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webhelp default search operator

Posted: Mon May 08, 2017 5:03 pm
by mrdnbrown
Hi, Currently the default search operator for webhelp output is "OR" ... is there a way to change that? For my users it makes more sense to use "AND" as the default.

Re: webhelp default search operator

Posted: Tue May 09, 2017 8:59 am
by radu_pisoi
Hi,

There is no option to change the default search operator.

However, starting with WebHelp 19.0, the search engine has received a lot of improvements [1]. One of the improvements is related to the search results sorting mechanism, so the most relevant results are presented first.

More precisely, the pages that contains as many words from the search query are preferred against the pages with less words.

For instance, lets say we have the next search query and results configuration:
search query: w1 w2 w3

Code: Select all


----------------------
|Pages | Words found |
----------------------
| p1 | w1 |
| p2 | w2 w3 |
| p3 | w1 w2 w3 |
----------------------
Then the search results will be sorted/presented as follow: p3, p2 and p1.

So, according with this sorting mechanism, you get similar results as if the default search operator is AND. The difference is that you get more results, and you get also the pages that do not contain all words, but presented at the end of the results page because they are less relevant.

[1] - https://www.oxygenxml.com/xml_editor/wh ... #19WebHelp
[2] - https://www.oxygenxml.com/doc/versions/ ... ive+system