Dear MMDers,  I read with interest the comments made on the
desirability of a forum or chat room.  I agree completely with the
sentiments posted by Larry Emmons (110720 MMDigest).

In a free for all chat room you see all sorts of inane comments
from people who don't really know very much.  The professionals who
contribute their knowledge and wisdom to MMD would soon get sick of
responding to the banter of a public forum.  I say, therefore, stick
with what we've got -- it's a wonderful resource.

If I could just make one suggestion, I would love to see a good search
facility integrated into the MMD web site.  My inability to easily
search the archive is a source of frustration.

Kind regards
Geoff Ward

 [ Other subscribers also wrote that they agree with Larry Emmons.
 [ -- Robbie

 [ I've wanted to have a search capability for a long time too.   The
 [ "Author" and "Keyword" indexes on the MMD website were an attempt at
 [ that.  We've obvously outgrown those indexes.

 [ Google offers a "pay for service" service search (supported by cash
 [ from the website operator, not ads) which can be incorporated into
 [ a website like ours.  The cost is about a 1/2 cent per query, paid
 [ annually:  $100 buys 20,000 queries, $250 buys 50,000, etc.  I'm going
 [ to check into how hard the programming would be and what the
 [ contractual constraints are.

 [ If we can afford the Google service, it's very slick.  Alternatively,
 [ we get search-engine software that runs directly on our server.   The
 [ MMD web server has "spare cycles" so I will look into how hard that is
 [ to do these days.  The last time I checked there was a one-time license
 [ fee for the software I was interested in using, and a substantial
 [ programming task to set it up.   I'll report back when I've done some
 [ more research.  --Jody