conflict with the
other relation operators in CQL -- stuff like "<" for less-than search
on a numeric, date or other ordered field.

Now that I've finally made a positive suggestion, I'll be interested
to see how many pieces it gets retributively torn into :-)

 _/|_    _______________________________________________________________
/o ) \/  Mike Taylor   <[log in to unmask]>   www.miketaylor.org.uk
)_v__/\  "I don't think we should all necessarily strive to move
         the human spirit -- sometimes, just getting the punctuation
         right is achievement enough" -- Adrian Bedford.