22 June 2005 The search syntax you are attempting to describe may not have a formalised name. It seems to have evolved into a common form with popular search tools rather than starting with a predefined name. I suspect that it started mostly with the implementation in one popular program. Find someone who really knows and get a reliable answer .It should be possible to wrap any syntax in a web form to reduce end user difficulty and possibly increase programmer difficulty. Serving the end user should be the goal without killing the programmer if possible. The problem with CQL and SRW is not enough server support yet as compared to Z39.50 unless everyone has secretly started offering services. Everyone cannot wait for everyone else if progress is to be made. CQL and SRW may supplant Z39.50 at some future time. The best use of Koha development time now should be considered. Thomas D Quoting MJ Ray <mjr@phonecoop.coop> :

---------------- Beginning of the original message ------------------

Many search systems seem to be evolving a common syntax, with double quotes around terms which should appear consecutively, a dash in front of a term to exclude it and a single-attribute search to have the attribute name and a colon in front of the term. For example:

children subject:"social science" -author:Smith

to find items about children with a subject of social science not authored by anyone called Smith.

Is there a formal name or description for this syntax?

I don't even know whether I should be reading language processing or information retrieval or information filtering literature to find this. Web searching has been useless, as usual for learning about searching!

This arose at yesterday's search meeting. I hope the facilitator will organise a summary for koha-devel soon. I can see the attraction of CQL, especially for interserver communication, but I think it gets too hard too fast for general end-user searches. I'd like to have something well-defined to propose instead.

Thanks for any help. -- MJ Ray (slef), K. Lynn, England, email see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ _______________________________________________ Koha mailing list Koha@lists.katipo.co.nz http://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha

------------------- End of the original message ---------------------

--------------------------------------------- Protect your mails from viruses thanks to Alinto Premium services http://www.alinto.com _______________________________________________ Koha mailing list Koha@lists.katipo.co.nz http://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha