Question Parsing

A Metamorph query will by default be parsed for noise before the main words are sent out to the executed search. The intent is that a user can phrase his search request in a manner which reflects how he is thinking about it, without requiring him to categorize his thoughts into a syntactical procedure.

You do have the option to keep the noise words as significant words in the query. This choice can be invoked by setting the APICP flag keepnoise to on. If off, as is the Metamorph default used by Texis, the question parser is invoked and allowed to exercise discretion in determining what is most important about your query. This selection process determines what should be treated as a search word, and therefore included in the set count and intersection quantity assigned to each significant search item.

A need to edit these lists would be most likely to come up if one were searching language from a different era or with a vastly different language style; perhaps for example the Bible. Where "thee's" and "thou's" replace "you" and "yours", certain things should be filtered out from the query that might not be entered in the list. These categories can be defined as follows, where all of these categories are grouped for APICP programming purposes under "noise".

Noise

Small, common, relational words which appear frequently in a particular language and refine and fine tune specific communications, but do not majorly affect the larger concepts under discussion; e.g., about, in, on, whether.

Pronouns

Words indicating person, number, and gender which are used in place of other nouns; e.g., her, his, we, them, its.

Is

Words indicating state of being or existence, or used as auxiliary verbs as assistive in defining tense and use; e.g., is, being, was.

Questions

Words indicating a question is being asked and requires an answer or response; e.g., what, where, when.

Syntax for setting a custom list inside a Vortex script is as follows, where what you write in would override the default internal noise list:

  <$noiselist = "am" "are" "was" "were" "thee" "thou" "has" "hast"
     "from" "hence">
  <apicp noise $noiselist>