[sword-devel] Compressed modules (was fast search)

[David J. Orme]

David Twyerould wrote:

> <<snip>>...on the subject of inverted
> indexes, my understanding is that the Online Bible format is in fact an
> inverted index with punctuation. From memory I think there are three parts
> to it: the words themselves(word list), the word index and the verse list
> (ie: a sequential list of word numbers).  The verse text is recreated on
> the fly as required. The index is compressed as is the word list.
> 
> The advantage is that you have minimal disk space plus high speed
> searching. The time taken to reconstruct the verse text is negligable on
> all but the very slowest machines and even then its not usually a problem

My opinion is that we /need/ to do this if we want Sword to be able to 
effectively support PDAs and other machines with limited storage space.

What would be involved in doing this?  I'd like to take a crack at it.


Best,

David Orme
(Agenda PDA front-end maintainer)