OPAC: putting search terms in double quotes does not always prevent stemming

[Charles P Wiggins]

According to Evergreen documentation, double quotation marks are supposed to override the stemming algorithm and force an exact search. This does not seem to be working for me as expected.

See: https://docs.evergreen-ils.org/docs/latest/opac/using_the_public_access_catalog.html#stemming

I searched for titles containing [ “organ” ] with the double quotes and had to go to #8 before I saw a title that met that criterion. I still got a lot of “organic,” “organized,” and “organization.” Basically, I am getting the same results I would expect for [ organ* ]

It does seem to work with the example in the documentation, [ “parenting” ] and [ “parental” ] both work, but [ “parent” ] does not. I still get variants with the root “parent– “.

Evergreen Version: 3-11-1

Sample search: https://isothermal.ncccevergreen.org/eg/opac/results?query=%22organ%22&qtype=title&fi%3Asearch_format=&locg=121&detail_record_view=1

[Mike Rylander (mrylander)]

Yep, those are not doublequotes, as in, the shift-modified character output by the apostrophe key near the Enter key on most QWERTY-layout English keyboards. They're Apple's "smart punctuation" double quotes. Thanks, Apple.

Work seems to be happening on bug #2077586 to address this.

[Jason Boyer (jboyer)]

Apple has plenty of things to answer for (especially lately) but I'm pretty sure typographers's quotes were in Unicode 1.0, it's just easier to use them on macOS and iOS devices.

That said, it's an odd side effect, but disabling spell checking in the field will stop them from being sent so there's little backend work to do.

[Charles P Wiggins (cpwiggins)]

I am working in a Windows environment, so I am not sure how the Apple problem is applicable.

[Stephanie Leary (stephanieleary)]

Charles, I'm less familiar with the Windows punctuation settings, but "smart" punctuation is not limited to Apple. It's entirely possible that you have an OS or browser setting that's changing your quote style. In any case, the solutions being added to bug #2077586 will work across operating systems.