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----- Original Message ----- From: "Edward C. Zimmermann" <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Tuesday, November 29, 2005 10:24 AM Subject: Re: Proximity search > Quoting Mike Taylor <[log in to unmask]>: > >> >> > >> > I don't sematically see "same element" (in the same leaf container) >> > as proximity. >> >> Hmm. I am trying to think of a polite way to say "then you are >> mistaken", but I can't find one. :-) > > We are not here to be polite but to create good systems.. > >> > Proximity is distance.. Within X characters.. Within X >> > words.. within some metric. Same element is NOT a metric. >> >> If you really want to push this point, you'll have to overturn an >> ANSI/NISO standard going back a full decade and ratified by ISO. See >> http://www.loc.gov/z3950/agency/markup/09.html#3.7.2 >> > > I am, as you know, quite familar with it. It was in many ways wrong but > reflected models of throught widespread back decades ago when we had > enough > of a time doing proximity with characters and words and most of us had > little to no support of paragraph, section chapter. It might have seemed > to make sense to go from "chapter" to an abstract "element" but it does > not. Byte streams, characters, words, lines etc. have a concept of unit, > distance and order. > > To be a proximity there is (and specified here too) a scalar (distance) > and a relation. > > In a structured document such as > > <person> > <name> Edward Zimermann </name> > <address> </address> > <network> > <email> [log in to unmask]</email> > </network> > </company> > <company> > <primary> > <name> Nonmonotic labs </name> > . > Actually, I did the first draft of the proximity spec for Z39.50 and I based it on our working production systems, in which we supported proximity searching over both textual data and MARC data. We had "same element" as distance=0, unit=element (although I think we used the term "field"). We also supported sections, chapters, footnotes, captions in our e-book project and all of the proximity oeprations over them. So, the spec was based on real-world experience. I don't think we were the only ones doing this, based on my recollection of the discussions we had on Z39.50 (anyone remember AT&T (Lucent) Bob's electronic books?) -markh