Mac OS X Tiger to feature more powerful search kit

A new version of Apple's Search Kit due to ship with Mac OS X Tiger will reportedly contain several improvements over the version introduced in Mac OS X Panther, including search indexing that is up to three times faster than before.

According to sources, developers writing software for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger will be able to use several new function calls to achieve search-as-you-type performance within their applications.

Applications that are aware of the new Search Kit will also allow users to search for text contained within a word or combine search patterns to form complex search expressions.

Additionally, the updated Search Kit will provide optional proximity indexing and quoted phrase searching, greater control over indexing and searching options, and an improved search syntax.

Sources say that Tiger developers will be able to displaying their search results with an improved relevance ranking that supports absolute relevance with incremental results. Optionally, developers may choose to use a new unranked search, which sources say will be much faster than the ranked version.

In recent weeks AppleInsider has provided extensive coverage of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. Previous reports include coverage of Tiger's Spotlight search, Safari with RSS, Mail 2.0 with smart mailboxes, iCal 1.5.3, Resolution Independent UI and 256x256 Icons, AppleScript 1.10, Installer 2.0, web enabled Help, Fast Logout, Access Control Lists, OpenGL enhancements, adoption of OpenAL, Core Data, Core Audio improvements,PDF Kit, SQLite, and networking-related enhancements.

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11 Comments

hmurchison

said about 19 years ago

In what scenarious would you use Search Kit over Spotlight? Or do the two work hand in hand with each other?

rok

said about 19 years ago

Quote:

Originally posted by hmurchison
In what scenarious would you use Search Kit over Spotlight? Or do the two work hand in hand with each other?

if i'm reading this correctly, search kit is a developer level tool, whereas spotlight works on the file system itself (outside of the applications). but there certainly could be some overlap. an example might be itunes' ability to whittle down the selected library or playlist as you increase search terms. spotlight wouldn't do this, search kit would. whereas if you are searching for something system-wide from the finder, spotlight is the answer (and here might be some of that overlap, as spotlight could also look through your itunes library from a system level).

basically, if i am understanding this correctly, if you are a developer, you can embed an itunes-searching-like tool inside your app without reinventng the wheel.

now couple this with, say, dashboard widget creation and automator, and, well, you're putting some pretty scary-level power in the hands of folks to make some nice applications.

hmurchison

said about 19 years ago

rok

Yeah you're right. I see the difference now. I absolutely LOVE the "Seach as you type". I'm using Opera and it does that on my bookmarks and I don't want to be without this feature ever again. I still keep my bookmarks organized but simply typing in say "app" pulls up apple.com, appleinsider.com faster than clicking through the hierarchy. I'm going to harass Omni until they add this to Omniweb bookmarks(I'm not sure if it does this already).