Reply To: seach result not complete for CCJK

[Derek Read]

The code that generates the search feature for WebHelp cannot deal with any content that does not separate words using spaces. So languages such as Chinese and Japanese (if spaces are not used, which is most common) will not be searchable.

When WebHelp is generated the content of each DITA topic is split into words using the spaces as a delimiter and a JavaScript array is built from these words. Without spaces that cannot be done and so they array will be empty (or mostly empty).

There are no plans to attempt to improve this as we are not in the business of creating search engines (we primarily concentrate on the XML authoring portion of our software). So, I think a 3rd party solution would need to be found. You may wish to look into a fairly inexpensive product called [url=http://www.wrensoft.com/zoom/]ZoomSearch[/url]. One of our clients has implemented a solution based on it as they found the search feature in our WebHelp to be too simplistic: http://forums.xmetal.com/index.php/topic,1080.msg3420.html I believe all of their content is currently in English, so I don't know if ZoomSearch can support Chinese / Japanese. If not, then you will need to look elsewhere. I suspect that any software that can differentiate between words in Chinese / Japanese might need to take things to the next level and implement a look-up table / dictionary of words and possibly even some understanding of grammar in order to figure out where one word starts and another ends. This makes me suspect that ZoomSearch may not cut it and that you would need to look at some more advanced software.

I'm sure there are lots of other products out there that specialize in search and are constantly improving what they do so ZoomSearch is not your only option. Depending on what your exact needs are (where you are deploying your WebHelp and how it is used) you might also look into using Google or some other search implementation depending on whether the WebHelp will be deployed for offline use or on a website.

Reply