G’day!
I’m working with @Snowbird to extend our search-test utility. Neither of us knows how the reference search should work.
Here is an example, from the filter page:
Does anyone use this feature? Can you explain it?
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Ven. @Jhanarato
This is the data source:
They were imported into the database.
Then query using the instant_volpage_search view.
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People use it because in many texts references are not given by collection and sutta numbers as has come into use in the digital age, but people will find references to volume and page of the old printed editions and don’t know what these refer to on sites like SC. So it’s great for them if SC finds the passages for them when they enter the PTS reference.
Did I understand your question correctly? Is this what you wanted to know?
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I guess people wouldn’t likely be searching for “PTS 1.1” Presumably if people are using ref they don’t know what kind of reference they have. It lets people just put in a number and see all the references using that number.
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That’s very helpful, thank you!
So I might be reading some random book somewhere and there’s a quote, with a reference like t125.19.1. I can then type ref:t125.19.1 into sc search and discover the quote comes from https://suttacentral.net/ea19.1?
Nice feature! Not sure how often it gets used, but it might be handy.
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Yep, got it now. I can add support for this in search-test.
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Wow…trying to understand this.
For example:
pts-vp-pli1.37
what does vp, pli,1.37 equate to in a PTS instance of [nikāya]+[period]+[space]+[volume #]+[comma]+[space]+[page #]
?
Where did you find such a reference? I have no idea what it means.
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I believe pts-vp means it’s a PTS volume-page citation. As opposed to vnp which I think means “verse number PTS”. But don’t quote me on that.
e.g. snp1.2
And I think we have to assume pli refers to Pali, but I’m not sure what other PTS citations are on the site to the English editions.
Oh… looks like it’s all there on the abbreviations page.
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OK that helps me unpeel it a bit.
Which also makes sense. And the data source makes sense.
But I wouldn’t know how to use
ref:PTS+1.1 where I suppose you type ref:PTS+[value]
in the search engine to find PTS DN i 47.
There is a dedicated filter for PTS. So you would search for volpage:DN i 47
Check out the filters page
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Ah, thank you…I didn’t know about this filter capability!
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Perhaps we’ll tackle the search UI/UX one day. My thinking is that we could separate the different kinds of search, rather than relying on the structure of the query.
by:sujato dog makes sense though, you’re actually restricting the query, rather than using a different search altogether.
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I didn’t know SC had structured queries either! I would’ve used ref: in particular
I see where this link is found now at the bottom of the search bar:
and that structured queries are mentioned near the top with the
in:ebs example, but I definitely think it could be made more visible
I can write up an issue for some improvements to the existing search. In particular, I think having a “Filters 
” dropdown button in the search bar (left or right) or just below it would already improve it a lot.
Lots of websites already have this, so it is somewhat of a UX convention. Some examples being Amazon and GitHub:
GitHub in particular updated the search UX a few years ago. Prior to that it was very similar to the current SC experience where there was a page describing filters and you could type them in, but there weren’t many other indications.
When you click on a filter in the dropdown, it could just move the filterX: text into the search bar.
As a first pass, could even just have the “Filters 
” button just link to the /search-filter page, with no other interaction initially, just a more explicit button
Additionally (can be added later), if a filter is fully written out, the UI can convert it to a pill shape inside the search bar to differentiate it from the plaintext query. Or do it similar to GitHub with the highlighting, or current SC with the text color change.
Tangentially related, but I see it also says “Search by algolia”, but I thought SC’s search was custom built on ArangoDB? (Hence this thread etc). I haven’t read through much search code yet, so I might very well be just missing some nuances 
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As it happens, there are two search engines. The drop down with autocomplete uses Algolia (and maybe Arango?). If you then hit enter it uses the Arango search engine and takes you to the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). If you then search via the the SERP it uses Arango.
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