[jsword-devel] A thought on search indexing.

[Mark Goodwin]

I can see Random J. User getting fed up with search indexes.  Firstly
there's the time taken to generate them.

It takes about 7 minutes on my PowerBook to generate a search index
for the KJV sword module (yeah, I know, it's my fault for owning a
Mac!).  Generating exactly the same index on my Athlon
twenty-something-hundred-plus Linux box takes 3.5 minutes.

Now, when I nuke my .jsword dir on the mac, I wonder about copying the
indexes from the Linux box.

I definitely think that indexed searches are the way forward, and
whilst I'm sure there's room for optimisation in the indexing code,
I'm wondering whether a significant proportion of users would be
better served with a different solution.

how about downloadable search indexes?  An uncompressed index is only
1.3 MB for the same book.  If I compress it down, it squeezes to a
mere 1 MB.

We could leave the option of generating your own for the bandwidth impaired.

The other thing I think may frustrate Random J. User is the point at
which an index is created.  I think it might be a good idea to ask the
user if they would like an index created / obtained at module install
time; that way the hit of generating / downloading the index is
grouped along with the other stuff that keeps the user waiting...

Good idea? Bad Idea?