info on how RH searches?

[Tech_Writer_KC]

Hello,

(background: RH7, .chm files with a master project / sub-projects setup)

Does anyone know of a good source of info on how the search feature in a .chm help ranks results?

After fixing our search system (an .hhp issue was mucking up our search and limiting it to the index), we now seem to have the opposite "problem" - namely some searches returning a lot of results! (can't please everyone 😉 ).

In addition, the ranking seems a little random in how results are positioned - I'd assume it'd simply be by # of instances of the search term, but that doesn't seem to always be the case.

Looking through the forums, I don't believe (knock on wood) that we're suffering from any of the other common issues reported with search, such as missing or duplicate results. This issue also isn't related to the use of words like "and" or "by" that can be resolved through the exclusion list.

In other words, rather than trying to fix an issue, this is more about optimizing what seems to be a more or less working feature.

PS: In searching the forums, I found a thread on a piece of software called "Zoomsearch", that appears to give Google-like results for webhelp projects.

Does anyone know of something similar that would work for .chm files?

[RoboColum_n_]

I could be wrong here but I think the search results are "ranked" only by the topic title. The number of hits is irrelevant. If you have Topic A and Topic C both of which contain the search string, Topic A will always we shown first in the list as it's topic title is alphabetically before topic C. Note I said topic title not the file name.

As far as mimicing Zoomsearch, I'm not aware of anything and as a CHM file is a compiled file and therefore contains everything needed to use it I'd say it would be impossible to mimic but what do I know. Perhaps someone with more experience of CHM file makeup can confirm this. If I am right, one way around this may be to use one of the many pieces of software that can search a CHM file's contents but it would mean having to implement two things.

[Peter Grainge]

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms669980.aspx#20

[Tech_Writer_KC]

Thanks - the answer looks straight-forward enough. I wish there were a way to disable the "rank each #1 result first", as it really pushes down more relevant topics simply because they're #2 or #3 within their own .chm file...