Testing reference search

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?

Perhaps @sujato or @HongDa can help.

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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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Thanks @HongDa,

I don’t know much about the content here. What would people use this for?

Cheers!

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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.

When I clicked on the link in Jhanarato’s example from the filter page, that’s what it shows.

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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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