: space, so identifying a function vs. a group clause hinders any progress. : Is that why they separated the functionality of queries using the : defType=func?
The function syntax in solr predates the new QueryNode based QueryParser in lucene. The main motivation behind "defType" was to refactor out out query parsing so you could have multiple different Query Parser (lucene, dismax, func, etc...) impls (with arbitrary query syntaxes) that could be mixed and matched in differetn situations (q, fq, etc...). having one universal syntax that melds the historic lucene syntax with arbitrary functions is something probably too hairy to fathom. I'm also not sure that it would really provide much value add: different syntaxes for different audiences seems like a saner idea (let end-users enter dismax queries, let advanced users and biz managers specify things in lucene queries, let solr admins configure boost queries using function syntax that refers to variable params specified by biz uers, etc...) -Hoss
