There are currently two types of fulltext searching: an SQL-based word index and a file scanner. They each have their advantages and drawbacks.
The word index is very fast to search and is currently used for the find-as-you-type quicksearch. However, indexing files takes some time, so we should probably offer a preference to turn it off ("Index attachment content for quicksearch" or something). There's also an issue with Chinese characters (which are indexed by character rather than word, since there are no spaces to go by, so a search for a word with common characters could produce erroneous results). The quicksearch doesn't use a left-bound index (since that would probably upset German speakers searching for "musik" in "nachtmusik," though I don't know for sure how they think of words) but still seems pretty fast.
* Note: There will be a potentially long delay when you start Firefox with this revision as it builds a fulltext word index of your existing items. We obviously need a notification/option for this. *
The file scanner, used in the Attachment Content condition of the search dialog, offers phrase searching as well as regex support (both case-sensitive and not, and defaulting to multiline). It doesn't require an index, though it should probably be optimized to use the word index, if available, for narrowing the results when not in regex mode. (It does only scan files that pass all the other search conditions, which speeds it up considerably for multi-condition searches, and skips non-text files unless instructed otherwise, but it's still relatively slow.)
Both convert HTML to text before searching (with the exception of the binary file scanning mode).
There are some issues with which files get indexed and which don't that we can't do much about and that will probably confuse users immensely. Dan C. suggested some sort of indicator (say, a green dot) to show which files are indexed.
Also added (very ugly) charset detection (anybody want to figure out getCharsetFromString(str)?), a setTimeout() replacement in the XPCOM service, an arrayToHash() method, and a new header to timedtextarea.xml, since it's really not copyright CHNM (it's really just a few lines off from the toolkit timed-textbox binding--I tried to change it to extend timed-textbox and just ignore Return keypress events so that we didn't need to duplicate the Mozilla code, but timed-textbox's reliance on html:input instead of html:textarea made things rather difficult).
To do:
- Pref/buttons to disable/clear/rebuild fulltext index
- Hidden prefs to set maximum file size to index/scan
- Don't index words of fewer than 3 non-Asian characters
- MRU cache for saved searches
- Use word index if available to narrow search scope of fulltext scanner
- Cache attachment info methods
- Show content excerpt in search results (at least in advanced search window, when it exists)
- Notification window (a la scraping) to show when indexing
- Indicator of indexed status
- Context menu option to index
- Indicator that a file scanning search is in progress, if possible
- Find other ways to make it index the NYT front page in under 10 seconds
- Probably fix lots of bugs, which you will likely start telling me about...now.
Addresses #260, Add auto-complete to search window
- New XPCOM autocomplete component for Zotero data -- can be used by setting the autocompletesearch attribute of a textbox to 'zotero' and passing a search scope with the autocompletesearchparam attribute. Additional parameters can be passed by appending them to the autocompletesearchparam value with a '/', e.g. 'tag/2732' (to exclude tags that show up in item 2732)
- Tag entry now uses more or less the same interface as metadata -- no more popup window -- note that tab isn't working properly yet, and there's no way to quickly enter multiple tags (though it's now considerably quicker than it was before)
- Autocomplete for tags, excluding any tags already set for the current item
- Standalone note windows now register with the Notifier (since tags needed item modification notifications to work properly), which will help with #282, "Notes opened in separate windows need item notification"
- Tags are now retrieved in alphabetical order
- Scholar.Item.replaceTag(oldTagID, newTag), with a single notify
- Scholar.getAncestorByTagName(elem, tagName) -- walk up the DOM tree from an element until an element with the specified tag name is found (also checks with 'xul:' prefix, for use in XBL), or false if not found -- probably shouldn't be used too widely, since it's doing string comparisons, but better than specifying, say, nine '.parentNode' properties, and makes for more resilient code
A few notes:
- Autocomplete in Minefield seems to self-destruct after using it in the same field a few times, taking down saving of the field with it -- this may or may not be my fault, but it makes Zotero more or less unusable in 3.0 at the moment. Sorry. (I use 3.0 myself for development, so I'll work on it.)
