[daisy] [JIRA] Commented: (DSY-621) Many query fields in dialogs should use wildcards by default

[Allan Pratt (JIRA)]

    [ http://issues.cocoondev.org//browse/DSY-621?page=comments#action_13572 ] 

Allan Pratt commented on DSY-621:
---------------------------------

Thanks for looking at this. It's true that wildcard searches are slower, but I think they're probably the 99% case in "Browse for page." And it's a usability issue: I think Internet users are trained that text they type in a search box will do a substring match or "contains these words" match of document titles. Each time I forget I have to remember, "Oh, right, this part of this wiki works differently from every other search box in the universe."

For performance, try this: create a a word-based index of page titles, and treat a search entry with no wildcards as a word-based search in that index. The default mode would be "match if a page title contains all these words." If the user put in any wildcard characters, you wouldn't do that kind of search, but rather the kind you have now. This would satisfy all my Internet-trained reflexes without hurting performance. (Of course it would be more implementation work, but hey, us software engineers work hard so users don't have to, right?) 

> Many query fields in dialogs should use wildcards by default
> ------------------------------------------------------------
>
>          Key: DSY-621
>          URL: http://issues.cocoondev.org//browse/DSY-621
>      Project: Daisy
>         Type: Improvement
>   Components: Frontend (wiki)
>     Versions: 2.1
>     Reporter: Allan Pratt

>
> Most interactive queries done by users should automatically act like there are wildcard characters around the user input.
> For example, I used "Create link by searching" in the editor. I filled in the "Document name like" field with the word "suggestions." As a user, I expected this to match any document name with the word "suggestions" in it. Of course it did not - I had to write "%suggestions%" to get that effect.
> I'm not a database wonk. I know the word "like" has special meaning in database-speak, but I'm not an SQL query author, I'm a user and I want the UI to treat me like one.
> At a minimum, this could be resolved with a change to the helpful text in the query dialog (and elsewhere). Currently the text says "(leave blank to get all documents, use % as a wildcard)" but this is not quite helpful enough. If it said something like "(blank=all, %text% for substring matches)" I would have known what to do.
> I realize that the current system is more powerful than one that wraps wildcards around whatever you type. But as a new user it's surprising and frustrating to do what appears to be a simple query and not hit any pages.

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