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tag search not working correctly?

Posted: Tue Oct 05, 2010 6:13 am
by iLiAS
I have a tag "windows_mobile". In the search box i type "mobile". It can't find it (I tried with exact search on and off). And by the way, what does exactly "exact search" do?

TIA

-ilias.

Re: tag search not working correctly?

Posted: Fri Oct 08, 2010 9:22 am
by ale
Hello iLiAS, this is an explanation from the developer about the differences between full-text search mode and the exact search mode: viewtopic.php?p=2811#p2811. The syntax is further explained in the manual: cintanotes.htm#finding. Now about your question, I think tags are only matched from the beginning of the word during searches, so a suggestion would be to use always single words, two tags "windows" and "mobile" in your case (with the added benefit of autocompletion).

Re: tag search not working correctly?

Posted: Fri Oct 08, 2010 9:32 am
by CintaNotes Developer
Tag search now matches full tag names only. This is done for efficiency, because partial matching of tags was making general "Anywhere" search several times slower.
But I guess this could be done if you specifically select "Tags" from the search options list. I suggest you add a suggestion to the roadmap for partial tag matches in the "Tags" search mode. Unfortunately this will be introducing some inconsistency. Maybe adding a special option would be better - this needs to be discussed.

Re: tag search not working correctly?

Posted: Sat Oct 09, 2010 1:40 am
by Guest
Thanks for the replies. I am not sure what inconsistency you are referring to. A technical (implementation) inconsistency maybe? I am not a programmer, so I can't comment on that. But from a usability perspective, I think this ability is critical. Breaking the tags into two words is not always practical or logically correct. In my above example, "windows_mobile" is a distinct concept, an actual product/platform of microsoft. "windows" is a completely separate platform, both functionally as well as cognitively. Those two platforms are worlds apart. Notes about Microsoft's Windows Mobile platform have no reason being tagged as "windows" and living next to, say, notes about Windows 7.

The reason I believe this ability is critical is because it helps to combat what research has shown to be the #1 problem of tags; that is, the inability of a user to remember what tags she has previously used. That leads to "tag fragmentation", i.e. using different tags (synonyms perhaps) to describe similar content. That is why, for example, autocompletion is so critical in tagging systems.

Please consider making this change.

I have some other comments to make about the tagging system of Cintanotes, which i find very inefficient and incomplete at its current state. The biggest problem of it, as I see it, is in tag intersections and/or combinations (tag1 AND/OR tag2 AND/OR tag3). The present GUI facilitates this well enough if you have only a few tags. But at an actual usage example of even the most casual user and you will see that after a few months the tags run from tenths into the hundreds (just go to delicious and see some usage examples).

I will write more on tagging in later posts.

Thanks for the help again.

--ilias.

Re: tag search not working correctly?

Posted: Tue Oct 12, 2010 11:02 am
by Midas
While experimenting with the tags in my notes, I noticed I could use underscores and colons in them -- like this: 'multi_term' and 'software:windows', which isn't exactly what I expected after reading help...
http://cintanotes.com/cintanotes.htm#finding wrote:If you want to associate two or more tags with a note, just put them all into the "Tags" separated by spaces (comma and semicolon are also allowed, but are autoconverted to spaces).

While the first example would help reduce term ambiguity, the second would really streamline note management by keeping close to each other sets of notes that share the first term of their tag string.

Maybe diverse and better solutions could be found for this, like using other characters, for example. Right now, I immediately noticed that the tags with a colon don't show up on either tag search... Bummer! :|

Following this, I think that it would be very useful if there was a way to define word spacers (mainly the the space character) and space equivalents that wouldn't be treated as spacers (all other non-alphanumeric characters, for instance). Your input is welcomed.

EDIT: While consulting the help link above I also found this nearby:
Remember also that tags are case-insensitive, so whatever you enter into the "Tags" field is converted into lower case.
While I entirely agree that the searches should be case insensitive until otherwise specified, it is customary for LIS professionals to display DESCRIPTORS (in technical terms, that's what TAGS are, although they could also be referred to as KEYWORDS) in upper case, thus giving an instant visual cue of their meta-role. Just thought I'd mention this.

Another idea that occurred to me meanwhile is that, when inter-note linking is implemented maybe a special syntax could be accommodated for tags (#TAG or @TAG, maybe), enabling autosearch/linking as is done in other platforms...

Re: tag search not working correctly?

Posted: Tue Oct 12, 2010 12:52 pm
by CintaNotes Developer
Midas and Ilias, thanks for the really interesting observations!

My take on this is that hierarchical tags implementation is going to help alleviate most of the current problems.
Instead of writing "software:windows" you'll write "software/windows" as a tag name. This will automatically create a new tag group "software" (if it didn't exist before), and also the sub-tag "windows" inside of it. The key point here is that tag group is itself a tag, so the note will behave as if it had two tags: "software" and "software/windows". This will make sure that the note appears both when you select software, and when you select windows. The tag sidebar will display such tags as trees, and in tag fields CN will display it as a single "software/windows" tag.
The search will be made to match both "software" and "windows", as well as the fully qualified tag name "software/windows".
And this actually is not limited to just 2 levels of hierarchy. The note tagged as "A/B/C" will under the hood be treated as if it had tags "A", "A/B", and "A/B/C".
What do you think?

