full-text search

[David Young <dyoung%pobox.com@localhost>]

On Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 02:22:51AM +0000, David Holland wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 01:19:21PM -0600, David Young wrote:
>  > I'm glad you asked that question.  I think that NetBSD is sinking below
>  > the threshold of usefulness for daily computing because it does not come
>  > with the tools to do type and quality of work that's expected these
>  > days.
>  > 
>  > Just for one example of tools that the base system is missing, we don't
>  > have a full-text indexing & search system.
> 
> This I agree with. We should have a real text indexing system in base,
> so we can do real documentation searches. There was no excuse for
> apropos(1) in 1998; there's even less today.
> 
> There's no reason an application for indexing your own files needs to
> be in base. If there isn't a good one in pkgsrc, then perhaps one
> should be added; if there isn't one that can be added, perhaps one
> should be written.

Dividing responsibility for searching different types or sources of
documents between different programs, as you suggest, will lead to
usability problems and duplicated design & programming effort.

You should not have to divert your attention from the task at
hand---e.g., find documentation for the is_computer_on() function---to
the type, ownership, or source of relevant documents.

Dave

-- 
David Young             OJC Technologies
dyoung%ojctech.com@localhost      Urbana, IL * (217) 344-0444 x24