>The full SGML system at EBT addresses the need for authored structural
>addressability.
>The type of subdocument addressability that I am looking for would allow a
>search
>engine to refer to the last paragraph in chapter 2 spanning to the first
>paragraph
>of chapter 4 (potentially spanning 3 html files) as a region of
>information to be
>presented to a user which satisfies a complex "how to" query.
That's a bit of a tough one, but everyone in the search business is looking
at redefining the definition of a document in order to accomodate searches
against logical units within logical units. Soon, one might search each
server as if it were a single document, for example, in order to select
which servers to search further.
>I'd also like to construct complex standing queries about "the president
>of the
>United States" in the news, which returns a conditional result. The selection
>mechanism for a search engine can be distinct from both the scoring and
>highlighting
>mechanisms. An older document might incorrectly highlight the word
>"Clinton" if he
>was "govenor Clinton" at the time.
This is where knowledgebases come in handy, to tout our technology for a moment.
I'm not sure that I see where these issues would have a direct effect on
implementations of client-side highlighting. The information about what to
highlight would still have to come from the search engine.
Nick