Online search

[freischneider]

@freischneider Here is the exact configuration file that determines what is suggested for typed word (or part of a word). If you do a search for "spo" in this file, you will see what is suggested if you type "spo" in Locus using German language. It is (conceptually) as simple as that. This file was created for us by user Balloni, please take it as a reference. If anyone is interested in improving this file -- also applies to other languages -- that's great, but first: I should properly explain how it all works to editors. (It is important, really, you see it). Also we should set up some collaborative platform for this. Let me know if you want to participate here, please.You cannot view this attachment. 

In principle, I am ready to help. I will take the time.
But I am not sure if I know how to work with JSON. I have never heard this before. and I don't want to do anything wrong.
Suggestion:
Open a topic for improving the search.
Make a child topic for each language (or the most important ones).
In the first post mention the people working on the file and how to make suggestions.
Then all people can make suggestions for improvement.
The person who adds the suggestion to the file clicks on the "Say thank you" button. Then other admins (editors of the file) will see that it has already been added.

[Gerhard57]

When i look at the thesaurus_de.json file there is

    "charging_station_bikes" : "Ladestation für Fahrräder, E-Bike, Aufladen",
    "charging_station_cars" : "Ladestation, KFZ, Elektro",

but seaching Ladestation finds only one category "Ladestation für Autos" with another different name??

[T-mo]

I am also willing to support, maybe collaborative country-teams might be a solution.

I guess you already have special characters in view, e.g. german umlauts, ö<>oe etc.
tourism is 'Tourimus' and generally the words should also be added separately, like some others already (Essen, Trinken).

Popular searches (fast food, discounters, gas stations, etc.) might help, whatever that might include and it will extend and grow with more and more searches. Sure, advanced and just a filter that might be added anytime somewhere in your lookup-filter-chain. Just a thought.

This is tricky sure, see my vid, searching for 'mc do' needs to  trigger search 'mcdo', whitespaces, and very probably the popular 'Mc Donalds' is meant. Just as stupid example.
'mc dö' might possibly be a search-suggestion as list-item for searches around german locations. Some might be looking for 'Mc Döner', like suggested in the vid, just zillion miles alway.
What if you type 'mill' ? are you searching for categories or specific names, windmill, million..mispelling millitary, and some people also name modern wind turbines a windmill..just for fun. World searches will be versatile
I guess also a list for popular typos might be of help, to suggest replacement or even trigger further searchs.

[Tapio]

Why not just adding it to https://crowdin.com/project/menion/de#?

[Radim V]

Why not just adding it to https://crowdin.com/project/menion/de#?

I didn't want to do that as this is not "translation" and some non-trivial context needs to be explained.

[Radim V]

When i look at the thesaurus_de.json file there is

    "charging_station_bikes" : "Ladestation für Fahrräder, E-Bike, Aufladen",
    "charging_station_cars" : "Ladestation, KFZ, Elektro",

but seaching Ladestation finds only one category "Ladestation für Autos" with another different name??

I have given more space to the categories in the stack of results. There will be 2.

[Radim V]

I am also willing to support, maybe collaborative country-teams might be a solution.

I guess you already have special characters in view, e.g. german umlauts, ö<>oe etc.
tourism is 'Tourimus' and generally the words should also be added separately, like some others already (Essen, Trinken).

Popular searches (fast food, discounters, gas stations, etc.) might help, whatever that might include and it will extend and grow with more and more searches. Sure, advanced and just a filter that might be added anytime somewhere in your lookup-filter-chain. Just a thought.

This is tricky sure, see my vid, searching for 'mc do' needs to  trigger search 'mcdo', whitespaces, and very probably the popular 'Mc Donalds' is meant. Just as stupid example.
'mc dö' might possibly be a search-suggestion as list-item for searches around german locations. Some might be looking for 'Mc Döner', like suggested in the vid, just zillion miles alway.
What if you type 'mill' ? are you searching for categories or specific names, windmill, million..mispelling millitary, and some people also name modern wind turbines a windmill..just for fun. World searches will be versatile
I guess also a list for popular typos might be of help, to suggest replacement or even trigger further searchs.

Special characters - of course, there is "unaccent" procedure. Mc Do - we do not think names of companies are synonyms of categories. This is never done, at least so far. Typos, popular misspellings e.t.c: Yes, especially for short terms guessing what is actually meant can be very, very tricky. Not from technical point of view, but from "how to go about this?" point of view. So I suggest to focus on plain, simple and thoroughly considered configuration. Then the categories suggestion module will be ...not super smart, but definitely good enough.

