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IIIF
Consider adding `max` parameter for Autocomplete request -
We have a min parameter (https://iiif.io/api/search/1.0/#request), there might be utility in a max parameter to omit very common terms in the index
(From editors' meeting 2022-06-10)
Should this be included in Search 3.0? (thumbs up/down on the comment please)
I would like to look at examples of other search services that leverage a feature like this to better understand the use case
Assuming that the terms are ordered by frequency, rather than strictly alphanumeric sort, and stopwords are not excluded, then the top words will likely be useless for autocomplete - 'th' --> the, then, there, these, this, ... and so on.
max could exclude those ... but to be less optimistic, it would be (a) better to have the server exclude these automatically, and (b) the max number would be server/index dependent and hard for the client to predict.
I think if we wanted to exclude common words for autocomplete as you describe then max would not want to be a number but instead a frequency so that it scales with size of the resource (i.e. nothing that occurs more than 5% of the time). But even then, I think know what this threshold should be would be very difficult in the general case. I agree that this is probably left up to the server though (which might be configured with knowledge of content) and this not put into the spec.
Where a search service does not exclude stopwords, does it make sense to have a parameter that tells the client to use a specific or custom stopword list? For example, if project A requires a German stopwords list and project B requires a stopwords list of terms that are too common to be meaningful in that context, then the client could use the Search API to load the appropriate stopword list for that project context. Or something like that...
In any event, I don't think I understand how a max parameter would be able to effectively limit terms for Autocomplete and agree with @zimeon's comment.
