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[Ayatana] Search algorithm in Ubuntu Software Center
Anup Verma wrote on 03/10/11 12:26:
>
Friends, don't you find any problem with the algorithm used to search
in the software center. Giving you an example:
Let us search for MultiGet. When I write "Mult" in the search MultiGet
appears at the 6th position. As soon as I add 'i', I see that
surprisingly, MultiGet now appears at 10th position with some rather
irrelevant options before it.
Not understandable...
...
These are the items that appear for "multi" before MultiGet:
* Qtractor, "a multi-track sequencer"
* qutIM, "a multi-protocol IM client"
* Teeworlds, "an online multi-player platform 2D shooter"
* BasKet, "a multi-purpose note-taking application for KDE"
* ROXTerm, "Multi-tabbed GTK/VTE terminal emulator"
* Babiloo, "dictionary viewer with multi-languages support"
* Jokosher, "Simply and easily create multi-track audio"
* Empathy, "GNOME multi-protocol chat and call client"
* ACM, "a multi-player aerial combat simulation".
Though USC does take into account the possibility that the last word you
typed is only part of a word, it gives more weight to results where that
last word is a complete word. And it can't tell the difference between a
complete word and a hyphenated prefix like "multi-".
All of those higher results use "multi-" in their summary or synopsis.
MultiGet uses "multi-" only in its description.
So that's why more items appear above MultiGet for "multi" than for
"mult": because as soon as you type the "i", the packages that use
"multi-anything" start being more important than those which use
"multianything". And the packages that use "multi-anything" in their
title or summary are treated as more important than those that use
"multi" in their name *or* "multi-" in their description.
If there is a bug here, it is that BasKet, ROXTerm, and Empathy use
"multi-" words only in their package synopsis, which USC doesn't show at
all -- so it's not obvious why they're being weighted as they are. I've
reported that now. <http://launchpad.net/bugs/865294>
Thanks
--
mpt