[Blacklight-development] blacklight questiosn

[Jonathan Rochkind]

Hi all, I've started taking a look at the Blacklight code. Very nice 
clean code, nice job. [ Although some more comments wouldn't have hurt! :) ]

There are a few things I'm having trouble figuring out, and some 
questions about features and if you considered them or implemented them 
or not.

I see you store the entire marc record in a field, and use that  stored 
MARC for display, the index fields are just used for indexing. Which 
makes sense; I understand that right?

I don't understand how the default_controller.rb comes into play.  
Nothing I know about Rails says anything about a "default controller"  
being part of rails--and I don't see any of the other controllers  
extending or including it---so what is this file used for, if anything?  
Is it leftover from a previous version, and should be deleted?

I see that I don't think you've handled 'status' (checked out,  
available, etc.) at all, true?  Do you handle serial holdings at all 
(ie, showing what the ranges of coverage or individual volumes held are 
for a serial, right in Blacklight?).

Have you tried to tackle highlighting of _where_ in the record your 
search matched, at all?  Do you know what I mean?

You don't support any kind of fielded search except for limiting by  
facets right now, right? No way to enter a fielded keyword search?

And in general, I'm having trouble understanding how the Flare code 
works exactly, what is the heart of both the indexing and the display, 
yes?  Any advice for understanding what's going on there? I admit I 
haven't done much with SOLR; if I understand SOLR, will the Flare API 
map pretty obviously to SOLR functions?

Jonathan



-- 
Jonathan Rochkind
Digital Services Software Engineer
The Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University
410.516.8886 
rochkind (at) jhu.edu