Design issue Highlighting does not work reliably

[Kirby]

Affected version

2.2.2

If a search term is a stopword or appears as start of a word, it does get highlighted on the results page even though it was not being searched for.

Steps to reprodue

1. Configure Enhanced Search to use built-in stopwords for German
2. Add content with title "Robust, leicht, top, zuverlässig - mit Stoppfunktion - bis 300 oder 500 Euro - Test"
3. Perform a search for "leicht zu" in titles only

Expected Result
"zu" does not get highlighted as part of "zuverlässig" as it was not searched for; ideally a notice should be shown that this term was ignored because it is a stopword

Actual Result
"zu" does get highlighted as part of "zuverlässig"

 

[Xon]

The result highlighting is done in via exact text matching in php rather than from elasticsearch's actual search results.

And depending on Elasticsearch configuration, "zu" will actually match "zuverlässig"

 

[Kirby]

The result highlighting is done in via exact text matching in php rather than from elasticsearch's actual search results.

And depending on Elasticsearch configuration, "zu" will actually match "zuverlässig"

I know, that's why I am reporting this as a bug.

Highlighting should be done by the search implementation (if possible; Elasticsearch/Sphinx/Manticore do provide the required fuctionality), not XFs own magic - only the search engine itself does know "exactly" what actually did match.

The current output is confusing for users and we do get ongoing complaints about this.

 

[Jeremy P]

While I understand the current highlighting implementation is not fully accurate, and I do agree it would be very nice to allow highlighting to be done by the search implementation, this is a bit of a design issue as it stands and any improvements would be better tracked as a suggestion.