New Search: {Milestone}

Mark Barnes said:

Frank W. Becker said:

what is the functional difference between the parentheses (  ) and the curly brackets { } in a search? 

Parentheses are used to group search terms together, so that terms are searched for in the right order.

Curly braces are used to indicate special search criteria.

Thank you Mark....Thanks to everyone for all the help on the forum

This is probably a tall order, but since the milestone search is SO precise, could it not occupy its own space on the SEARCH title Bar ... between BASIC and BIBLE. And if so, many of the representative types of searches could be listed as "samples" down below so we have it all in one space.  Nu?

Ron Corbett said:

This is probably a tall order, but since the milestone search is SO precise, could it not occupy its own space on the SEARCH title Bar ... between BASIC and BIBLE. And if so, many of the representative types of searches could be listed as "samples" down below so we have it all in one space.  Nu?

It certainly should be included in the samples, but moving it into a discrete tab would be counter productive IMO. It's power lies in combining it with other elements of a basic search.

"Would a "search help" for {Milestone} not be a helpful addition in the search box?"

Sorry, I did not see Ron's post.

The feature itself looks very good, but once again, it is CERTAINLY NOT intuitive to use. I tried to do something along the lines of Mark's Augustine example and the suggestion to use the Ancient Litt, guide to find the data type and could not even find the passage I started with!

Step 1: Ancient Litt.,

Step 2: I pick the top reference, right-click on it, pick "Reference" and run a search for it. 0 hits (though lookup from the reference does produce 1 hit).

Step 3 I open the resource to try to identify the milestone from the reference box:

Step 4: using the reference provided and guessing syntax by analogy to Mark's example on Augustine and Logos' search term earlier, I try to search for the milestone and get 0 hits. Note that I used a list to try to cover different terms, abbreviations. In another attempt there was an expanded title for the reference. Nada, niet, zilch, rien du tout.

Now, obviously, I am doing something wrong syntax-wise. But that's my point: this is already a complicated road to try to figure out what that syntax may be and even so, it does not work! 

We may need something like the expandable menu of syntactical search to allow users to find and pick options such as datatypes from a list, for instance on top of search <resource(s)> in <location, collection, etc> ADD <advanced>. When you click on advance, you get a box morph options type. On the left "what kind of data you want to search" with a drop down list (place, person, headword, topic, milestone) then based on what we pick, on the right another box "enter your term". I'd pick milestone on the left, I'd start typing chrys on the right and the drop-down list would populate with one or more (when there are more than one option) corresponding choice. 

Or this could be done graphically. But the point is that searches need to be more assisted when the references, types, kinds, tags and other whynots are so variegated (even among similar resources) and the syntax must be exact to work. Being able to search fields is useful but is more limited since you cannot build complex searches interacting with separate fields. In other words if you pick topic and title, you will be searching both at once and you cannot using the drop-down field list, do something like search topic A within title B. 

So, I am both asking for help figuring out (for myself and others) the simplest route to making complex searches work and finding the right syntax to use AND suggesting that there needs to be ways to make this power more accessible and usable for those who do not have the expertise and resourcefulness of Mark Barnes, Dave Hooton and the likes.

Dave Hooton said:

{Extension} searches were designed to embrace their own syntax without requiring extra tabs under Search. Admittedly, the drop down menus could simplify aspects of the search but I would have thought {Label} would be a better candidate with its more complex options?

Yes Dave, you have probably already seen Mark's most of the TAB for Milestones, but drop down menus of some kind would be a huge benefit. Label Tab might be a good addition. I am still mulling on possible uses; starting to get some interesting ideas but haven't begun adding them yet.

Bradley Grainger (Faithlife) said:

In Step 3, take the reference search from Step 2 and surround it with {Milestone ... } to get:

{Milestone <Chrysostom = John Chrysostom, Homilies on John 27.2>}

Thanks, Bradley, why does Mark's example use a tilde (~) and the one you suggested an equal sign? This threw me off in my attempts to correct what was not working. 

Duh! I forgot about that!! Thanks, Graham. I need more coffee. But I still think that indeed, even when our minds are too tired to remember so much information about commands, syntax, etc, that better assisted would really help. Logos can be used very simply but to be used to its full potential it is quite advanced. To use it to its full potential is to maximize its value for more people (not just an elite few) and this is what assisted tools can do. 

This is super helpful, thanks for all the explanation.  I agree, if there were a simpler way to make this accessible - the rest of us would appreciate it!

Elias Brasil de Souza said:

I have tried to use Milestone Search with Qumran Sectarian Manuscripts but it searches only the headings, not the body text. This is how I’m doing it.

law WITHIN {Milestone <QSM 1QpHab>}

It gives 0 results since law does not occur in the headings. However if I type a word occurring in a heading I will get the expected hits.  Any idea how this search should be contructed in order to search the actual content and not only the QSM headings.

I believe the datatypes for the scrolls don't properly support ranges (i.e. you can only search for single lines, not entire columns). At least I've never managed to find away to get them to work with ranges.

Mark, I am new to the milestone concept. Is the ability you discussed above regarding headwords available yet?