Re: Demo of Sputnik with LuaUsers content

["Yuri Takhteyev" <yuri@...>]

Hi, Leo,

>  I have been using PmWiki (http://pmwiki.org/) for several years and
>  love in no small part because of its comprehensive internal full
>  search capabilities that include keywords, categories (aka special
>  keywords), boolean composition, etc. PmWiki is written in pure PHP. I
>  would argue that anything that can be done in pure PHP can be done in
>  Lua. Please, if you have time, take a look on PmWiki search syntax
>  http://pmwiki.org/wiki/Site/Search

I agree with this 100%.  I think adding serious and configurable local
search would increase the value of Sputnik by an order of magnitude.
Apart from the ability to search intranet/personal wikis, local search
would be configurable to match the structure of the data, which is
especially useful when using the wiki to store _data_.  For instance,
I've configured Sputnik to work as a very simple bug tracker (e.g.,
http://sputnik.freewisdom.org/en/Ticket:000013), and it's most serious
limitation at this point is most surely the lack of ability to
serach/filter bugs in an intelligent way (e.g., "cgi and
status='open'").

So, I agree that robust search would be very important.  And I get
asked about it frequently.  I was just saying that my feeling was that
people who ask for search do not want simple prefix search within page
titles - they want comprehensive ranked full-text searchd.  Which
makes sense to me, since if you have a small wiki and just want to
search within page names, you get a more comprehensive search feature
by simply going to the index
(http://sputnik.freewisdom.org/en/_sitemap) and using Ctrl-F.  Again,
this isn't a final decision: the moment someone asks for for prefix
search within page titles, I'll add it.  (BTW, none of this is/was
meant as a criticism of Nanoki.  I was just explaining to Raphaël why
I made the choices I made.)

I also agree that one can write a good seach system in Lua (or add
bindings to an existing system).  In fact, I think Lua would offer a
number of advantages in an IR system.  (I've been trying to convince
IR people I know to try it; no luck so far.)  But figuring out how to
do search in Lua well would be a sizeable project and I've been
reluctant to take it up on my own.  (Adding Xapian bindings might be
trivial to someone who is up on their C, but mine is rusty.)  If
anyone is interested in pulling efforts on a project like this (which
I think would be of use for things other than wikis), please let me
know.

  - yuri