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New Search Tool - Workin' on it.

Jeremy

By Jeremy
in General geocaching topics

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Jeremy

Jeremy

Posted
Posted

Just so you folks don't know I'm slacking, here's a large (in actual size) image of the interface for the new engine.

 

Because of the assumed database and CPU hit on this, we're going to schedule it so you can have each search executed and the results emailed to you on a daily basis (at the most). You'll be limited to 5 searches at any given time with a results size of 500 records max.

 

Two reasons for the limitation: Database impact and The Unknown. TU is something I'm concerned about when a ton of folks start doing these searches, so initially the result set will be limited. If there is no affect it will be increased.

 

Here's the image. It should be relatively self-explanatory. The eBook reader will be a free download.

 

Timing? Well, I have to head out of town on Friday and won't be back until Thursday, but Elias is working on the application while I'm away. We've got the structure built so we need to do some more testing before we go with it.

 

searchpage.gif

 

Jeremy Irish

Groundspeak - The Language of Location

 

[This message was edited by Jeremy Irish on June 06, 2002 at 07:57 PM.]

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Jamie Z

+Jamie Z

Posted
Posted

Hmmm,

 

I may not be alone in thinking that's exactly what I was looking for, set in a format that I didn't expect at all.

 

Sounds like doing a search will be a major undertaking if I have to have it emailed to me.

 

Should be very useful.

 

Jamie

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Dan_Edwards

+Dan_Edwards

Posted
Posted

Well I don't smoke, but you get the idea.

 

Man a up to datebase on my Palm will all the caches I want to hit in there. My moods change, sometimes I want to head for the Rockies and really work my rear off for a cache, and other times I am curious about whats in town. Sometimes I don't know until I wake up that day which I want to do. I could make up two search requests, one I would call "lazy" and the other "heart attack"

 

Dan

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worldtraveler

+worldtraveler

Posted
Posted

It seems to have ALMOST everything that I've seen requested, with one notable exception: Search along a route, i.e. something along the lines of what Delorme has with their "points of interest" within X miles of the mapped route. I imagine this would be quite a challenge to program, but is it beyond the limits of a viable request?

 

Worldtraveler

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Team Hoijong

+Team Hoijong

Posted
Posted

I think the idea of this search tool will be great.. Hope it doesn't load the server to much when do-ing the actual searches..

 

1. Thing.. The date format it says xx/xx/xxxx

i think it will be confusing because some use

dd/mm/yyyy and some use mm/dd/yyyy

this needs a change

 

Don't mather how far you get from home, you will always get back there to get out again

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robertlipe

robertlipe

Posted
Posted

I'm intrigued. Maybe this is becuase I've invented my own interface to serve my selfish needs by beating stones together. I think this will solve many inconveniences for us and I appreciate the steps to make it happen. So please don't take my questions as whining or ingratitude. :-) While I realize you're not in "ready to announce" stage, can you help clarify a few details, Jeremy?

 

Does the "limit of five searches at any given time" mean that I could "only" have five browser windows or progammatic connections wailing on your server at a time (a generous limit, IMO) or does it mean that I can only store five queries (not the results of the queries) on the server and readily flip between them? (Not as generous for those that travel to do long-distance, but still a tractable problem)

 

Will there be a CGI-ish interface to this? (If not, we can presumably generte the form/post data.)

 

Does "from origin" default to the coords you've marked as home in your profile?

 

Does "during" mean "hidden during", "found during" , "logged during", "description modified during", or something else?

 

What are the contents of the "formats" pulldown? I'm interested in not just the coords (and I can cope with geocaching.loc, GPX, or just about any other format for the waypoints, but the entire sheets as HTML or XML.

 

Is the "Free Ebook reader" somehow tied to this data or is this ebook format a very open/standard thing so those on the fringe aren't excluded?

 

I'm really interested in seeing this succeed. You have some great ideas there!

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Elias

Elias

Posted
Posted

quote:
Originally posted by worldtraveler:

It seems to have ALMOST everything that I've seen requested, with one notable exception: Search along a route, i.e. something along the lines of what Delorme has with their "points of interest" within X miles of the mapped route. I imagine this would be quite a challenge to program, but is it beyond the limits of a viable request?

