Re: RFC: suggested feature

[Golda Velez <gvelez@tucson.com>]

At 02:47 PM 12/18/99 -0500, Christian Vogler wrote:
>I suggest an experiment: Why don't we try to read and format the
>output of glimpse through the pipe as it arrives? Although this would
>not cut total search times, the user would see a partial response much
>sooner. If the search result is in the first few matches, he or she
>wouldn't even have to wait for the search to complete before he or she
>can continue.

Yes, agreed!  This would also solve a problem a few users have with IE
timing out before the results are returned.

>Technically, this would mean that we'd need to create a pipe in
>webglimpse, then call fork(), redirect standard input, ouput, and
>error to the pipe and call glimpse via exec(). The processing loop
>after the glimpse call would also need to be modified a bit. 
>
>I'm willing to experiment with this early next year. This looks like a
>major change, but it would be very worthwhile, methinks. It will
>interfere with ResultCache.pm, but this module needs to be rewritten
>anyway. Maybe we can combine this rewrite with my proposed change.

Correct, we have the rewrite planned out, I will take a look and see what
the potential conflicts are.  I don't see anything very fundamental,
basically  I think the logic is like so:
	- are we using cached results?  If so do a lookup and print the results
	- no, run glimpse and allow the results to pipe to the screen
	- save total results to cache file

This would be great, between this change and the use of shared libraries
for the filter programs, the apparent speed will be greatly increased!

My only question is are we running into any system-dependant syntax for the
fork and exec calls?   I wouldn't think so, but does anyone know for sure?

--Golda
------------------------------------------------------------
Golda Velez         gvelez@tucson.com	        520-620-6878
Internet Workshop                          http://tucson.com
Webglimpse Search Software             http://webglimpse.net
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