I realize Solr just pulls the .toString from Lucene's explain. It's helpful to a point, but quickly scanning over a results list doesn't convey "the big picture".
Looking at Lucene's code, I don't think moving to .toHtml() would be much better, as I read it you'd just get the same dense text in an HTML list instead of a newline list. So I guess reformatting it would likely involve parsing it first. Getting it into an XML snippet would allow for XSLT processing. Some ideas that I had for visualization: * Generally reformat each "match" paragraph to fit on one line * Use font sizes and weights to convey relative importance. * The field name could convey the norm for it. * The term could possibly convey the density. * For some of the multiplied products, use the length and width of a rectangle, so the area is a visual aid (scaled appropriately) * Having these various sizes of fonts and boxes on one line would also be easier to visually "sum" * Maybe a mouse-over for precise numerical values Just some ideas. Visually representing dismax would be another challenge. -- Mark Bennett / New Idea Engineering, Inc. / mbenn...@ideaeng.com Direct: 408-733-0387 / Main: 866-IDEA-ENG / Cell: 408-829-6513