Re: tag search not working correctly?

Posted: Wed Oct 13, 2010 12:32 pm
by Midas
I forgot in mentioning keyword case insensitivity, that everything gets converted to upper/lower case on search...
CintaNotes Developer wrote:Instead of writing "software:windows" you'll write "software/windows" as a tag name. This will automatically create a new tag group "software" (if it didn't exist before), and also the sub-tag "windows" inside of it. The key point here is that tag group is itself a tag, so the note will behave as if it had two tags: "software" and "software/windows". This will make sure that the note appears both when you select software, and when you select windows. The tag sidebar will display such tags as trees, and in tag fields CN will display it as a single "software/windows" tag.

The search will be made to match both "software" and "windows", as well as the fully qualified tag name "software/windows".

And this actually is not limited to just 2 levels of hierarchy. The note tagged as "A/B/C" will under the hood be treated as if it had tags "A", "A/B", and "A/B/C".

What do you think?

I like your idea, although I'm not visualizing it yet. At least, it'll provide for an easy way to set tag hierarchy.

But how will you solve ambiguity? Take tags "A", "B/A" and "C/B/A", for example; which will be returned on a search for "A"? I gather the answer is the obvious 'all'; the downside is that only by remembering the exact structure can the "C/B/A" subset be retrieved, which in time will seriously limit its usefulness... What will be in the sidebar a tree with this hierarchy, or the individual terms? The tree can grow massively, if no limits are preset -- I'd advise on limiting the tag level to three or four, a value generally accepted in the 'ontology' management field.

These are my first impressions; if I get other issues, I'll post them...

Re: tag search not working correctly?

Posted: Wed Oct 13, 2010 1:11 pm
by CintaNotes Developer
Midas wrote:But how will you solve ambiguity? Take tags "A", "B/A" and "C/B/A", for example; which will be returned on a search for "A"? I gather the answer is the obvious 'all'; the downside is that only by remembering the exact structure can the "C/B/A" subset be retrieved, which in time will seriously limit its usefulness...


You are right about "all" because I don't see any other way here. But searching for "B/A" or "C/A" (!) will yield the desired result.

Midas wrote:What will be in the sidebar a tree with this hierarchy, or the individual terms? The tree can grow massively, if no limits are preset -- I'd advise on limiting the tag level to three or four, a value generally accepted in the 'ontology' management field.

The sidebar will present hierarchical tags as trees, although internally they will probably remain separate tags.

I agree that the number of levels should be limited otherwise it might get unwieldy. I'm thinking 3 or 4 levels might make users feel limited (although they might not be using all of them), but 5 levels should be more than enough even psychologically.

Re: tag search not working correctly?

Posted: Tue Oct 19, 2010 9:15 am
by CintaNotes Developer
Guest wrote:Thanks for the replies. I am not sure what inconsistency you are referring to. A technical (implementation) inconsistency maybe? I am not a programmer, so I can't comment on that. But from a usability perspective, I think this ability is critical. Breaking the tags into two words is not always practical or logically correct. In my above example, "windows_mobile" is a distinct concept, an actual product/platform of microsoft. "windows" is a completely separate platform, both functionally as well as cognitively. Those two platforms are worlds apart. Notes about Microsoft's Windows Mobile platform have no reason being tagged as "windows" and living next to, say, notes about Windows 7.


The inconsistency is namely that from a conceptual viewpoint, a more focused "Tags" search should not be able to find something that "Anywhere" search wouldn't, since "Anywhere" is logically a union of all search modes.
So what do you think of hierarchical tags? Would they solve this problem in your case?

Guest wrote:The reason I believe this ability is critical is because it helps to combat what research has shown to be the #1 problem of tags; that is, the inability of a user to remember what tags she has previously used. That leads to "tag fragmentation", i.e. using different tags (synonyms perhaps) to describe similar content. That is why, for example, autocompletion is so critical in tagging systems.


I agree that multi-user tag systems need moderation, otherwise they get stuffed with nasty duplicates. But in a single-user environment this should not pose such a huge problem, especially when you can segment your notebook with the help of tabs and different notebook files.

Guest wrote:I have some other comments to make about the tagging system of Cintanotes, which i find very inefficient and incomplete at its current state. The biggest problem of it, as I see it, is in tag intersections and/or combinations (tag1 AND/OR tag2 AND/OR tag3). The present GUI facilitates this well enough if you have only a few tags. But at an actual usage example of even the most casual user and you will see that after a few months the tags run from tenths into the hundreds (just go to delicious and see some usage examples).


Do you have any suggestions here? How do you see the perfect tagging GUI?