[racket] ranking of search results in documentation search

Better ranking would be good. Meanwhile and also:

Even with excellent ranking there will be times you need to scan more
than 20. I think that's acceptable, let's just take away a pain point.

"Showing 1-20 of N matches" can be a little annoying. "Peephole" UI,
looking at results in chunks of 20: Down, over, down, over.  Instead
I'd prefer one list: Down, down, down.

I understand searching on "a" can give 13,000+ results, so there needs
to be some limit, but I'd prefer much bigger than 20. Like say 200 or
more. Especially if you're accessing it file:, but even via http:.

I offer this small suggestion along with another compliment for how
good the Racket documentation content and system already is!

On Fri, Dec 24, 2010 at 4:48 PM, Neil Van Dyke <neil at neilvandyke.org> wrote:
> I think that some tweaking to the ranking of documentation search results
> would help.
>
> Oftentimes, I find that I have to scan down the search result list looking
> at the small text at end end of each search result line to find an
> appropriate manual, and only then look to the left at the titles.
>
> Here's an example...
>
> file:///home/neil/.racket/5.0.2/doc/search/index.html?q=port
>>
>> (rnrs io ports (6)): I/O: Ports  in r6rs
>> Attaching Documentation to Exports  in syntax
>> clear-output-ports (method of text:ports<%>)  provided from framework
>> Creating Ports  in reference
>> Custom Ports  in reference
>> Default Ports  in guide
>> Exports: provide  in guide
>> File Ports  in reference
>> Fine-Grained Control Over Package Imports  in planet
>> Garbage Collector Exports  in plai
>> gunzip-through-ports  provided from file/gunzip
>> gzip-through-ports  provided from file/gzip
>> Imports: require  in guide
>> input ports, pattern matching  in reference
>> Managing Ports  in reference
>> module->exports  provided from racket/base, racket
>> module->imports  provided from racket/base, racket
>> module-compiled-exports  provided from racket/base, racket
>> module-compiled-imports  provided from racket/base, racket
>> modules, imports  in reference
>
> In this particular case, I would've preferred to see the hits in the "guide"
> and "reference" manuals ranked higher than "syntax", "framework", and "r6rs"
> ones.
>
> As a simple improvement, perhaps, for example, "guide" and "reference"
> should be weighted more than "r6rs", in addition to whatever other ranking
> is used, like TFIDF and whether there is an exact match for a language
> identifier.  This weighting by manual could be dependent on a "context"
> query in the URL, which, when invoked from DrRacket, could depend on the
> "#lang" line.  (Looking at all the "require"s in effect would be a lot
> trickier, but the "#lang" line is easy.)  There could be a little selection
> box beside the search text field, so that the user could see the context
> bias and control it.
>
> --
> http://www.neilvandyke.org/
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