Bug 144665 - LibreOffice Search function in Help displays results in which search string characters are present in any order
Summary: LibreOffice Search function in Help displays results in which search string c...
Status: RESOLVED NOTABUG
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Documentation (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
7.2.1.1 rc
Hardware: All All
: medium normal
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2021-09-22 13:23 UTC by Alex Thurgood
Modified: 2021-09-24 13:46 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
Screenshot of search results after launching Help from main application window (StartCenter) (103.18 KB, image/png)
2021-09-23 10:56 UTC, Alex Thurgood
Details
Comparison with the content search feature of AOO (216.57 KB, image/png)
2021-09-23 11:32 UTC, Alex Thurgood
Details

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Description Alex Thurgood 2021-09-22 13:23:57 UTC
Description:
1) Start LibreOffice
2) Open the LibreOffice Help (F1) or via the Help Menu
3) For example, type in ODBC
4) Check the results list, and notice that the list contains results in which the  letters O,D,B, and C appear in any order within the result string.
5) Most of the displayed results are either irrelevant or misleading.

Steps to Reproduce:
See above

Actual Results:
Irrelevant result string list displayed

Expected Results:
Only results containing the searched for string should appear.


Reproducible: Always


User Profile Reset: No



Additional Info:
Version: 7.2.1.2 / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 87b77fad49947c1441b67c559c339af8f3517e22
CPU threads: 8; OS: Mac OS X 11.5.2; UI render: default; VCL: osx
Locale: fr-FR (fr_FR.UTF-8); UI: fr-FR
Calc: threaded
Comment 1 Olivier Hallot 2021-09-22 14:04:30 UTC
We have recently improved the index search

https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/c/help/+/122312

Can you please check with the recent online update for master at 

https://help.libreoffice.org/7.3/en-US/text/swriter/main0000.html

and check if it has improved. We can back port to 7.2.

The search for O, D, B, C is by design.
Comment 2 Buovjaga 2021-09-22 14:38:34 UTC
Are you searching through the index or through the whole content?

Even with the index filter, which has fuzzy search, I get

ODBC -- definition
database settings -- ODBC date/time
draw objects -- displaying (Calc)

which doesn't seem bad. The fuzziness is there to account for typos and give flexibility in general.

Content search for ODBC on the other hand only gives exact results.
Comment 3 Alex Thurgood 2021-09-23 10:56:43 UTC
Created attachment 175214 [details]
Screenshot of search results after launching Help from main application window (StartCenter)
Comment 4 Alex Thurgood 2021-09-23 11:11:51 UTC
(In reply to Buovjaga from comment #2)
> Are you searching through the index or through the whole content?
> 

See the enclosed screenshot (taken with 7152 but the results are the same).

Presumably I'm searching through the Index ?

The only result that is relevant there is the first one.
None of the other displayed results are relevant.
Comment 5 Alex Thurgood 2021-09-23 11:22:08 UTC
(In reply to Olivier Hallot from comment #1)
> We have recently improved the index search
> 
> https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/c/help/+/122312
> 
> Can you please check with the recent online update for master at 
> 
> https://help.libreoffice.org/7.3/en-US/text/swriter/main0000.html
> 
> and check if it has improved. We can back port to 7.2.
> 
> The search for O, D, B, C is by design.


Testing with
Version: 7.3.0.0.alpha0+ / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: bc7baa18435000f47f90e47d3300710bcb4cf56b
CPU threads: 8; OS: Mac OS X 10.16; UI render: default; VCL: osx
Locale: fr-FR (fr_FR.UTF-8); UI: en-US
Calc: threaded

The same search in the Index only gives 3 results, of which one is totally irrelevant.

The design is not a particularly logical one IMHO from a user experience point of view if it searches independent occurrences of the letters.

The old help had a Content search feature that allowed you to search the whole content, is this global search function present in the new help system ?
Comment 6 Alex Thurgood 2021-09-23 11:32:01 UTC
Created attachment 175218 [details]
Comparison with the content search feature of AOO

I've enclosed a screenshot of a search for the same string in the Search tab of Apache OpenOffice.
Notice the more relevant list of results here compared to LibreOffice.
Comment 7 Buovjaga 2021-09-23 12:45:14 UTC
The online help has the content search.

I will tweak the fuzziness aspect, when I move from fuzzysort to Flexsearch as the JS search library.
Comment 8 Alex Thurgood 2021-09-23 14:14:55 UTC
Is there something I haven't understood here ?

With the LibreOffice app bundle, the included help doesn't have content search.

Should I open a separate bug report for that ?
Comment 9 Olivier Hallot 2021-09-23 14:49:07 UTC
(In reply to Alex Thurgood from comment #8)
> Is there something I haven't understood here ?
> 
> With the LibreOffice app bundle, the included help doesn't have content
> search.
> 
> Should I open a separate bug report for that ?

The content search is only implemented in the online version of the Help. It uses Xapian and Omindex, and requires a web server.

https://xapian.org/docs/omega/overview.html

The content search for the offline Help is still an open issue.
Comment 10 Alex Thurgood 2021-09-23 15:04:40 UTC
(In reply to Olivier Hallot from comment #9)


> 
> The content search for the offline Help is still an open issue.

Thanks !
Comment 11 Buovjaga 2021-09-24 09:39:36 UTC
(In reply to Buovjaga from comment #7)
> The online help has the content search.
> 
> I will tweak the fuzziness aspect, when I move from fuzzysort to Flexsearch
> as the JS search library.

You will be pleased to learn that this patch makes the switch and FlexSearch actually doesn't even have fuzzy search: https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/c/help/+/122566
Comment 12 Buovjaga 2021-09-24 13:46:12 UTC
Olivier did a new build with the patch, so you can preview it here: https://help.libreoffice.org/7.3/