Search engines (was: HTML-Info design)

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

An interesting problem is Emacs and searching.  The various Gnus mail
backends have various searching interfaces, but it would be nice to have
a more general Emacs searching mechanism, where you can search parts of
directory trees, etc.

Has anybody looked into hooking into the various OS-level search
interfaces?  Spotlight in OS X, the Explorer thingie in Windows and
<something> in the various GNU/Linux distributions?

A basic search engine is easy to implement (I've done it a couple of
times), but the main work is in understanding the various file formats
and keeping the reverse index updated when files change.  If there were
OS-level search stuff we could just hook into, that would obviously be
better.

And provide searching in the Emacs manuals.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
  bloggy blog http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no/