aparks517

Happy Friday! I built Doc Search with the generous help and advice of my wife. During a long car ride, we got to talking about the increasing difficulty of finding in-depth information on many topics using consumer-focused search engines. She lamented the disappearance of the option to show only PDFs in the search results as well as the shift toward "helpfully" ignoring some of the terms or directives she would try to add to a query to refine it.

I think I understand (at least some of) the constraints and incentives that push consumer search engines to work the way they do and I suspect the current state of the art strikes a good balance in accommodating them. After all, there are a lot of really smart people working on the problem.

By scoping the problem differently, I suspect that smaller operators can build tools shaped by different constraints and incentives and provide better service to their respective niches. Doc Search is my contribution to this effort. We've been using it for the past eighteen months or so as I've worked to grow the index. It's getting to the point where it usually gets us useful results, so I thought it would be a good time to share it and solicit broader feedback.

I hope you find it useful! Please let me know what you think. I'm also happy to answer any questions you may have.

Print magazines worked on the same principle; the ones that are left still do. I subscribe to one magazine. In it, all of the editorial content is up front and the back third is nothing but ads. I still read them -- sometimes I start there! -- because I genuinely want to know what's going on and what products are available in the niche this magazine covers.

In the United States, engineering drawings or reports submitted to local, state, or federal government agencies typically have to be stamped by a licensed professional engineer. You'll sometimes see similar requirements in private industry as well.

Around here (and maybe in all of the United States?) you don't have to be a PE to call yourself an engineer, but I think in some countries you do. I personally reserve the expression "real engineer" for PE's who can stamp drawings and have the license and insurance to back it up.

But, hey. What do I know? I'm probably overpaying by going to a "real" dentist.

For sure. I stood in line for the original iPhone, owned every model (except the 5C) up through the 6, then an SE, X, and now an 11 Pro since it came out. I played around with Siri when it debuted, but didn't use it much. I turned it off at some point (I think it was when Apple was catching grief for keeping recordings or something like that) and haven't missed it. I'm not against it especially -- it just never really became part of my life.

"Get lucky" is solid advice, but you've also got to give luck something to work with. I think your overnight success started a long time ago, at least as far back as when you showed your manager you weren't a bozo.

Thank you for your kind words! For lofi.limo I support back to Chrome 49 and Firefox 52 (the last versions available for Windows XP), which I /think/ both have Fetch, so I could have probably used it here.

Fetch has about the same capabilities as XHR, so it should be a drop-in replacement in this project. Let's call it an exercise for the reader! ;)

Thank you for your suggestions! I'll see if I can write a few intelligent sentences on these (somewhat more advanced) subjects.

I don’t expect it to as long as the mark-up is valid. Perhaps someone with more SEO knowledge will stop by to correct me.

Oh, wow... I hadn't even thought of the diff angle, but it makes all the sense in the world. I've heard some authors even start each clause on its own line. I'm not sure I'm ready for that yet.

Aw... you didn't read to the end ;)

> The right way to tie your shoes is with a square knot. It's easy to confuse this with the granny knot, which is the wrong way. The square knot is a simple and sound knot with many uses. The granny knot is an unsound knot whose only known uses are to make your shoelaces look crooked and to trip you.

Thank you for the kind words! I've been working on adapting this style for web apps, but I haven't got it figured out well enough to write an article about. Yet...

I wouldn't mind if we had a bunch more basic content documents on the web.