[Xapian-discuss] Future of Xapian (long)

[Olly Betts]

On Thu, Jun 24, 2004 at 10:51:26PM +0100, Sam Liddicott wrote:
> While sort bands will always be technically unsatisfactory they are a
> shortcut to a users problem in a better way than the user could manage
> un-aided.

It's not that they're technically unsatisfactory.  They're
unsatisfactory to the user.

> When I search news or dated documents I often want "recent relevant stuff";
> now this can be done with a strict cut off - say 80% and then date sorting.
> - but what if I dont find what I'm looking for? Rather than keep repeating
> the search with lower and lower cut-offs, banding does this for me.
> [...]
> I dont mind if banding is got rid of, but the user problem remains and it
> would be good to be able to present some solution to it.

I see your point, but giving recent documents a weight boost also
achieves this, and more nicely I believe.  You can think of it as like a
banded sort, but with the arbitrary steps smoothed out.  Sort bands also
boosts documents up the relevance ranking for being newer, but the size
of the boost they get largely depends on which percentage band they
happen to fall into rather than just on their age.

Cheers,
    Olly