- This would have been much, much easier if having an autocomplete textbox (which uses an XBL-generated popup for the suggestions) within a popup (as it is in the independent note edit panes) didn't introduce all sorts of crazy bugs that had to be defeated with annoying hackery -- one side effect of this is that at the moment you can't close the tags popup with the Escape key
- Independent note windows now need to pull in itemPane.js to function properly, which is a bit messy and not ideal, but less messy and more ideal than duplicating all the dual-state editor and tabindex logic would be
- Hitting tab in a tag field not only doesn't work but also breaks things until the next window refresh.
- There are undoubtedly other bugs.
- About panel now gets version number automatically
- Change version from 1.0a1 to 1.0b1
* Important: If you're on an SVN install, you need to rename the scholar@chnm.gmu.edu text file in your profile extension directory to zotero@chnm.gmu.edu *
XPI installs will (I think) update automatically, since I kept an entry in updates.rdf with the old GUID
not yet implemented:
- formatted in-text citations, rather than placeholders
- footnotes
- selection of citation style (for now, only APA is available)
- support for non-ASCII characters
- exclusion of notes from select items window
- Windows support (although it shouldn't be difficult)
- probably much more...
Attachments.importFromURL() now first does a HEAD request to get the MIME type and passes that through Scholar.MIME.hasInternalHandler() (now abstracted from Scholar.File, along with the other MIME functions) -- if it can handle the MIME type, it uses a hidden browser; otherwise, it use a remote web page persist to save the file directly
- Fixed bug in File.hasInternalHandler() (no access to navigator from XPCOM)
- Changed "View Attachment" action to check File.hasInternalHandler() and use window.loadURI() for internally handled files and nsIFile.launch() for external -- this prevents the user from getting a helper app dialog when they try to view external files. I basically had to duplicate most of Mozilla's content detection logic and "guess" whether or not it will be able to handle the file internally, which seems a little silly, but, while I feel there are probably better ways to do various parts of this, what's here seems to do the trick. Let me know if you notice it guessing incorrectly (i.e. you get a helper app dialog rather than having a file just open or it launches a file that should've just been loaded into the window). Also look for text files that should be launched rather than opened, especially XML-based data files, as this is a chance for Scholar to be smarter than Firefox itself--for example, OmniGraffle files, which are actually just XML files, normally open up in Firefox as an XML tree, but Scholar will launch them instead. (I imagine the same will need to be done for OmniOutliner, among other things...)
Implemented advanced/saved search architecture -- to use, you create a new search with var search = new Scholar.Search(), add conditions to it with addCondition(condition, operator, value), and run it with search(). The standard conditions with their respective operators can be retrieved with Scholar.SearchConditions.getStandardConditions(). Others are for special search flags and can be specified as follows (condition, operator, value):
'context', null, collectionIDToSearchWithin
'recursive', 'true'|'false' (as strings!--defaults to false if not specified, though, so should probably just be removed if not wanted), null
'joinMode', 'any'|'all', null
For standard conditions, currently only 'title' and the itemData fields are supported -- more coming soon.
Localized strings created for the standard search operators
API:
search.setName(name) -- must be called before save() on new searches
search.load(savedSearchID)
search.save() -- saves search to DB and returns a savedSearchID
search.addCondition(condition, operator, value)
search.updateCondition(searchConditionID, condition, operator, value)
search.removeCondition(searchConditionID)
search.getSearchCondition(searchConditionID) -- returns a specific search condition used in the search
search.getSearchConditions() -- returns search conditions used in the search
search.search() -- runs search and returns an array of item ids for results
search.getSQL() -- will be used by Dan for search-within-search
Scholar.Searches.getAll() -- returns an array of saved searches with 'id' and 'name', in alphabetical order
Scholar.Searches.erase(savedSearchID) -- deletes a given saved search from the DB
Scholar.SearchConditions.get(condition) -- get condition data (operators, etc.)
