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List Info
Thread: Levenstein, Typo correction, Sorting items by usage
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| Levenstein, Typo correction, Sorting
items by usage |
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2007-10-03 15:15:01 |
Hi all
I was wondering if anybody thought about implementing
levenstein in
Deskbar? Also what about implementing typo correction (eg if
2 letters
are swapped, one missing or one too much) then it should
still match
the entries in the db. I think quicksilver for mac osx
implements such
stuff..
I have a very limited free time at the moment, so I think I
can't
implement it myself, but I'm curious if there are plans or
if anybody
already tried.
I also wrote a blog entry about the new Ubuntu release and
Deskbar [1]
Nils
---
[1] http://emerging-patterns.com/blog/art
icles/2007/10/02/gutsy-gibbon#comments
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| Re: Levenstein, Typo correction,
Sorting items by usage |
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2007-10-03 20:54:49 |
On 10/4/07, Nils <n.bruenggelgmail.com> wrote:
> I was wondering if anybody thought about implementing
levenstein in
> Deskbar? Also what about implementing typo correction
(eg if 2 letters
> are swapped, one missing or one too much) then it
should still match
> the entries in the db. I think quicksilver for mac osx
implements such
> stuff..
>
> I have a very limited free time at the moment, so I
think I can't
> implement it myself, but I'm curious if there are plans
or if anybody
> already tried.
>
Some back-ends are able to suggest terms, or do spelling
correction.
It would be useful if these capabilities could be exported
by Deskbar
handlers/modules.
Fabrice
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| Re: Levenstein, Typo correction,
Sorting items by usage |
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2007-10-04 00:57:45 |
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2007/10/4, Fabrice Colin < fabrice.colingmail.com">fabrice.colingmail.com>:
On 10/4/07, Nils < n.bruenggelgmail.com">n.bruenggelgmail.com> wrote:
>; I was wondering if anybody thought about implementing levenstein in
> Deskbar? Also what about implementing typo correction (eg if 2 letters
> are swapped, one missing or one too much) then it should still match
> the entries in the db. I think quicksilver for mac osx implements such
> stuff..
>
> I have a very limited free time at the moment, so I think I can't
> implement it myself, but I'm curious if there are plans or if anybody
> already tried.
>;
Some back-ends are able to suggest terms, or do spelling correction.
It would be useful if these capabilities could be exported by Deskbar
handlers/modules.
This is not solvable on a global deskbar level. But can be solved by individual modules.
In the days before we joined Gnome we did native stemming, but it turned out to be a bottle neck. One of deskbar9;s prime features are the near-instant searches, and that should be kept as a higher goal than spelling corrections I think.
Mikkel
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| Re: Levenstein, Typo correction,
Sorting items by usage |
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2007-10-04 01:24:08 |
On 10/4/07, Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen
<mikkel.kamstrupgmail.com> wrote:
> 2007/10/4, Fabrice Colin <fabrice.colingmail.com>:
> > Some back-ends are able to suggest terms, or do
spelling
> > correction. It would be useful if these
capabilities could be
> > exported by Deskbar handlers/modules.
>
> This is not solvable on a global deskbar level. But can
be solved by
> individual modules.
>
> In the days before we joined Gnome we did native
stemming, but it
> turned out to be a bottle neck. One of deskbar's prime
features are
> the near-instant searches, and that should be kept as a
higher goal
> than spelling corrections I think.
>
We may not be talking about the same thing. I agree that
stemming
is for the back-end engine to handle, and not Deskbar.
Imagine for instance you want to search for
"mikkel" but misspell
it "mikkal". No results are found, but the engine
is able to
suggest alternative query strings, for instance
"mikkel", if this
term exists in its documents corpus. A feedback mechanism
where
the user is prompted with "Did you mean mikkel ?"
would be useful.
Engines that support this do it rather quickly and it
doesn't have
a noticeable impact on search speed.
Similarly, as the user types in the query field, it may be
desirable to suggest terms; for instance, Firefox shows a
list
of suggestions pulled from Google and Yahoo when you type in
its
search bar.
Is there a way for Deskbar handles/modules to give this kind
of
feedback at the moment ?
