In the course of my work, I’ve encountered a use case for which I would welcome a simplified search feature—one that is currently only achievable through rather cumbersome manual combinations.
Specifically, I’m thinking of functionality that would be equivalent in meaning to a “TWO OF” or "MOST OF" operator.
Example:
I want to search for instances where a particular lemma (e.g., מְלָאכָה) appears alongside at least two out of three other lemmas (e.g., כלה, שׁבת, עשׂה.1) in the same context (e.g., within the same verse or within a certain word range).
Currently, this can only be done by manually creating all possible combinations of two lemmas, like this:
Lemma.h:מְלָאכָה NEAR ((Lemma.h:כלה AND Lemma.h:שׁבת) OR (Lemma.h:כלה AND Lemma.h:עשׂה.1) OR (Lemma.h:שׁבת AND Lemma.h:עשׂה.1))
This quickly becomes unwieldy and error-prone when working with more than three elements.
My suggestion:
A new syntax extension that allows for a simple, declarative form—something like:
Lemma.h:מְלָאכָה NEAR (AT LEAST 2 OF (Lemma.h:כלה, Lemma.h:שׁבת, Lemma.h:עשׂה.1))
It would be even better if options like AT LEAST 3 OF or MOST OF were also possible.
Such functionality would not only improve user-friendliness but also significantly enhance the expressive power of the search language.
I would be delighted if you could consider this suggestion internally and perhaps include it in a future update. I’d also be happy to assist with further questions or testing.
Kind regards
