Author Topic: Add 3-letter terms for forum search-in-topic  (Read 3156 times)

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Offline gwidemanTopic starter

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Add 3-letter terms for forum search-in-topic
« on: February 26, 2014, 02:13:05 am »
Hi -- mostly for Dave or the forum admins:

The search-in-topic is a highly useful feature for the long threads we have here. However, I've noticed that the forum indexer apparently indexes only terms that are 4 characters long or more. So, for example, searching this topic:

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/software-tips-and-tricks-for-rigol-ds200040006000-ultravision-dsos/

fails for any of the following: RUU, USB, TCP, TCP/IP, LAN, DSO, GIF, JPG, BMP, PNG, CH1, WFM, CSV, etc etc,

though it succeeds with: TCPIP, SCIP, JPEG, and so on.

Somewhat idiosyncratically, a multi-word OR search that happens to hit on a 4+ character term will also highlight any 3-character terms, though these don't work as hits in their own right.

No doubt the indexer allows constraining the minimum-length "word" it will bother with. However, for the content here, not including 3-character terms is a substantial shortcoming, so needless to say, I'd like to advocate that search work with 3-character terms.

I realize that google can also be used to search the site, but it's awkward, in general, to get google to constrain results to a particular forum topic.

-- Graham
 

Offline GraphicArmy

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Re: Add 3-letter terms for forum search-in-topic
« Reply #1 on: February 27, 2014, 04:36:43 am »
try this go to google search page and type this in search bar

site:eevblog.com ruu

or

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=site%3Aeevblog.com+ruu
 

Offline EEVblog

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Re: Add 3-letter terms for forum search-in-topic
« Reply #2 on: February 27, 2014, 04:40:34 am »
There is no option for this in the settings. So it would require a forum code change. Not something I readily know how to do.
 

Offline gwidemanTopic starter

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Re: Add 3-letter terms for forum search-in-topic
« Reply #3 on: February 27, 2014, 04:45:31 am »
try this go to google search page and type this in search bar

site:eevblog.com ruu

or

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=site%3Aeevblog.com+ruu

Yes, that's how to constrain the search to the site. What I was looking for was to constrain results to a particular forum topic.

 

Offline Legit-Design

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Re: Add 3-letter terms for forum search-in-topic
« Reply #4 on: February 27, 2014, 04:51:15 am »
 

Offline gwidemanTopic starter

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Re: Add 3-letter terms for forum search-in-topic
« Reply #5 on: February 27, 2014, 10:01:31 am »
What I was looking for was to constrain results to a particular forum topic.
Did I miss something?

Nope. What do ya know, turns out google's site: parameter will digest a URL including path. OK, good workaround! Thanks!
 

Offline gwidemanTopic starter

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Re: Add 3-letter terms for forum search-in-topic
« Reply #6 on: February 28, 2014, 03:28:50 pm »
Probably for Dave again:

For what it's worth, I started a thread about this on the SMF forum:

http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=519114.0

So far there's agreement that search should find 3-character terms, and that the behavior at eevblog is odd.

A helpful respondent wants to know whether eevblog is set to use an index for search.

http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/SMF2.0:Search_%28admin%29#Search_Method

 It seems to me unlikely that eevblog would not, but I thought I'd ask anyway.

-- Graham
 


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