Xapian

Xapian is one of the indexation/search engines I'm planning on integrating to Dokeos instead of the current indexation/search engine that we have at the moment: MnoGoSearch. There are many reasons for that change:
  • MnoGoSearch server is not GPL under Window, which makes it impossible for us to ship as part of Dokeos
  • MnoGoSearch has crappy support mailin-lists
  • MnoGoSearch's packages in various distributions are not maintained
  • Xapian has *many* interfaces in many languages, all regularly maintained. The PHP interface also allows for indexation, which means we can do indexation on-the-fly, and do not have to rely on a cron-ed process to spider a website or a database later on
  • MnoGoSearch's documentation is baed on Russian documentation and translated to Englih by Russians who, obviously, don't master English enough to make a good documentation
Anyway, I read today that OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) XO is using Xapian internally. This doesn't mean anything directly or in the interest of Dokeos, but it is interesting to learn that other big known projects are using it as well, plus here it's got to do with education and it's one project I'm interested in as well.