[T-mo]

Sure, the example of brand names was not about categories.
when searching for online adresses and places, LoPoints on the Internet, then you generally don't really know if someone is searching for a POI-name or is thinking about a category or fragments of its description.
But I stop here to not overcomplicate things, focusing on locus-specific scenarios makes sense. No-one expects to cover 'park' like car-parking, park as a place to visit or a misspelled CenterParc of a german and the user should still complete his search-text.
well there's already G-maps to cover extended needs.

[Jan Čapek]

If I explicitely search for health, then I explicitly search for health. Sure, there might be a pet shop nearby. Honestly I currently have no idea of an usecase of such extended results without any differentiation.

Ah, then it is something else than to what I replied before. You are referring to cumulating child categories under "top level" one like "Health", which are all highlighted in such case, I get it now. Yep, there is some definition of hiearchery of POIs categories, which we might review based on such feedbacks. Thanks

Clicking somewhere else was intuitively to get more map screen space, no bottom point detail, and also by mistake, sometimes i don't hit a POI precisely.

I understand what you mean now I think. Yep, when you are in search screen, you will "lost" it when doing long-press only, however when in POI detail from search, short-press cancels everything. This is by design, as when users are in POI details, most likely higher probability is they already found what they wanted and doesn't need to go back. This of course brings mentioned issue for other cases, where they want to go through more POI details listed in search results. We will think about this.

I noticed it zooms to the first result

In case you don't go directly from suggestions to POI/adress detail, you will always have even your previous map position on screen when opening search results exactly for reasons you mentioned: To not loose idea where nearest results are related to your previous map area. So the map area is calculated to show your your previous position and nerest one now with same safe margins as most general behavior rule to any search case. Before we will as planned split it to more distinct behaviours based on spread of search results.

POI on the map do not open.

That is not correct behaviour - can you please record screen video of this? I can't simulate it.

Also with search: Fountain I would like C. Drinking water and C. Source. At the moment there is no category at all.

As Radim wrote, that thesaurus file is something else than defined hirearchy of POIs.
1) If "fountain" word is used in the german, you should get related fountain category under this search. That is to be added to thesaurus file.   
2) What other categories are related with category fountain are based on defined (somewhere else) category hirearchy. We  welcome  all specific suggestions here, but please keep in mind that they might be highly subjective. I definitely don't think that "drinking water" category should appear under "fountain", as this is not case in real world in many places of earth. 

[Andrew Heard]

For consistency, could the category hirearchy be the same as offline LoPoints?

[freischneider]

POI on the map do not open.

That is not correct behaviour - can you please record screen video of this? I can't simulate it.

I don't think I clicked correctly. It was auto rotate on and I didn't hit it right.
But I noticed that the center for clicking is under the icon. If I click slightly below it, it is activated. If I click slightly above it, it is not activated.
I think it makes sense to put the center in the middle of the icon or to extend the area upwards more than downwards.
Most users will try to click exactly on the icon and not under it.
The real place should be already below the small arrow. But the area to activate should not be.

[Jan Čapek]

For consistency, could the category hirearchy be the same as offline LoPoints?

I understand request. But as online search is the new stuff, the answer is, if the offline category hierarchy can be same with online one.   And hopefully yes, but this will be confirmed during second development phase, where we will focus to old offline searches.

[Andrew Heard]

I'm still quite confused how the new online search works. Again (next town on cycle trip) I look for a laundromat. Google Maps finds nearest 1km away. It works reliably every time. It has "cleaners" in the name, so I return to Locus & type "cleaner" but the nearest match is 1000km+! Please suggest how I would accomplish this simple task with just LM rather than Maps 1st then trying to match addresses. Thanks.

BTW the hamburger menu is still quite slow to respond sometimes.

[Tapio]

I guess the Locus Search doesn't have access to those? I searched for "Wäscherei",Google Maps has many, but LM (and OAM) doesn't have those, maybe shop:laundry hasn't been included.

[Andrew Heard]

After reading the 4.17 News I made some progress, but IMHO it shows improvement is possible. As before, I type "cleaner" BUT now (for 1st time also) tap the Enter/ Find button - now the map zooms out to be 1000km across - grrr, but it now also displays the button SEARCH THIS AREA (so which area was being searched before??), so I carefully zoom back to where I was (REALLY annoying LM), tap the mentioned button, and it now lists the "cleaner" that Google Maps had also suggested just 1km away. I feel this experience can be improved quite a lot but I'll leave it for now, maybe for the developers to reproduce my use-case & frustration.