[Rhodes22-list] Web Interface: Searching the Archives

[Jeffrey Camiel]

Awesome.  Played with it for a bit and got back good results fast. 

> On Apr 4, 2024, at 8:38 PM, Graham Stewart <gstewart.gm at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Peter:
> The Rhodes22.net web page works beautifully for me. I have never really
> been able to use the old system so this is a massive improvement. We are
> very lucky to have someone with your skill and generosity of spirit to sort
> this stuff out for us. Thanks so much!
> Graham
> Agile 1976
> Graham Stewart
> gstewart.gm at gmail.com
> 
> 
>> On Thu, Apr 4, 2024 at 4:47 PM Peter Nyberg <peter at sunnybeeches.com> wrote:
>> 
>> As I mention in my last post, in order to support the web interface for
>> the Rhodes 22 email list, the entire history of the emails sent to the list
>> has been extracted from the Mailman archives and placed into a relational
>> database.  This was primarily done to make sure that the user interface
>> performed well, but it also has benefits for facilitating searches.
>> 
>> Previously, the only way to search the email list archives was to search
>> the archive web pages.  On rhodes22.net, a search of the archives will
>> instead search the database.  This allows searches to be more narrowly
>> tailored.  For instance, you can choose to search just subject lines.
>> 
>> But there’s more…
>> 
>> As I also mentioned in my last post, most emails sent to the list have two
>> sections of content: the new text written by the sender; and older content
>> that was in the message being replied to.  The search page refers to the
>> new content as ‘Original Text’, and the older content as ‘Quoted Text’.
>> 
>> A search of the archive web pages will look through and potential find
>> hits in both Original Text and Quoted Text.  Often, the search word or
>> phrase will be found over and over in the same segment of Quoted Text which
>> reappears in many messages.  This can result in some pretty muddy water.
>> 
>> The process that extracts messages from the archives splits the original
>> text from the quoted text and stores them in separate database tables.
>> This allows the search to optionally ignore the quoted text and just search
>> the original text, which will probably produce a better result set.
>> 
>> The actual search engine is a black box provided by the Database
>> Management System (DBMS).  If it doesn’t produce the expected results,
>> there’s not much we can do about it.  But the limited testing that I’ve
>> done indicates that it works pretty well.
>> 
>> If you’d like to check it out, you can find it at
>> https://www.rhodes22.net/email-search.html
>> 
>> —Peter
>> 
>> 
>> [ Sent From rhodes22.net ]
>>