How would you tell us what your route is?

 

-Elias

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Ideology

Ideology

Posted
Posted

Is there any chance of making the date format a little easier for we international people? For example, if something says 7/6/02, we have no idea whether that is 7 June 02 or 6 July 02. (Or in Japan, 2 June 2007!) What about using a format like "7 Jun 02" or even make the format settable in the user profiles?

 

Thanks,

George.

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Elias

Elias

Posted
Posted

quote:
Originally posted by robertlipe:

I'm intrigued.

icon_smile.gif

 

quote:
Does the "limit of five searches at any given time" mean that I could "only" have five browser windows or progammatic connections wailing on your server at a time (a generous limit, IMO) or does it mean that I can only store five queries (not the results of the queries) on the server and readily flip between them? (Not as generous for those that travel to do long-distance, but still a tractable problem)
Your searches don't get executed in real time on the site. We store up to 5 of your chosen queries and then execute them on the day(s) you've selected and then the results will be e-mailed to you in the format(s) you've requested.

 

quote:
Will there be a CGI-ish interface to this? (If not, we can presumably generte the form/post data.)
We're not currently planning any kind of interface to this engine. However, a .NET Web Service isn't out of the question. But no promises. icon_wink.gif

 

quote:
Does "from origin" default to the coords you've marked as home in your profile?
Not in this first version.

 

quote:
Does "during" mean "hidden during", "found during" , "logged during", "description modified during", or something else?
It means hidden during. We'll make this clearer.

 

quote:
What are the contents of the "formats" pulldown? I'm interested in not just the coords (and I can cope with geocaching.loc, GPX, or just about any other format for the waypoints, but the entire sheets as HTML or XML.
Currently, the only option is the EasyGPS LOC file. But we're planning on providing support for GPX as well (may not be ready by launch though). You'll basically get all the data currently on the cache detail page except for logs.

 

quote:
Is the "Free Ebook reader" somehow tied to this data or is this ebook format a very open/standard thing so those on the fringe aren't excluded?
The ebook itself is compiled and binary, so its not particularly useful outside the reader but it is based on the "Open-ebook" standard. Just don't ask me what that means. icon_smile.gif

 

quote:
I'm really interested in seeing this succeed. You have some great ideas there!
Thanks!

 

-Elias

 

[This message was edited by Elias on June 07, 2002 at 12:37 AM.]

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Elias

Elias

Posted
Posted

quote:
Originally posted by robertlipe:

I'm intrigued.

icon_smile.gif

 

quote:
Does the "limit of five searches at any given time" mean that I could "only" have five browser windows or progammatic connections wailing on your server at a time (a generous limit, IMO) or does it mean that I can only store five queries (not the results of the queries) on the server and readily flip between them? (Not as generous for those that travel to do long-distance, but still a tractable problem)
Your searches don't get executed in real time on the site. We store up to 5 of your chosen queries and then execute them on the day(s) you've selected and then the results will be e-mailed to you in the format(s) you've requested.

 

quote:
Will there be a CGI-ish interface to this? (If not, we can presumably generte the form/post data.)
We're not currently planning any kind of interface to this engine. However, a .NET Web Service isn't out of the question. But no promises. icon_wink.gif

 

quote:
Does "from origin" default to the coords you've marked as home in your profile?
Not in this first version.

 

quote:
Does "during" mean "hidden during", "found during" , "logged during", "description modified during", or something else?
It means hidden during. We'll make this clearer.

 

quote:
What are the contents of the "formats" pulldown? I'm interested in not just the coords (and I can cope with geocaching.loc, GPX, or just about any other format for the waypoints, but the entire sheets as HTML or XML.
Currently, the only option is the EasyGPS LOC file. But we're planning on providing support for GPX as well (may not be ready by launch though). You'll basically get all the data currently on the cache detail page except for logs.

 

quote:
Is the "Free Ebook reader" somehow tied to this data or is this ebook format a very open/standard thing so those on the fringe aren't excluded?
The ebook itself is compiled and binary, so its not particularly useful outside the reader but it is based on the "Open-ebook" standard. Just don't ask me what that means. icon_smile.gif

 

quote:
I'm really interested in seeing this succeed. You have some great ideas there!
Thanks!

