Basic search on iPad yields erratic results

[Linus]

Brendan,

I’m having trouble with free-text search on my iPad. Basically, records that I would have expected to show up in search results – ones that I know do contain the word I’m searching for – sometimes fail to do so.

I know that you haven’t implemented search within words, which on a side note I think is a shame, since this severly cripples search functionality in some languages that do not use spaces, such as Japanese. But I don’t think this is the case here, because the words I’m searching for are whole words in English. I haven’t yet discerned any pattern in what seems to work and what does not.

Any ideas?

Best,
Linus

[Linus]

Brendan,

I’m having trouble with free-text search on my iPad. Basically, records that I would have expected to show up in search results – ones that I know do contain the word I’m searching for – sometimes fail to do so.

I know that you haven’t implemented search within words, which on a side note I think is a shame, since this severly cripples search functionality in some languages that do not use spaces, such as Japanese. But I don’t think this is the case here, because the words I’m searching for are whole words in English. I haven’t yet discerned any pattern in what seems to work and what does not.

Any ideas?

Best,
Linus

(I’m commenting my own thread since the contents of my original post didn’t show up on the web – very strange.)

[Brendan]

Hi Linus,

And now you have 2 posts :-)

It’s not that I don’t want to support searching within words, it’s just that the full text search engine inside SQLite doesn’t support that. For certain languages such as Japanese, Korean, and Chinese, I actually disable the full text search engine in order to support searching within words because of the no space issue between words in those languages. That bit of code checks to see what language you’re running Tap Forms in and switches appropriately. But it also means that searching in those languages can be much much slower than in other languages.

Have you tried running the Rebuild Search Index command on the Database Maintenance screen?

Thanks,

Brendan

[Linus]

Thanks, that seems to have solved my (major) problem!

I understand your rationale for choosing the faster search engine. Still, this remains a problem in mixed language settings. Would it be possible let the user choose between different search engines in Settings instead of basing the selection on app language?

Linus

[Brendan]

So many settings, too much to explain :-)

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