When I do a NEAR search: phrase1 Near phrase2 I get a list of documents with hits. When I select one of the documents with a hit the display pane below the list of hits highlights hits of phrase1 and hits of phrase2 and hits of phrase1 NEAR phrase2.
Is there any way of causing the display to show only the NEAR hits and not individual instances of phrase 1 and phrase 2 when those are not near each other?
Not currently, but I would like that, too. I suppose the highlighted string would have to be defined as the contiguous text including both phrases, and that meets the proximity criterion. Sort of a dynamic, on the fly “exact phrase” string to be highlighted and scrolled to. Probably tricky to do.
Bill,
Isn’t what you describe exactly what DevonAGENT does? I’ve used the NEAR operator with DA quite a few times and it comes back with search results that RMF mentions.
Hmmm…I might be missing something. I, too, was greatly looking forward to being able to search like DA in my own DT database, but I’ve found, like RMF, the NEAR operator to be a bit lacking and not all that useful as it shows exactly what RMF describes.
Happy Holidays!
David
chatoyer, I think you might be misunderstanding (unless I’m misunderstanding).
I search for “tree NEAR life” on Wikipedia (which searches for “tree AND life” on Wikipedia). It returns 116 pages. Then I click the tab and it shows me a list of 89 documents that match “tree NEAR life”. That’s all great.
I think what RMF and Bill are talking about is that when you view those documents, that “tree” and “life” are highlighted wherever they occur in the document, whether or not they are near each other. So the issue is the display, not the search. (Unless I’m mistaken)
This happens in both DTPO and DA for me.
Ah - I see. I think I misunderstood. I think you’re right: it’s the display of the results, not the results per se. Thanks!
You are exactly correct. When I do a near search I only want to find the phrases that are NEAR each other. I don’t need to find the individual instances of the phrases that are not NEAR. It doesn’t do any good to do a NEAR search and then show results that are not limited to the NEAR result only. If I wanted a display of phrase 1 or Phrase 2 then that is what I would search for. However, the NEAR search displays phrase 1 and phrase 2 and phrase 1 NEAR phrase 2. I sure hope this gets fixed.
I would agree. Otherwise, there is not much point to having the ability to actually use the NEAR operator to begin with, at least not that I can see.
I’m sure it will get fixed in time.