 

-Elias

 

[This message was edited by Elias on June 07, 2002 at 12:37 AM.]

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robertlipe

robertlipe

Posted
Posted

quote:
Currently, the only option is the EasyGPS LOC file. But we're planning on providing support for GPX as well (may not be ready by launch though). You'll basically get all the data currently on the cache detail page except for logs.

 

Since you can't express all the data (the prose, the hint, etc.) as an easy GPS file, I'm speculating that your second sentence is also predicated upon GPX, isn't it?

 

quote:
The ebook itself is compiled and binary, so its not particularly useful outside the reader but it is based on the "Open-ebook" standard. Just don't ask me what that means. icon_smile.gif

 

Oh. It's probably the stuff from openebook.org. I'll reserve my grumbling until I've had to parse the data.

 

Does the openbook rendition of the sheets contain the logs?

 

Thanx for the clarifications.

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robertlipe

robertlipe

Posted
Posted

quote:
Currently, the only option is the EasyGPS LOC file. But we're planning on providing support for GPX as well (may not be ready by launch though). You'll basically get all the data currently on the cache detail page except for logs.

 

Since you can't express all the data (the prose, the hint, etc.) as an easy GPS file, I'm speculating that your second sentence is also predicated upon GPX, isn't it?

 

quote:
The ebook itself is compiled and binary, so its not particularly useful outside the reader but it is based on the "Open-ebook" standard. Just don't ask me what that means. icon_smile.gif

 

Oh. It's probably the stuff from openebook.org. I'll reserve my grumbling until I've had to parse the data.

 

Does the openbook rendition of the sheets contain the logs?

 

Thanx for the clarifications.

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mrcpu

+mrcpu

Posted
Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Ideology:

Is there any chance of making the date format a little easier for we international people? For example, if something says 7/6/02, we have no idea whether that is 7 June 02 or 6 July 02. (Or in Japan, 2 June 2007!) What about using a format like "7 Jun 02" or even make the format settable in the user profiles?

 

Thanks,

George.

 

I concure! The ISO International standard is YEAR/MONTH/DAY as in 02/06/07... which I think is just as stupid as 06/07/02, 06/7/02 7/06/02 or 07/06/02 !!!

 

Numerical dates are generally a BAD idea and this is why the military standard is day MON year as in 07 JUN 2002... ABSOLUTELY NO QUESTION AS TO WHAT THIS IS!!!

 

As for the interface I would just make the month a drop down with labels of Jan, Feb etc and values of 1, 2 etc so that the back end programming doesn't have to worry about it. Also means you don't have to do as much error detection on the information that is put in. Using a pulldown for the year is probably a good idea starting with 2000,2001,2002,2003 and sometime in the future adding 2004 when it gets closer.

 

Cheers,

 

Rob

 

Rob

Mobile Cache Command

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blscearce

+blscearce

Posted
Posted

That looks terrific. The only improvement I would suggest is that the terrain/difficulty selectors should be ranges rather than minima, and the only concern I have is that from what I've read of eBook, it's pretty cramped compared to HTML, so it might be hard to render people's descriptions if they included tables, lists, etc.

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parkrrrr

+parkrrrr

Posted
Posted

quote:
Originally posted by robertlipe:

The ebook itself is compiled and binary, so its not particularly useful outside the reader but it is based on the "Open-ebook" standard. Just don't ask me what that means. icon_smile.gif

 

Oh. It's probably the stuff from openebook.org. I'll reserve my grumbling until I've had to parse the data.

 

But the stuff from openebook.org is based on XML, which isn't what I'd call "compiled and binary."

 

If it is the stuff from openebook.org, there's an easy way to make it easier to parse: the Open eBook standard allows nonstandard extensions, so long as they have stylesheet entries. Thus, you could mix in new elements such as, say, latitude and longitude without violating the Open eBook compatibility, so long as the names of the elements don't collide. The result would have to have its own schema defined, of course, but it should be compatible with existing Open eBook readers as well.

