Re: Adding an alternate syntax for Phrase Search

On Sun, May 22, 2016 at 3:00 PM, Thom Brown <thom(at)linux(dot)com> wrote:

> On 22 May 2016 at 18:52, Josh berkus <josh(at)agliodbs(dot)com> wrote:
> > Folks,
> >
> > This came up at pgCon.
> >
> > The 'word <-> word <-> word' syntax for phrase search is not
> > developer-friendly. While we need the <-> operator for SQL and for the
> > sophisticated cases, it would be really good to support an alternate
> > syntax for the simplest case of "words next to each other". My proposal
> > is enclosing the phrase in double-quotes, which would be intuitive to
> > users and familiar from search engines. Thus:
> >
> > to_tsquery(' Berkus & "PostgreSQL Version 10.0" ')
> >
> > ... would be equivalent to:
> >
> > to_tsquery(' Berkus & ( PostgreSQL <-> version <-> 10.0 )')
> >
> > I realize we're already in beta, but pgCon was actually the first time I
> > saw the new syntax. I think if we don't do this now, we'll be doing it
> > for 10.0.
>
> I think it's way too late for that. I don't see a problem with
> including it for 10.0, but when the feature freeze has long passed and
> we also have our first beta out, it's no longer a matter of changing
> the design or additional functionality, unless there's something that
> absolutely requires modification. This isn't that.

​Particularly in light of our annual major release cycle we need to be open
to usability recommendations during Beta 1 (at minimum). Not everyone with
intelligence, insight, and meaningful uses for our product and features
follows -hackers and compiles from source to try things out during
development. We should encourage these others to at least voice their
opinions on the new features.

Its not like we get inundated with these kinds of requests. Let it remain
mostly a resource concern. If a few people can agree on desirability and
get a patch written, reviewed, and ready-for-commit before the next beta
release then the release committee, with input from the community, can be
the final arbiter of whether to back-patch it into 9.6 or keep it for 10.0

I'd like to think that features are the "top-level capabilities" that we
introduce - this is a sub-component of the "phrase search" feature.
Component freeze should occur no earlier than after the second packaged
release. I'd generally rather have feature freeze earlier and use the
added time for component work and additional general testing if keeping on
the yearly cycle doesn't allow for both. But, I'm tending to think that we
are that tightly constrained generally.

David J.