I cannot search Chinese key words

[seeking]

I like zim very much. But I found that I cannot search Chinese key words by Shift+Ctrl+F.
As you know, this is used to search for key words in all notes, not only the present one.
It is a very important feature. But I can only search English key words.
I work in Archlinux, Zim 0.52.

[Jaap Karssenberg (jaap.karssenberg)]

I have had this question before and it is because Chinese doesn't use
whitespace between words the same way western languages do. So when looking
for whole words the logic to separate words fails. Try "*searchterm*"
instead, the "*" will make it match partial words as well.

[Robin Lee (cheeselee)]

Searching with "*searchterm*" succeeds, but then finding fails for the excessive asterisks.

[Jaap Karssenberg (jaap.karssenberg)]

On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 4:47 AM, Robin Lee <email address hidden> wrote:

> Searching with "*searchterm*" succeeds, but then finding fails for the
> excessive asterisks.
>

This is already fixed in current development version.

-- Jaap

[Jaap Karssenberg (jaap.karssenberg)]

Thinking how to fix this and make the search do the right thing for chinese characters.

What would be the right way to determine word boundries in chinese text ? Can we rely on whitespace for that, or is there a different rule ?

If no rule at all maybe add the "*" internally for words that have chinese characters (check unicode ranges).

[Robin Lee (cheeselee)]

No literal way to determine word boundaries in Chinese text and the concept of "word" is vague in Chinese.

[seeking (lishengwen)]

I think you can put an option in the searching dialog for users to decide whether to search for whole words. For English users, they can search for whole words, while Chinese do not. This is just what is done in many notebook softwares.

In fact, as a Chinese, I also search for English words sometimes. But I have to type the word completely even when the word is very long. I think this is inconvenience.

[seeking (lishengwen)]

Hi, I just noticed that the local search Ctrl+F is different from the global search Shift+Ctrl+F. There is no such problem mentioned here in the local search Ctrl+F. I wish the global search could obey the same rule with Ctrl+F.

[Jaap Karssenberg (jaap.karssenberg)]

https://github.com/jaap-karssenberg/zim-desktop-wiki/issues/47