Azure Search and diacritics

I've been experimenting with Azure Search, to improve searching the Gesamtausgabe. I've got all the content indexed on Azure, and it's returning decent results; compensating for misspellings, and providing suggestions-as-you-type. I still need to figure out how to integrate with the Bootstrap typeahead control, before I update the website with the new search feature.

One of the features Azure Search doesn't have yet is asciifolding, so that a search for "αληθεια" will return documents containing "ἀλήθεια". Who can remember the polytonic Greek keyboard's diacritics' layout? And not every document uses diacritics consistently. If this feature is important to you, you can cast three votes for it here.

[Update March 9, 2015]
Asciifolding now works with Azure Search, with api-version=2015-02-28-Preview. The new release cadence from Microsoft is much better than the old days; "we'll fix that in the next Windows release". I've rebuilt the indexes and asciifolding is working in the app version that I'm currently working on. I hope to release it soon, several weeks.

In the fields you want to be searchable with asciifolding you set:

Analyzer = "standardasciifolding.lucene"

Drawing diagrams with SVG

I've figured out how to do large large curly brackets, like these in Thomas Sheehan's "Astonishing! Things Make Sense!" (P. 14):

I don't want to use bitmaps, like the picture above, because they don't scale, they're relatively large downloads, and their text isn't searchable. Today I figured out how to draw the curly brackets using SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) to draw lines. A curly-bracket is two lines and four quarter circles.

Here's what it looks like in an HTML document. It won't render inside a blogspot blog, so you'll have to click there to see.

This is the code that renders the diagram.

    <svg height="700" width="800">
        <path d="M 200 260 a 7 7 0 0 1 7 -7" fill="none" stroke-width="2" stroke="black">
        <path d="M 200 260 l 0 143" stroke-width="2" stroke="black">
        <path d="M 200 403 a 7 7 0 0 1 -7 7" fill="none" stroke-width="2" stroke="black">
        <path d="M 200 417 a 7 7 0 0 0 -7 -7" fill="none" stroke-width="2" stroke="black">
        <path d="M 200 417 l 0 143" stroke-width="2" stroke="black">
        <path d="M 200 560 a 7 7 0 0 0 7 7" fill="none" stroke-width="2" stroke="black">

        <path d="M 420 160 a 7 7 0 0 1 7 -7" fill="none" stroke-width="2" stroke="black">
        <path d="M 420 160 l 0 93" stroke-width="2" stroke="black">
        <path d="M 420 253 a 7 7 0 0 1 -7 7" fill="none" stroke-width="2" stroke="black">
        <path d="M 420 267 a 7 7 0 0 0 -7 -7" fill="none" stroke-width="2" stroke="black">
        <path d="M 420 267 l 0 93" stroke-width="2" stroke="black">
        <path d="M 420 360 a 7 7 0 0 0 7 7" fill="none" stroke-width="2" stroke="black">

        <path d="M 560 95 a 7 7 0 0 1 7 -7" fill="none" stroke-width="2" stroke="black">
        <path d="M 560 95 l 0 43" stroke-width="2" stroke="black">
        <path d="M 560 138 a 7 7 0 0 1 -7 7" fill="none" stroke-width="2" stroke="black">
        <path d="M 560 152 a 7 7 0 0 0 -7 -7" fill="none" stroke-width="2" stroke="black">
        <path d="M 560 152 l 0 43" stroke-width="2" stroke="black">
        <path d="M 560 195 a 7 7 0 0 0 7 7" fill="none" stroke-width="2" stroke="black">

        <path d="M 560 315 a 7 7 0 0 1 7 -7" fill="none" stroke-width="2" stroke="black">
        <path d="M 560 315 l 0 43" stroke-width="2" stroke="black">
        <path d="M 560 358 a 7 7 0 0 1 -7 7" fill="none" stroke-width="2" stroke="black">
        <path d="M 560 372 a 7 7 0 0 0 -7 -7" fill="none" stroke-width="2" stroke="black">
        <path d="M 560 372 l 0 43" stroke-width="2" stroke="black">
        <path d="M 560 415 a 7 7 0 0 0 7 7" fill="none" stroke-width="2" stroke="black">
        <g fill="black" font-size="14" font="Helvetica, sans-serif" stroke="none">
            <text x="70" y="390">EVERY λόγος =</text>
            <text x="70" y="410">σημαντιχός</text>
            <text x="70" y="430">A MEANINGFUL</text>
            <text x="70" y="450">UTTERANCE</text>

            <text x="220" y="240">λόγος ἀποφαντιχός</text>
            <text x="220" y="260">DECLARATIVE SENTENCE</text>
            <text x="220" y="280">I DECLARE P OF S</text>

            <text x="220" y="560">λόγος ἀναποφαντιχός</text>
            <text x="220" y="580">NON-DECLARATIVE SENTENCE</text>
            <text x="220" y="600">I WISH, HOPE, ASK, OR</text>
            <text x="220" y="620">COMMAND SOMETHING</text>

            <text x="450" y="140">AFFIRMATIVE</text>
            <text x="450" y="160">χατάφασις</text>

            <text x="450" y="360">NEGATIVE</text>
            <text x="450" y="380">ἀπόφασις</text>

            <text x="580" y="85">TRUE</text>
            <text x="580" y="105">ἀληθής</text>

            <text x="580" y="205">FALSE</text>
            <text x="580" y="225">ψευδής</text>

            <text x="580" y="305">TRUE</text>
            <text x="580" y="325">ἀληθής</text>

            <text x="580" y="425">FALSE</text>
            <text x="580" y="445">ψευδής</text>
        </g>
    </svg>