We are pleased to announce a new version of OpenFTS. 

(current version is available from CVS only, all external interfaces
are frozen now. We'd consider it as beta-release when documentation
will be modified to reflect changes). We're kindly request people
to test it and report problems. Also, you may subscribe to 
OpenFTS-general mailing list, dedicated to  discussion about
OpenFTS development, features, hints and support. 
(http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/openfts-general)


We'd like to explain some major changes since v.032, please read
Changes for a full list.

1. We moved from using contrib/intarray module to our new module 
   contrib/tsearch, which is available from contrib directory of
   PostgreSQL distribution since 7.2 release.

   tsearch module provides special text data type suitable for text
   indexing. It uses words 'as is' without hashing to integers and provides
   search interface in more natural way. For example, it's possible now
   to test fulltext search from psql.
   Read documentation in contrib/tsearch module for more details.
   
2. We changes interfaces to dictionaries to conform changes in 1.
   Methods provided by dictionaries should work with lexems instead of
   integers as before: lemms method instead of lemmsid, is_stoplexem instead
   of is_stoplemm.

3. We've added a possibility to drop OpenFTS instances:
     drop - removes all OpenFTS tables, indices, dictionaries (if dictionary
            provides 'drop' method);
     drop_index - it's opposite to method 'create_index', removes all OpenFTS 
                  indices on index tables (INDEX1,,,INDEXN) and
                  GiST index on base table (the table where the documents 
                  are stored together with its primary key). 
   It's very convenient for adminstration and maintaince.

4. We've added generic interfaces to ISpell dictionaries and Snowball stemmers.
   ISpell dictionaries are free and available for many languages and could be
   used to return base forms for a word.
   It's very important for inflective languages, i.e. russian language.
   Snowball stemmers (available from snowball.sourceforge.net) 
   could be use to stemm a word, i.e. to cut a words endings and use 
   remains stem for indexing and searching.

IMPORTANT NOTICE:

This version is incompatible with previous versions due to:

   1. changes of base data type used for storage
   2. changes of structure of index tables
   3. changes of interfaces to dictionaries

To upgrade OpenFTS you need:
   1. Manually remove all instances of OpenFTS ( index tables, GiST index,
      configuration table, dictionary tables (if any) )
   2. install new version
   3. create new OpenFTS instances following standard procedure
   4. re-index
   
Sorry for inconvenience.

TODO:

Modify OpenFTS Primer to conform changes.

             OpenFTS development team