Re: Support for boolean queries in apropos

[Mouse <mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost>]

>> I suspect the truth is more like, general Boolean queries are
>> something most end users are not capable of getting the full benefit
>> from, so search engines [...] have dumbed down their interface to
>> something their mass audience _can_ make effective use of.
> I'm hardly an expert on text retrieval but it seems to me that
> complex boolean logic (beyond "cirrus +logic -cloud") isn't really a
> good fit for natural language.

It's not a particularly good fit.  However, it has the big advantages
that it is easy to implement and get right, and that it is relatively
easy for a human to predict the behaviour of.

Also possibly relevant is that a significant fraction of its users will
be computer geeks, whose minds already work that way to a substantial
extent and thus find it a comparatively easy-to-use interface.

/~\ The ASCII                             Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
 X  Against HTML                mouse%rodents-montreal.org@localhost
/ \ Email!           7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39  4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B