Fabrice
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| Re: Levenstein, Typo correction,
Sorting items by usage |
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2007-10-04 02:44:34 |
> Imagine for instance you want to search for
"mikkel" but misspell
> it "mikkal". No results are found, but the
engine is able to
> suggest alternative query strings, for instance
"mikkel", if this
> term exists in its documents corpus. A feedback
mechanism where
> the user is prompted with "Did you mean mikkel
?" would be useful.
> Engines that support this do it rather quickly and it
doesn't have
> a noticeable impact on search speed.
That's not exactly what i meant. I used quicksilver some
time ago on
OSX and as far as I remember it did the following: It showed
up the
items matching the input, sorted by the levenstein distance
(the one
with the shortest distance first) and by usage (the most
used items
first). This means that you could call "Firefox",
for example "foxy",
since there is some similarity between the 2 strings. If you
always
choose Firefox, when typing "foxy", it learns, so
Firefox will move on
the top of the menu. It also reacted quick, but I'm not sure
what
algorithms were used, I also think it's not opensource (but
free of
charge).
Another thing which I found rather disappointed on Deskbar
was, that
it does not recognize if a program needs to run in a shell.
Eg uname,
ssh somewhere.com, etc does not work. I don't have an idea
right now,
how Deskbar should know if a program needs to run in a shell
or not
(ok you could just use a list of UNIX commands..) But a
launcher for
Linux should support this IMHO 
NIls
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| Re: Levenstein, Typo correction,
Sorting items by usage |
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2007-10-04 05:41:04 |
> Apparently, this will be no easy task and we're pretty
much lacking
> man power these days.
Quicksilver has these features and I doubt, that they have
more
manpower. So I want to have this too on my Linux box! I mean
I can't
be that the mac users now have a better _command line_ then
we have 
I hope I'll have some time in the not so distant future to
have a look
at Deskbar..
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| Re: Levenstein, Typo correction,
Sorting items by usage |
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2007-10-04 14:48:54 |
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2007/10/4, Fabrice Colin < fabrice.colingmail.com">fabrice.colingmail.com>:
On 10/4/07, Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen < mikkel.kamstrupgmail.com">mikkel.kamstrupgmail.com> wrote:
>; 2007/10/4, Fabrice Colin < fabrice.colingmail.com">fabrice.colingmail.com
>:
>; > Some back-ends are able to suggest terms, or do spelling
> > correction. It would be useful if these capabilities could be
> > exported by Deskbar handlers/modules.
>;
> This is not solvable on a global deskbar level. But can be solved by
> individual modules.
>
> In the days before we joined Gnome we did native stemming, but it
> turned out to be a bottle neck. One of deskbar9;s prime features are
> the near-instant searches, and that should be kept as a higher goal
>; than spelling corrections I think.
>;
We may not be talking about the same thing. I agree that stemming
is for the back-end engine to handle, and not Deskbar.
I'm quite sure that we are talking about the same thing. Stemming was only an example of a related technology that we had to remove.
Imagine for instance you want to search for "mikkel" but misspell
it "mikkal". No results are found, but the engine is able to
suggest alternative query strings, for instance "mikkel", if this
term exists in its documents corpus. A feedback mechanism where
the user is prompted with "Did you mean mikkel ?" would be useful.
Engines that support this do it rather quickly and it doesn't have
a noticeable impact on search speed.
I can think of many ways to add such functionality to deskbar. The biggest problem is presenting it in a non-obtrusive and sensitive way to the user. Deskbar has a very compact UI - and some users are requesting the previous, even more compact UI, back. It is hard cramming more info in there, but if there are good ideas, I'm all ears.
Similarly, as the user types in the query field, it may be
desirable to suggest terms; for instance, Firefox shows a list
of suggestions pulled from Google and Yahoo when you type in its
search bar.
The standard way to do this is via popup, but that will not work for deskbar. So again - how should such things be displayed?
Is there a way for Deskbar handles/modules to give this kind of
feedback at the moment ?
Nope, but it should not be rocket science to add (I think).
Cheers,
Mikkel
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| Re: Levenstein, Typo correction,
Sorting items by usage |
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2007-10-04 14:55:29 |
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2007/10/4, Sebastian Pölsterl < mardukk-d-w.org">mardukk-d-w.org>:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Fabrice Colin schrieb:
> On 10/4/07, Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen < mikkel.kamstrupgmail.com">mikkel.kamstrupgmail.com> wrote:
>;> 2007/10/4, Fabrice Colin <
fabrice.colingmail.com">fabrice.colingmail.com>:
>>> Some back-ends are able to suggest terms, or do spelling
>>> correction. It would be useful if these capabilities could be
>>> exported by Deskbar handlers/modules.
