[MTOS-dev] Implementing new MT::App::Search

[Timothy Appnel]

On 3/1/08, Anil Dash <anil at sixapart.com> wrote:

> Just in the interest of clarifying the use cases here, Tim, what do you see users doing with (for example) command-line search support? That might help others understand what you're advocating from a user-benefit standpoint.

I've on occasion used tools/list-objects to see what is happening
inside the database. Its rather cumbersome and often doesn't cut it
that I have to come up with an alternate.  I'd much rather use a
command line search to check what is happening. So there is one
specific use case that I think Jay has already agreed with up.

MT does almost nothing to provide expert tools for people who spend a
lot of their time working with command line tools. Dave Morgan called
these people administrators. They are the forgotten step child users
of MT now.

>  Put differently, I think the priority right now is a performant version of current capabilities, since that's a baseline expectation that all users will have. Similarly, the percentage of users who *don't*

Making the search pluggable at isn't helping that. Creating a built-in
search engine indexing system akin to Search::Indexer (a suggest I
made to Brad anf Fumiaki offline) and denormalizing tags or faster and
less complex searches (see my mt-dev benchmarks) would.

I was under the impression that engineering was trying to "kill two
bird with one stone."

> make use of the built-in search is vanishingly small.
> I'm not denying that some very important MT users use search substitutes (and I mean alternate scripts here, not simply Google site search) but as a percentage of users, replacing mt-search wholesale is an uncommon behavior -- do you have more data to suggest otherwise?

Curious where that comes from. I have not one client that didn't dump
MT's search. I've noted a lot of other sites that don't have search at
all from what I presume is frustration with the poor state of MT's
search has been in for years.

I'd don't have any specific research other than my own observation in
working with clients, talking to user and other MT users, but to say
the number of those who don't is vanishingly small? I suppose there is
some truth to the power of defaults, but to suggest that are choosing
the built-in MT search seems to be stretching it.

<tim/>

-- 
Timothy Appnel
Appnel Solutions
http://appnel.com/