 

warm.gif

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parkrrrr

+parkrrrr

Posted
Posted

quote:
Originally posted by robertlipe:

The ebook itself is compiled and binary, so its not particularly useful outside the reader but it is based on the "Open-ebook" standard. Just don't ask me what that means. icon_smile.gif

 

Oh. It's probably the stuff from openebook.org. I'll reserve my grumbling until I've had to parse the data.

 

But the stuff from openebook.org is based on XML, which isn't what I'd call "compiled and binary."

 

If it is the stuff from openebook.org, there's an easy way to make it easier to parse: the Open eBook standard allows nonstandard extensions, so long as they have stylesheet entries. Thus, you could mix in new elements such as, say, latitude and longitude without violating the Open eBook compatibility, so long as the names of the elements don't collide. The result would have to have its own schema defined, of course, but it should be compatible with existing Open eBook readers as well.

 

warm.gif

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worldtraveler

+worldtraveler

Posted
Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Elias:

How would you tell us what your route is?

-Elias

Something like two boxes for city names, a "via" box (or boxes) for highway numbers, and a final box for the maximum distance from the route.

 

So the query could read something like, "Caches within [X distance] of [highway #] between [city A] and [city B]." These would, of course, be used in conjunction with the other filters you've already described, so your query could actually be more specific as to cache type, etc.

 

Worldtraveler

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eattick

+eattick

Posted
Posted

This is more in tune with what I would like to see! I like the fact that it appears that you will get all results of the query in ONE .loc file, which I think is fantastic. I am curious however about one of the comments concerning the ebook stuff. One of the things that I do every week prior to heading out is go thru the actual pages for the caches and select all of the logs and also decrypt them. I then save the page in its entirety to disk and transfer it to my laptop. That way, I dont need to print them all, I just pull them up on the laptop when I need to. (really beneficial if you get to a cache and dont remember that its a multi-cache and you need the clues) Is there any way to support doing this automatically? just the text mind you, even in a very simple format other than HTML. It seems that there are already plans in place to get the cache description output to the ebook format, I am just wondering if its possible to expand that to include ALL of the logs and the decrypted hint.

 

Thanks for all of your hard work.

Tick

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unclerojelio

+unclerojelio

Posted
Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Elias:

How would you tell us what your route is?

-Elias

It could be simply a list of waypoints. Just like the 'route' function on a GPSr.

 

Come to think of it, I think I saw a 'distance from line segement' function the other day in the gfc(Geographic Foundation Classes) icon_wink.gif

 

... Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--

I took the one less traveled by, ...

 

unclerojelio

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unclerojelio

+unclerojelio

Posted
Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Elias:

How would you tell us what your route is?

-Elias

It could be simply a list of waypoints. Just like the 'route' function on a GPSr.

 

Come to think of it, I think I saw a 'distance from line segement' function the other day in the gfc(Geographic Foundation Classes) icon_wink.gif

 

... Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--

I took the one less traveled by, ...

 

unclerojelio

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Elias

Elias

Posted
Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Ideology:

Is there any chance of making the date format a little easier for we international people?

This is really a site-wide issue and not one specific to this search engine. I don't want to get off topic here as this forum is providing great feedback, but I'll tell you that as we migrate the site to .NET, it is one of my design goals to provide better localization options for the international community.

 

However, we'll make it clear on the search page what the date format is.

 

-Elias

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Elias

Elias

Posted
Posted

quote:
Originally posted by robertlipe:

Since you can't express all the data (the prose, the hint, etc.) as an easy GPS file, I'm speculating that your second sentence is also predicated upon GPX, isn't it?

We're going to try to extend the current LOC format to include some additional data - provided it doesn't break EasyGPS. We haven't done any testing of this yet, so I can't say, but if we can add additional tags to the format and EasyGPS will still work, then we'll add the data. If not, then the additional data won't be available in LOC and will have to wait for GPX.

 

quote:
Does the openbook rendition of the sheets contain the logs?
No, not for version 1. We've been tossing the idea around about including the logs in a future version, but we really need to see how well this new feature scales before deciding on what we can add.

 

-Elias

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Elias

Elias

Posted
Posted

quote:
Originally posted by blscearce:

...and the only concern I have is that from what I've read of eBook, it's pretty cramped compared to HTML, so it might be hard to render people's descriptions if they included tables, lists, etc.

