[pmwiki-users] Search

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Fri, Sep 21, 2007 at 06:28:49PM +1000, Kathryn Andersen wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 20, 2007 at 06:38:48PM -0400, Sameer Kumar wrote:
> >> What I've done is to set up an external search engine (I'm using
> >> swish-e(1)) which indexes the whole server, and then alter the 
> >> $SearchBoxFmt so that it creates a form which points to the external
> >> search rather than the PmWiki search.
> > 
> > How and where are the results of the search displayed? In the browser?
> > In the wiki? 
> 
> The idea is that one bypasses the Wiki search altogether, and uses an
> external search engine, which one will have to set up and configure
> separately.  That's the only way you can get searches on things that ARE
> on the web server, but are NOT on the wiki.

My "official" stance on PmWiki's search engine is that it's
designed only to index the wiki content, and even then speed
isn't its most important criterion. 

Or, phrased differently -- I've never wanted to use PmWiki to
try to re-invent the search engine wheel.  For really fast searches, 
or to search non-wiki content, it's better to set up an external 
search engine of some sort (such as Kathryn has done with swish-e)
and let it perform the indexing.

> What happens is that the external search engine indexes both the wiki
> and non-wiki parts of the site, because as far as it is concerned, the
> whole thing is just one website.  Which is presumably what you want.

*Exactly*.

> > Thanks for the tip. How exactly does one define the $SearchBoxFmt ?
> 
> In my case, I've set it to the following:
> [...]

I'll be glad to help with searchbox formatting here.  Of course,
it's also possible to use PmWiki markup to build the searchbox
form -- I can put together a couple of examples if desired.

Pm