giewiki release 1.17 adds site-wide search

[Poul]

A hitherto badly missing feature of giewiki, that of site-wide search, has finally been implemented, making giewiki's content scale-ability message rather more convincing.

For more info, check out http://giewiki.appspot.com - or test the performance by searching Alice In Wonderland at http://tstest.giewiki-hrdta.appspot.com/

:-) Poul

[Tobias Beer]

Hi Poul,

Played a bit with Giewiki and here's some feedback, e.g. on search.

I find the search ui a bit unintuitive...

1. I'd say search belongs to the spot where I now find the GiewWiki version information
• the version information being something rarely of interest to anyone, especially not in a prominent spot
• having said that, the search options would probalby need to move into their own tiddler
2. an average visitor would have no clue what "page" and "site" mean
   
• so, as an author it is good, as a user... not so much
• maybe radio buttons or perhaps a "global" checkbox were better
• I would also prefer an "advanced" button rather than an "options" button
• this would then combine both options and advanced search fields
3. doing page search opens all matched tiddlers — something I never liked
• therefore, SimpleSearchPlugin and the corresponding search results list are a must for me these days
  
• How to make that available throughout an entire instance of Giewiki?
4. doing site search the results displayed feel a bit disappointing
• four results by default are definetely not enough when using paging — is that customizable?
• n.b. I found the "Show many results" option although it sounds quite vague as to what to expect
• why does it say "x-y of z hits in /" and not just "x-y of z results"
• the thing is "/" feels way too technical for the average user and brings little meaning
• or is it that one can actually search under "/page xyz" as well?

Site seatch feels like bringing too much ui to the table for too little results, e.g I would prefer...

results x-y of z:

* page / tiddler

* page / tiddler

* page / tiddler

<< < 1 2 3 4 5 > >>

...and thus remove the table layout (and headings) and use what I would consider default paging controls (in terms of usability).

The enhanced view could be...

results x-y of z:

; short date: page / tiddler 1

: preview tiddler 1

; short date: page / tiddler 2

: preview tiddler 2

<< < 1 2 3 4 5 > >>

May be a matter of personal taste, but I'm not much a fan of tables.

Also, clicking on "options" under search in the right sidebar initially took about 10 seconds, any idea why that would be?

Then under search options, I read:

Page Search: N.B.

..what does N.B. mean and why would it say that the tiddler PageSearchFAQ doesn't exist, even though it actually does? I guess that's a general issue for TiddlyWiki where it suggests that there is no such tiddler even though that atually is false in case there actually is a ShadowTiddler by that name.

When turning on the dates for search results, please allow (configuration) for more meaningful date formats than...

Sat Dec 29 2012 01:00:00 GMT+0100 (Mitteleuropäische Zeit)

~

Is global localization possible, e.g. so I could change...

site => wiki

page => topic

~

In general, what is the background of GieWiki not keeping up with the (classic) TiddlyWiki?

~

Is it possible in GieWiki to use some remote javascript magic (equivalent to search) that allows to list all tiddlers (throughout all "pages") that have tag x?

Would it be possible in GieWiki to also use some remote javascript magic to update (the tags or fields of) a tiddler (based on the above result list) in page y even though one currently looks at page x?

Thanks, Tobias.