Yeah, we're wondering about this as well. We're going to try to let the ebook publishing software convert the HTML tags from the cache descriptions to maintain some of the custom formatting. If we find that it just makes a mess, then we'll end up stripping out the HTML.

 

-Elias

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Elias

Elias

Posted
Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Tick and Sparkie:

This is more in tune with what I would like to see! I like the fact that it appears that you will get all results of the query in ONE .loc file, which I think is fantastic. I am curious however about one of the comments concerning the ebook stuff.... It seems that there are already plans in place to get the cache description output to the ebook format, I am just wondering if its possible to expand that to include ALL of the logs and the decrypted hint.

See my other post above about the logs. The hint will be included in the ebook.

 

-Elias

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Elias

Elias

Posted
Posted

quote:
Originally posted by worldtraveler:

Something like two boxes for city names, a "via" box (or boxes) for highway numbers, and a final box for the maximum distance from the route.

quote:
Originally posted by unclerojelio:

It could be simply a list of waypoints. Just like the 'route' function on a GPSr.

The problem is the interface we'd have to create so you could tell us what your route is. Serious thought has to be put into how to order and store that data, whether the data is just waypoints, highway vectors from a shape file, geocoding of addresses, etc... This would really be its own feature and there's a lot more to this to do it correctly. I'm not saying its not doable, but its certainly way out of scope for the purposes of this search feature.

 

I'd like to keep this discussion on topic, so if you wanted to explore this idea further, I'd suggest posting it as a possible feature enhancement in the Geocaching.com Discussion forum. If you guys along with other geocachers can hash out what you think the interface should be and what features you think it would need to be sucessful, then its something we could consider as a possible future enhancement.

 

-Elias

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Elias

Elias

Posted
Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Markwell:

What about an option to export to a simple ASCII delimited file? Some of us have very powerful tools off-line that would work quite well with this feature...

We're building all our functions, classes, and data models around XML, so that's the format we're focused on supporting. There are third-party tools available like Geobuddy which will help you convert the data into other formats.

 

-Elias

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sbell111

+sbell111

Posted
Posted

Wow. Thanks for all the hard work you guys have put into this.

 

For us 'non-techies' that didn't understand the first bit of any of the comments above, will there be instruction on the website that explains how to work this engine and what to do with the output?

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Team StitchesOnQuilts

+Team StitchesOnQuilts

Posted
Posted

I like the design, the way it's set up, and that the searches can execute "off hours" and the results then emailed to me.

 

You may have already incorporated this, but I'd like to be able to request difficulties and/or terrains *less than* a number, rather than just greater than.

 

Between me being, er, "pleasingly plump" (well, maybe that's wishful thinking) and my little sons still having rather short legs, being able to get just caches that are 1/1 or 1.5/1.5 would be very helpful.

 

Thanks for all your hard work!

 

Shannah

icon_smile.gif

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Team StitchesOnQuilts

+Team StitchesOnQuilts

Posted
Posted

I like the design, the way it's set up, and that the searches can execute "off hours" and the results then emailed to me.

 

You may have already incorporated this, but I'd like to be able to request difficulties and/or terrains *less than* a number, rather than just greater than.

 

Between me being, er, "pleasingly plump" (well, maybe that's wishful thinking) and my little sons still having rather short legs, being able to get just caches that are 1/1 or 1.5/1.5 would be very helpful.

 

Thanks for all your hard work!

 

Shannah

icon_smile.gif

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robertlipe

robertlipe

Posted
Posted

quote:
Originally posted by StitchesOnQuilts:

 

You may have already incorporated this, but I'd like to be able to request difficulties and/or terrains *less than* a number, rather than just greater than.

 

Shannah

icon_smile.gif

 

With no inside knowledge, I'm guessing you can do that. Look carefully at the picture and you'll that the "is greater equal than" text appears on a pulldown menu. While it's possible that a programmer would put a sole option on a menu, no self-respecting one would. If they went to the trouble to make it a menu, it's likely becuase there are other variations ("is greater than or equal to", "is lesser than", "is equal to", etc.) that are available.

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