[LUCENE-1685] Make the Highlighter use SpanScorer by default

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Minor
• Resolution: Fixed
• Fix Version/s: 2.9
• Lucene Fields: New, Patch Available
• Assignee: Mark Miller
• Reporter: Mark Miller
• Created: 11/Jun/09 19:48
• Updated: 28/Aug/22 12:02
• Resolved: 05/Aug/09 13:34

Description

I've always thought this made sense, but frankly, it took me a year to get the SpanScorer included with Lucene at all, so I was pretty much ready to move on after I it got in, rather than push for it as a default.

I think it makes sense as the default in Solr as well, and I mentioned that back when it was put in, but alas, its an option there as well.

The Highlighter package has no back compat req, but custom has been conservative - one reason I havn't pushed for this change before. Might be best to actually make the switch in 3? I could go either way - as is, I know a bunch of people use it, but I'm betting its the large minority. It has never been listed in a changes entry and its not in LIA 1, so you pretty much have to stumble upon it, and figure out what its for.

I'll point out again that its just as fast as the standard scorer for any clause of a query that is not position sensitive. Position sensitive query clauses will obviously be somewhat slower to highlight, but that is because they will be highlighted correctly rather than ignoring position.

Issue Links

• blocks: SOLR-1319 Upgrade custom Solr Highlighter classes to new Lucene Highlighter API
• relates to: LUCENE-2013 QueryScorer and SpanRegexQuery are incompatible.