From owner-freebsd-doc Thu Sep 28 2:33:49 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Received: from nothing-going-on.demon.co.uk (unknown [194.128.198.234]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D25B737B424; Thu, 28 Sep 2000 02:33:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from nik@localhost) by nothing-going-on.demon.co.uk (8.11.0/8.11.0) id e8S95UR51704; Thu, 28 Sep 2000 10:05:30 +0100 (BST) (envelope-from nik) Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 10:05:30 +0100 From: Nik Clayton To: "Jason C. Wells" Cc: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org, core@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Assessing Search Engine Issues Message-ID: <20000928100529.A51667@canyon.nothing-going-on.org> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: ; from jcwells@nwlink.com on Wed, Sep 27, 2000 at 10:18:50AM -0700 Organization: FreeBSD Project Sender: owner-freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Wed, Sep 27, 2000 at 10:18:50AM -0700, Jason C. Wells wrote: > Does the webserver have a database engine running on it? Does the > webserver have PHP? Will it? Can it? No. Maybe. Yes. (No, that's not eivind's most recent e-mail address). It might do, if the benefits outweigh the costs. The cost, basically, is that the existing mirrors have to be able to duplicate it easily, and it needs to be as simple as possible to set up. That would basically mean putting the site infrastructure tools in to the ports tree (where they're not already there) and coming up with a list of 7-10 things that a new web mirror has to do. PHP and database stuff also brings up interesting issues relating to 1. How do you version the content in the database? 2. How do you make it easy for translators to translate it? 3. How do you audit it? > How does the mail archive and search work? Poorly. > Is it home grown or is it some third party software? WAIS, from what I can gather. > Are there docs in existence? Ho ho ho. Ahem. No, not yet. > Hom does the current web search work? Is it home grown or is it some > third pacty software? Are there docs for it? As above. > I heard a rumor that the current search system has become unmanageable. > Can someone in the know speak on that issue? I don't know if "unmanageable" is the right word. But it certainly doesn't seem to be returning the right sort of hits, it's poorly documented, and the options when searching are very limited. > As I understand rumblings on chat, folks aren't terribly dissatisfied. > They do want a stronger boolean syntax and date functionality. They want > sortability on the results. > > I could answer these questions for myself if I were allowed to poke > around. Could someone vouch for me for an account on hub? I'd have no problem with that -- I've cc'd this to -core for their perusal. N -- Internet connection, $19.95 a month. Computer, $799.95. Modem, $149.95. Telephone line, $24.95 a month. Software, free. USENET transmission, hundreds if not thousands of dollars. Thinking before posting, priceless. Somethings in life you can't buy. For everything else, there's MasterCard. -- Graham Reed, in the Scary Devil Monastery To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message