RE: [search-ws-comment] DisplayTerm RE: Proposal to remove facet range feature from SRU 2.0

["Edward C. Zimmermann" <edz@nonmonotonic.net>]

Thinking more about DisplayTerm.. and the question: Do we need it?

I'd like to up the stakes was Edo suggested. What's an example or a good business case where one needs in the light of "anything goes" a DisplayTerm?

From the current draft on Scan:

<displayTerm>

"A string to display to the end user in place of the term itself. For example this might add back in diacritics or capitalization which do not appear in the
index. "

Is this really a good reason to have one?

Is the point of Scan to provide terms as they are stored in the index or is it not the function of scan to provide terms that one can search for?

If one can't search using diacritics or capitalization but is clever enough to be able to deliver in <displayTerm>..</displayTerm> the diacritics and capitalization then one should also be clever enough to search for diacritics and capitalization in indexes where terms are not stored using diacritics or capitalization. We should, I think, never confuse the terms in scan with a dump of the index. Its a search and not a debug service.

The only case I can think of is when they look identical but aren't.

Do we really want a difference?

Übertritt as a display
uebertritt as the term

Übertritt as a display
Übertritt as a term

e.g. Two displayed Übertritt for two different "spellings" in an index with quite different results? How does the user tell the difference?


FYI: In this case.. Ue and Ü should be different since while in German Ü and Ue are generally inter-changeable (following an accepted convention for writing words with umlauts without their umlauts) in other languages they are not.The transformation Ü->Ue is not reversible (not even in "German" texts).


--

Edward C. Zimmermann, NONMONOTONIC LAB
Basis Systeme netzwerk, Munich Ges. des buergerl. Rechts
Office Leo (R&D):
Leopoldstrasse 53-55, D-80802 Munich,
Federal Republic of Germany
http://www.nonmonotonic.net
Umsatz-St-ID: DE130492967