> > 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