The Problem
I find myself not using search as often as I like because it takes too much of my focus off my current work to craft the search I need.
Search Fields
There are 85 search fields available when I'm trying to search. That's great you keep track of that much metadata! But it also requires that I have a set of pre-saved selections of that metadata. One of the selections I find I use most (today) is "Heading Text; Large Text; Title; Topic"... but every time I want to do that, I have to:
a. remember that set of search fields (which I do today by using a layout, that to open I have to save my current layout, then come back to the current layout after I've remembered those fields)
b. select them from the search fields box
This process takes me up to 4 minutes to get an effective search! In turn, I just don't do it very often.
Collections
Another element: I have a definitely taken advantage of collections and tags... but there I again need to remind myself what collection(s) I have that are relevant to areas of focus in addition to the fields I want to search.
Search Expressions
Finally, with the complexity of morphological searches, and specific reference search options, I would like to be able to provide an example template search expression (I do this with simple templates and links to wiki pages today).
All Word Forms
I often forget how I have set this toggle... I'm sure I'm not the only one. I'd love to see an easy visual queue up front for this toggle and a faster and easier way to change it. Even better: let me set it for a search template. It is frequent that I have certain kinds of searches that are more specific/focused on words, and others that need more generic scoping.
What I suggest
Named Saved Search templates where I can select:
- Search Fields: Set of Search Fields
- Search Scope: Collection/Tag
- Search Expression (can be blank)
- "All Word Forms" setting
Some example templates I need:
- Search Head Words/Topics/Etc in my collection:
- Systematic Theologies
- Second Temple Judaism
- Early Church Fathers
- Christology
- Early Judaism
- Early Church History
- Conservative Journals
- Journals
- Favorite Bible Dictionaries
- Search for greek word reference in my favorite greek grammars and technical commentaries (I have a collection for this)
- Same as above for hebrew
- Search for inflected phrase in GNT collection
- Search for lemmas in GNT collection
- Search for lemmas in Greek Background Texts (collection)
- Search for specific biblical references near greek lemma in a number of collections, etc.
These are just a few off the top of my head... I personally don't care where they will be saved, I just need a good way to keep 20-60 of these with highly varying frequency of use.
Because LCV and search fields change frequently, the ability to edit, or easily replace existing search templates is needed as well.
Please note: this is not, per se, a "saved search"! I'm not searching for the same thing over and over again!
n.b. I'm happy to create a user voice entry for this if people chime in their support!
