Class index search broken

ROOT
1

Dear Root team,

I found that the class index search bar of the root class index has changed its behavior. Until some months ago the search for e.g. “TH1” initiated a google search and returned amongst the first few results the corresponding documentation root.cern.ch/root/html526/TH1.html. Now the google search results are different and the site is not within the results anymore. This makes a quick jump from class to class impossible. Is there a new way I haven’t found out about yet? If not, why is this and can you change it back?

Best regards and hoping for a quick solution,
Andreas

2

If you go there root.cern.ch/drupal/content/reference-guide only the first version (ROOT 6) behaves as you would like. All the others return different results and the TH1 top page is not often the 1st one. I am not sure why it is like that. Some Google Internal ? … It looks like going to the google home page is quite efficient to find TH1.

3

I think it is not a matter of google, it is a matter of the search string that is given to google when the class index search field is used. If I enter TH1 and hit enter the search string in google is:

th1 site:root.cern.ch/root/html526 -site:root.cern.ch/root/html526/src/ -site:root.cern.ch/root/html526/examples/

This is probably automatically passed to google by the root website. I tried the Root6 search and it works fine:

th1 site:root.cern.ch/root/htmldoc -site:root.cern.ch/root/htmldoc/src/ -site:root.cern.ch/root/htmldoc/examples/

The difference seems to be the “htmldoc” instead of the “html526”. Whatever the reason may be, I guess it must be a simple fix to just pass the right string to google. As it is at the moment, for everybody who uses an older root version (and I guess that’s about 90 % of the users) the search field is broken, which makes everything very complicaed. Is it possible to change that and make it work for all versions?

4

5.24 gives

google.com/search?q=th1+sit … gws_rd=ssl

6.00 gives

google.com/search?q=th1+sit … gws_rd=ssl

6.00 is now the default for the html doc html600 == htmldoc

5

yes, and this does not contain the link to the TH1 documentation for 5.24. That’s a broken functionality. I believe this should be fixed, otherwise the search bar is useless.

6

I asked the person who set up this google search. Here is his answer:

7

Ok, that’s bad news. Thanks for asking anyway! I guess I will have to use the Root6 documentation then and hope there weren’t too many changes.

Cheers,
Andreas

8

Actually, you can get the documentation for many ROOT versions.
The idea is quite simple.
If the “current” ROOT documentation uses a web link like:
root.cern.ch/root/html/TH1.html
then you can simply “transform” this link into a “ROOT X.YZ” version specific link using:
root.cern.ch/root/htmlXYZ/TH1.html
so, for “ROOT 5.24” you simply need:
root.cern.ch/root/html524/TH1.html

9

Yes thanks, but that’s not my point. My point is that the search bar on the top right only works for the newest version. I don’t know how the rest of the users navigates through the documentation, but certainly not by clicking their way through the inheritance trees. I want to simply put “TH1” in the search field, hit enter and get the desired page as one of the first google search results. But this does not work, so I will have to use the documentation that does not fit my old version #-o