Search includes all fields | FieldWorks Lite

Submission

Josh Purviance

Sep 11, 2025

Board: Features
Status: Closed

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Search includes all fields

!! Moved to: https://community.software.sil.org/t/search-includes-all-fields/10791/5 The search results only show the entries in which the search query matches the Entry name field. It would be a nice configuration option if other fields could also be searched over. E.g. when the search query term appears within an example sentence, that entry would also appear in the search results list.

Josh Purviance

Sep 11, 2025

5

Timothy HaasdykOct 6, 2025

This request has been migrated to: https://community.software.sil.org/t/search-includes-all-fields/10791/5

Kevin HahnSep 12, 2025

Thanks for the feedback Josh, there is actually some more specific filters if you click the filter icon to the right of the search bar, then you can filter on specific fields. Right now it's just a short list of fields and we can add example sentence, what else would you like to see there?

Josh PurvianceSep 12, 2025

I think a "search all possible fields" would be most useful to me. I use it to see how the search query is used within the context of example sentences for different entries. Also in our dictionary, the notes field also frequently lists alternate words that are more often used in the vernacular, and it's nice to see this. I'll edit the original submission to show a picture of how this works in the Dictionary-App-Builder generated output. UPDATE: I guess in Userjot I can't modify this original submission's content to include a picture.

Kevin HahnSep 12, 2025

We may consider expanding the fields that the search matches, but doing a search across all fields would be quite a bit of work to deal with, it also draws a lot of questions, for example how should complex forms work? Currently the search box searches on: * Lexeme Form * Citation Form * Gloss * Definition and the results are ordered by relevance, with headword being the most relevant and definition being the least. I want to avoid adding other fields because you could end up with a lot of false positives if you're searching for a word. As an example if you type "The" the expectation is that you want to find the Entry for "The" or a word with a gloss of "The", but if we matched on example sentence then you would get a whole lot of noise. I suppose if we made example sentence an even lower priority then that might work well.

Josh PurvianceSep 12, 2025

In our standalone dictionary app (which was created by Dictionary App Builder) the example sentences (or if there was a match in the Notes field) those show up as lower priority results after the lexeme/gloss. Even though you're right that it increases the noise, it's a nice feature. Thanks for considering!