Re: global full-text search for NetBSD

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

On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 09:36:15PM +0200, Jukka Ruohonen wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 01:18:52PM -0600, David Young wrote:
> > If you agree that the core system ought to be useful, coherent,
> > seamlessly expandable, and scalable, then in this day of 500-gigabyte
> > - 1-terabyte HDDs, global full-text search is an essential part of an
> > operating system core, much as a hierarchical filesystem was adequate
> > (and feasible) for organizing a 10-megabyte HDD back in 1985.
> 
> Actually, while I agree with the above, I had two different points in mind.
> First, I think you might underestimate the resources required for something
> like this (i.e. NetBSD should collaborate with existing projects). 

It's a big job, there can be no question about it, but at this moment I
think that we have some momentum in the area.

What project do you think we would collaborate with?

> Secondly, the "core" operating system (i.e. NetBSD as we now understand it)
> is quite barebone, lacking sufficient support to pull something like this
> through.  You need good libraries to parse PDF files, you need libraries to
> sort out MP3s, you need integrated e-mail clients, ...  -- you get the
> picture. Thus, a much better "platform" is the desktop system running on
> top of the "core" operating system.

I don't think that it is necessary to solve every search problem at
once. :-)

A lot of us use NetBSD for workaday tasks, or would like to be using it,
because it's not "desktop," it's UNIX.  There's not much of UNIX even in
an X11-based desktop, or that's what I find....

Dave

-- 
David Young
dyoung%pobox.com@localhost    Urbana, IL    (217) 721-9981