Package search engine didn't find xxdiff when given "diff"

[Craig Carey <research@ijs.co.nz>]

The search engine for packages at the Debian main website can' find
the "xxdiff" package when I tried a variety of different searches
using the text "diff".

The Debian website knows about the xxdiff package, as this URL shows;

http://packages.debian.org/cgi-bin/search_packages2.pl?keywords=xxdiff&searchon=names&version=all&release=all

So some of the website knows about the package, but the package search
engine apparently does not.

I did search at this webpage on about 5pm Sunday 12 January 2003,

   http://www.debian.org/distrib/packages

with these options being used:

>Search package directories
>
>Keywords:    diff
>
>Search on:
>   [X]   Package names only
>   [ ]   Descriptions
>
>Allow searching on subwords:    [X]
>
>Distribution:
>   [ ]  unstable
>   [ ]  testing
>   [ ]  stable
>   [ ]  any
>
>Section:
>   [ ]  main
>   [ ]  contrib
>   [ ]  non-free
>   [ ]  non-US
>   [ ]  any
>
>Searching is very straightforward, but quite flexible:
>
>  * Searches on package names should include a single word
>  * Standard boolean logic with 'and' and 'or' can be used
>  * Even when searching on subwords is not checked, appending an
>     asterisk, '*', to the end of a keyword will allow subword
>     searching for that word.
>  * Subword searching only checks for arbitrary suffixes, not prefixes.

----

It was not a big problem since the FreeBSD search engine promptly located
information on the "xxdiff" file:

   http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/ports.cgi?query=diff&stype=all

Their search engine held information on where the homepage of the
package was. It is here:

   http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/url.cgi?ports/textproc/xxdiff/pkg-descr

A homepage of the package is definitely here:

   http://xxdiff.sourceforge.net/

___________

I got the e-mail address to send this message to, from this webpage:

   http://www.debian.org/intro/organization



Craig Carey
New Zealand