I think we should be designing a system that exposes metadata, but we
shouldn't specify too much how the search logic works. What I would
*really* like is a metadata script language that can be passed in freenet
messages (very carefully designed for security of course).
What would happen is a client would contain an implementation of search
written in this script language that is passed to the first node. The
script executes on that node, doing whatever it feels necessary with the
metadata to determine hit or miss, as well as selecting the next neighbor
to propogate itself.
This way we can not only design a search mechanism, but people can design
competing ones, so that smarter people than us can evolve more intelligent
searching.
Some issues that we'd have to consider when designing the language:
* The script cannot modify any of the message contents (ie it cannot set
HTL higher or lower)
* The script can only execute for a limited amount of time.
* The script cannot create new requests.
* It can only access a limited number of well defined functions..
you see what I'm getting at. It would be a very restricted, very specific
language to prevent viruses, but would be flexible enough to implement
better search trimming than we can come up with.
Scott
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