Re: [HATT] Re: Online Help: OmniHelp

["Jeremy H. Griffith" <jeremy@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 21 Jan 2003 15:07:21 -0500, "Srikonda, Sanjay x31420" 
<Sanjay_Srikonda@adp.com> wrote:

>reasonable enough.  however, isn't that a bit much to explain to users who
>are used to typing a phrase and then clicking search?  

Yes, it *is* different.  The alternatives we investigated that would
allow phrase search had one of two consequences.  If you indexed the
phrases, the index became very, very large, into many megabytes for a
project like the 500-page User's Guide example.  And if you didn't,
the search became very slow, even with CGI available on a server.
So we had to pass on it.

Of course, this is an Open Source project, so if anyone else has a
brilliant idea that gets around these two issues, they can step
right up and propose the better solution, which will go right into
the project, at least as an option, if it works.

>It's really a great
>product, just that i'm doing enough of a workaround right now with RH to get
>the search halfway working without displaying false and non-existent hits on
>the current release (RH2K2R2) that I'm really really really looking for a
>search replacement for the RH one. 

Understandable.  It's probably the biggest issue in Help viewers.

>How about search term results highlighting?  
>
>I know, this is version 1, but I'm asking for whatever can be done right
>from the outset.

Again, if someone wants to build it, go right ahead!  We've put in
a lot of engineering time, and are willing to put in more.  But the
real benefit to Open Source is that *everyone* can play!  ;-)


-- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc.
  (jeremy@omsys.com)  http://www.omsys.com/

** To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@omsys.com **
** with "unsubscribe framers" (no quotes) in the body.   **