Peter H. Coffin wrote:

> Wave a magic wand? I speak English (.us subvarint) natively and would
> never expect a search engine to match "tyre" to "tire". As for "kerb" to
> "curb", and "car" to "automobile", well, they're different words with
> different meaning. For example, "curb" is both a noun and a verb. "Kerb"
> is not. "Car" can apply to a railroad wagon, a conveyance hung from
> wires, or part of an elevator, above and beyond an automobile. It's not
> the job of a search function to account for muddling thinking.

Hi, Peter.

Thanks for replying. 'Kerb' is the British spelling for 'curb' (as in,
edge of sidewalk). 'Tyre' is the British spelling for 'tire' (as in the
rubber part of a car's wheel). Both 'curb' and 'tire' have other
meanings as well, but they are less likely in some circumstances -- for
instance, a catalog of toys. 'Car' might have multiple meanings (and
because of model railroads, have high likelihood even in toys catalogs)
but, for instance, 'motorcar' doesn't and would be an exact synonym for
'automobile', and even with 'car' a search for 'train car' would bring
up train cars at a higher relevance than motorcars, as it should be
(and allow for '-motorcar' in a boolean search).

Thing is, I wouldn't *expect* a search engine to match on them either,
but I *want* one to somehow.

Actually, I did come up with a sort-of solution since I posted that
will work in a preprocessing sense. All I have to do is make a table of
synonyms like so:

[synonym]
word varchar(32)
synonym varchar(32)

....then I can add a column 'alternate_word' and add it to the fulltext
index. Then for each word in synonym, I can update the synonym column
to include that synonym where the other columns match the word but
don't match the synonym already.

That way when someone searches a costume store for 'Armor' they get
things made by Brits, Aussies and Canadians, too.

--
Dodger