Re: FAQ searching, was: Cygwin under Wine?

[Igor Pechtchanski <pechtcha at cs dot nyu dot edu>]

On Fri, 26 Mar 2004, Thomas L Roche wrote:

> Thu, 25 Mar 2004 19:33:52 -0500, "Thomas L Roche" said:
> >> (BTW: didn't there useta be a "one big FAQ" option, a lá the
> >> "one big UG"?)
>
> Joshua Daniel Franklin Fri, 26 Mar 2004 09:53:56 -0800
> > Yes, it's at <http://cygwin.com/faq/faq0.html>. I seem to have
> > borked cygwin.com/faq.html with my last update and the links are
> > gone. I'll fix that when I get the chance, hopefully this weekend.
>
> Thanks in advance: it's a lot easier to search the "one big FAQ".
>
> BTW, since we're on the topic: has anyone thought about providing a
> "simple FAQish search" form? What I mean: when I wanna know something
> about Cygwin, I gather search terms, then
>
> 0 pull up the one big FAQ, and search it (with browser find)
>
> 1 pull up the one big UG, and search it (with browser find)
>
> 2 archive-search cygwin, cygwin-xfree, etc via their forms
>
> ISTMT It Would Be Nice, and not too difficult, to provide
>
> * a "FAQish search form" (a textfield and submit button,
>   just like the archive search forms)
>
> * that would frontend a script that automated the 3 searches above,
>   and returned a hit page
>
> Granted, it would be work, but it would go a long way toward
> {automating, easing, improving the likelihood that folks will
> actually}
>
> http://cygwin.com/lists.html
> > check out the FAQ, the documentation, and the bug reporting
> > guidelines before sending email to a mailing list.
>
> or at least 2 outta 3 ...

It wouldn't be that much work, either.  It's simply a matter of providing
a search form which passes a proper restriction parameter to ht://Dig.
For example, these work (the first searches the UG, the second - the FAQ):
<http://cygwin.com/cgi-bin/htsearch?config=htdig&restrict=%2Fcygwin-ug-net%2F&exclude=&method=and&format=builtin-long&sort=time&words=ntsec>
<http://cygwin.com/cgi-bin/htsearch?config=htdig&restrict=%2Ffaq%2F&exclude=&method=and&format=builtin-long&sort=time&words=ntsec>

Of course, the usefulness of any page is impacted greatly by the phrasing
of the search query...  Also, being able to search for a quoted phrase (a
la Google) would help immensely (not sure if ht://Dig allows this).
	Igor
-- 
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