>;> This is not solvable on a global deskbar level. But can be solved by
>>; individual modules.
>>
>;> In the days before we joined Gnome we did native stemming, but it
>> turned out to be a bottle neck. One of deskbar9;s prime features are
>> the near-instant searches, and that should be kept as a higher goal
>> than spelling corrections I think.
>;>
>; We may not be talking about the same thing. I agree that stemming
> is for the back-end engine to handle, and not Deskbar.
>
> Imagine for instance you want to search for "mikkel" but misspell
> it "mikkal". No results are found, but the engine is able to
> suggest alternative query strings, for instance "mikkel", if this
> term exists in its documents corpus. A feedback mechanism where
> the user is prompted with "Did you mean mikkel ?" would be useful.
> Engines that support this do it rather quickly and it doesn't have
> a noticeable impact on search speed.
>;
If you know of a module that supports this feature, could you please
post a link to it? I'm curious how they do it.
This is very hard to do without an index. The standard way to do this is via N-grams extracted
fro m the main index and then stored in a second.
> Similarly, as the user types in the query field, it may be
> desirable to suggest terms; for instance, Firefox shows a list
> of suggestions pulled from Google and Yahoo when you type in its
> search bar.
>
> Is there a way for Deskbar handles/modules to give this kind of
> feedback at the moment ?
>
I myself can't think of any way that to do this with the current
architecture.
I believe Google uses previous successful queries for this. This is more or less equivalent to our history plugin.
When you think of it, the very nature of deskbar is to be a suggestion-popup.
Cheers,
Mikkel
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| Re: Levenstein, Typo correction,
Sorting items by usage |
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2007-10-04 21:25:22 |
On 10/5/07, Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen
<mikkel.kamstrupgmail.com> wrote:
> 2007/10/4, Fabrice Colin <fabrice.colingmail.com>:
> > We may not be talking about the same thing. I
agree that stemming
> > is for the back-end engine to handle, and not
Deskbar.
>
> I'm quite sure that we are talking about the same
thing. Stemming was
> only an example of a related technology that we had to
remove.
>
Right... Hopefully this will not be removed once implemented
> > Imagine for instance you want to search for
"mikkel" but misspell
> > it "mikkal". No results are found, but
the engine is able to
> > suggest alternative query strings, for instance
"mikkel", if this
> > term exists in its documents corpus. A feedback
mechanism where
> > the user is prompted with "Did you mean
mikkel ?" would be useful.
> > Engines that support this do it rather quickly and
it doesn't have
> > a noticeable impact on search speed.
>
> I can think of many ways to add such functionality to
deskbar. The
> biggest problem is presenting it in a non-obtrusive and
sensitive way
> to the user. Deskbar has a very compact UI - and some
users are
> requesting the previous, even more compact UI, back. It
is hard cramming
> more info in there, but if there are good ideas, I'm
all ears.
>
I am no UI expert, so bear with me How about
showing alternative
spelling suggestions on top of the results list ? It would
look like
Search: X
Spelling suggestions
"Did you mean Y ?"
Web Search
Search Amazon.com for X
...
Clicking on "Did you mean Y ?" would then set the
text entry field to
Y and run the search as if it had been entered by the user.
Search term suggestions could also be shown in the same list
while
the user types :
Search: comp
Search suggestions
compulink
compulsory
computador
computer
computing
...
I don't know if this is compatible with the ideas you guys
have for
Deskbar. I am not up to date on new developments, I still
use 2.19.3
here.
Fabrice
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| Re: Levenstein, Typo correction,
Sorting items by usage |
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2007-10-05 06:15:28 |
> This is very hard to do without an index. The standard
way to do this is via
> N-grams extracted from the main index and then stored
in a second.
As far as I remember (I sold my Power Mac some time ago and
my iBook
is broken..) quicksilver uses an index, which is
periodically updated.
So from this point of view Quicksilver and Deskbar differ
quite a
lot..
Btw does anybody here use/know Quicksilver? I would
recommend to play
with it if you have a chance to do this.
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