On Fri, 07 Aug 2015 19:39:40 +0100, Stephen wrote:

> On 8/7/2015 6:35 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On Fri, 07 Aug 2015 18:02:29 +0100, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
>>
>>> Honestly, trying to guess when the user meant wildcard and then they
>>> actually meant star is *highly* non-trivial.
>>
>> * = wildcard
>>
>> \* = literal *
>>
>>
> See! Training!
> Users need training. :-P

I never said they don't need training.  What I said was that if your 
software business' bottom line depends on training revenue as part of 
that bottom line, you're doing software wrong - and I stand by that 
statement. :)

But in this particular instance, a search interface that provided 
semantics for finding things based on arbitrary criteria that dealt with 
a natural language interface would probably be easier for the users.  
Much more difficult to implement, and Google's search capabilities (as 
someone in this thread, I think, already pointed out) make anyone else's 
search look like a child's attempt.

But actually, the Google search interface itself is an example of how to 
do user interaction around search right.  It doesn't provide as much 
flexibility as other search engines, but it works for the vast majority 
of what it's used for, and is simple, elegant, and requires no special 
training to understand how to use.

Jim
-- 
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and 
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw

Post a reply to this message