I've added support for the following two control strings on basic queries: sort:newest sort:oldest
Here is an example search on the gossip@jab.org list using "help sort:newest": http://www.mail-archive.com/search?l=gossip%40jab.org&q=help+sort:newest To answer your question about date formats, we are using the Python dateutil module to parse the date string: http://labix.org/python-dateutil It handles parsing almost any date format. We are using the default parameters, which means the precedence on an ambigious month / day / year order is this: http://labix.org/python-dateutil#head-b95ce2094d189a89f80f5ae52a05b4ab7b41af47 MM-DD-YY DD-MM-YY YY-MM-DD You followed up directly with me with a couple more good points. 1) When doing a basic search with a special field like "from:jeff" and then clicking to the Advanced Search should move those special fields to the appropriate form elements. I will work on this. 2) Sorting by Date Oldest instead of only Date Newest. I added this support on those special commands I mentioned at the start of this email. It's not in the Advanced Search UI yet because we don't have the translation strings for all the languages for this... Jeff On Sat, Aug 28, 2010 at 8:46 PM, Jeff Marshall <marsh...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi Esther, thanks for the suggestions. > > > > I really like the sort by date option that comes up from the Advanced > page search, but I'm curious whether there's any way to implement this as a > switch or option keyword from the regular search query. > > We should be able to add a special keyword to the regular search query to > do the sort-by-date. I'll try to work on this over the weekend. > > > > if the box is left empty, but the button has been changed from the > default "1 day" setting, is it possible for the program to search within the > specified date range, assuming that the date argument is "today"? > > Interesting idea. I'm not sure this would be intuitive to people, but > perhaps there is a way to add support for something like that and make it > obvious to people what the date search will do in that case. > > > > For date syntax, does the format (8/14/03) always default to > month/day/year, or is there a way for people to use day/month/year as a > preference? > > I'll have to double-check the date parsing code to let you know. > > > Jeff > > > > On Fri, Aug 27, 2010 at 11:00 AM, Esther <mori...@mac.com> wrote: > >> Hi Jeff, >> >> I really like the sort by date option that comes up from the Advanced page >> search, but I'm curious whether there's any way to implement this as a >> switch or option keyword from the regular search query. (From a read >> through of the Lucene document linked in the FAQ, this doesn't seem to be an >> option; they only note that results of range searches are sorted according >> to lexicography.) I find it most efficient to type a simple query, >> usually without detailed Boolean arguments or, in general, date ranges. >> Then, depending on the search results, I may modify my search syntax if I >> need to refine the search, but I usually do this by adding arguments to by >> search query rather than using the link to refine my search. Consequently, I >> only came across the Advanced Search page option a couple of weeks ago. The >> feature that I'd most like to use as an add-on to the regular search string >> is the sort by date (rather than relevance) option. Is that possible? It >> looks as though the Advanced Search page is running a Python program. >> >> Another few questions regarding the date range: if the box is left empty, >> but the button has been changed from the default "1 day" setting, is it >> possible for the program to search within the specified date range, assuming >> that the date argument is "today"? For date syntax, does the format >> (8/14/03) always default to month/day/year, or is there a way for people to >> use day/month/year as a preference? (This question is being asked because >> some International list members may prefer to use that syntax, and I was >> wondering whether there a way that the program can check this from their >> regional settings; 18 Jul 2006 seems to be interpreted correctly, as well.) >> >> Thanks very much for all your work on these archives. I've been using >> them since 2005, and have been pleasantly surprised by all the features that >> keep getting added. >> >> Cheers, >> >> Esther >> >> >> >> >> -- >> To unsubscribe, send mail to gossip-unsubscr...@jab.org. >> > >
