Mathematica 6 + Lucene = Exposed Searching

With the release of Mathematica 6 from Wolfram Research comes an update to their documentation and searching that uses the open-source Java Apache Lucene project.

The great thing about this choice is that it exposes the vast amount of data about the documentation to the end user, allowing customized searching tools using either Mathematica code or Java code.

For example, try pointing this great little Java app Luke at your new Mathematica 6 Index/ directories (recommend opening them read-only). With it, you can browse through all the Lucene documents and see what fields and available, along with doing custom searching from within Luke. It can definitely give you some ideas on alternative ways of tapping into this information than through the existing Documentation Center interface.