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List:       freedesktop-xdg
Subject:    Re: [Wasabi Proposal] End user search language
From:       Liam R E Quin <liam () holoweb ! net>
Date:       2007-02-16 22:28:01
Message-ID: 1171664881.11193.77.camel () dell ! barefootcomputing ! com
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On Wed, 2007-14-02 at 14:29 +0100, Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen wrote:
[...]
> 
> Also, I must say that I've got cold feet with regards to let OR have
> precedence over AND. Is it not safe to assume that people that use
> logical operators (which I'm willing to bet is a minority) knows that
> AND usually takes precedence over OR? 
No, not safe.

The most effective interpretation of (a AND b) I have seen is to use
quorum ranking -- first list things containing both, then list
things containing either, and for (a AND b AND c) sort results
by the number of terms matched.  And this is what some of the
Web search engines do, too.

There's no good answer, though, I think.  You have to do user testing.

Liam

-- 
Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/
Ankh: irc.sorcery.net irc.gnome.org www.advogato.org


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