Ticket #71 (new enhancement)

Opened 4 years ago

Last modified 1 year ago

a real search function

Reported by: d723@mac.com Assigned to: developer
Priority: high Milestone:
Component: Instiki Version: 0.9.2
Severity: normal Keywords: search
Cc:

Description

A search function that doesn't require knowledge of regular expressions to search for more than one word. Finding things in a wiki's isn't always straightforward and that makes a good search function invaluable. Instiki's current search function doesn't help me much unless I get out the book on regular expressions. It seems to me that search is the most used and under developed and function of Instiki. The search interaction is out of character for the rest of the app.

At the very least, on the "I couldn't find anything that precisely matched the exact characters that you typed" page that Instiki spits out after completely failing to find anything at all, instead of telling users that if they were smarter they might be able to uncover this Instiki's secrets using regular expressions, why not make them smarter by providing some common ways to use regular expressions to find things on Instiki. Personally, "[a-z]*Leet?RegExpSkill(s|z)" doesn't tell me anything, it would take me a book and a few hours to decifer that. If users don't understand boolean logic, they most certainly don't understand regular expressions, even many "high-tech wizards" don't. The basics on searching for more than one word would be a great start.

Also, Instiki recommends "expanding your search", which to me means more words, which is actually less likely to get Instiki to tell me any anything useful.

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