Ideas for query interface

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Goals

We have a column with all the obects and apply a filter to get another column.

Filters could be

• contains text (in any attribute)
• contains text in a specific attribute
• has certain object type
• is directly related (to the (selected) objects)
  • not selecting anything and creating another column gives everything 2nd degree related
• is indirectly related (by a path)

The column is divided by object type.

• clicking on an object type selects the type as a filter

Unfolding the object type shows the selected instances.

• clicking on the instance selects the instance (show the direct relations in the next column?)

It should be possible to select attributes to display in the column. (Default own-value?)

Some objects would have more complex display rules, e.g. Witness showing author and title (from text).

Prototype

These goals are being partially achieved using a Python webapp based on the ​whoosh search library and ​Tornado web framework. The prototype in development is hosted on GitHub:

​https://github.com/jamieklassen/ismi-search

Current Features Implemented

• Filters -- all can be matched exactly or approximately:
  • contains text (in any attribute)
  • contains text in a specific attribute
  • contains text in any attribute approximately matching a query string
• Results are sorted by object type
• Unfolding the object type shows the selected instances
• It is possible to select which attributes to display for each group of instances

Outstanding issues are tracked ​here.