Scholar.SearchConditions.getStandardConditions() -- retrieve conditions for use in drop-down menu (as opposed to special search flags)
Scholar.SearchConditions.hasOperator() -- used by Dan for error-checking
add Scholar.Cite and Scholar.CSL for parsing items into a bibliography using CSL. unfortunately, the output is not very good at the moment, and the format likely needs some changes, but I'm working with a few other people on getting it to that point.
closes#100, migrate ingester to Scholar.Translate
closes#88, migrate scrapers away from RDF
closes#9, pull out LC subject heading tags
references #87, add fromArray() and toArray() methods to item objects
API changes:
all translation (import/export/web) now goes through Scholar.Translate
all Scholar-specific functions in scrapers start with "Scholar." rather than the jumbled up piggy bank un-namespaced confusion
scrapers now longer specify items through RDF (the beginning of an item.fromArray()-like function exists in Scholar.Translate.prototype._itemDone())
scrapers can be any combination of import, export, and web (type is the sum of 1/2/4 respectively)
scrapers now contain functions (doImport, doExport, doWeb) rather than loose code
scrapers can call functions in other scrapers or just call the function to translate itself
export accesses items item-by-item, rather than accepting a huge array of items
MARC functions are now in the MARC import translator, and accessed by the web translators
new features:
import now works
rudimentary RDF (unqualified dublin core only), RIS, and MARC import translators are implemented (although they are a little picky with respect to file extensions at the moment)
items appear as they are scraped
MARC import translator pulls out tags, although this seems to slow things down
no icon appears next to a the URL when Scholar hasn't detected metadata, since this seemed somewhat confusing
apologizes for the size of this diff. i figured if i was going to re-write the API, i might as well do it all at once and get everything working right.
- changes scrapers table to translators table; all import/export/web translators now belong in this table
- adds Scholar.Translate to handle translation issues. eventually, Scholar.Ingester.Document will become part of this interface
- adds Scholar_File_Interface (in fileInterface.js) to handle UI for export and eventually import. (David, when you have time, please connect Scholar_File_Interface.exportFile to a button.)
- adds an export translator for MODS. all of our metadata, but not our hierarchy (projects, etc.) translates directly and unambiguously into valid MODS. eventually, we can use RDF or another format to handle hierarchy.
- adds utilities.getVersion() and utilities.inArray() for simplified scraper coding
- fixes minor interface issues with the nifty chrome scraping status window
- Broke schema functions into separate object and got rid of DB_VERSION config constant in favor of a toVersion variable in the _migrateSchema command (which isn't technically necessary either, since the version number at the top of schema.sql is now always compared to the DB version at startup) but will help reduce the chance that someone will update the schema file without adding migration steps)
- Removed Amazon scraper from schema.sql, as it will be loaded with the rest of the scrapers
Scholar.Notifier framework to handle update notifications between data layer and interface
- Notifier.registerColumnTree(ref) and Notifier.registerItemTree(ref) pass back a unique hash that can be used to unregister the tree later with unregister*(hash) (and must be, lest we leak treeViews and probably entire browser windows if the browser window is closed without unregistering the treeView)
- Data layer calls Scholar.Notify.trigger(event, type, id) after various events (only two calls in the data layer at the moment--more coming later)
- Notify.trigger() calls notify(event, type, id) on all registered trees of the appropriate type -- the data layer usually knows what collection the action pertains to, but we decided that it's cleaner to just let the tree decide what it wants to do rather than add all that logic into the data layer)
(Note: Item collection adds appear to be buggy on the interface side, but removes seem to be working)
More details coming on Basecamp: http://chnm.grouphub.com/W161222
*** Important note: after checking out this code, be sure to delete the compreg.dat and xpti.dat files in your FF profile directory or else the extension will not load. They'll be regenerated when you start FF again, and you won't have to do it again unless we add interfaces or other components. Once I set up the XPI packaging system, this step won't be necessary. ***
- Localization properties are now loaded directly via nsIStringBundleService and available via Scholar.getString(name) -- removed stringbundle from XUL
- Updated status line in bottom right to reflect whether Scholar is loaded correctly or not (temporary, obviously)
