Indexing and searching should be attacked as *very* separate problems. For example in my situation, there's not much out there to turn a few gigs of raw paper document scans into a searchable database.

So my focus is on hacking together indexing (Hence FileArchiveIndexer)- The search is iffy- but it's wide open to someone to reach in and work with it.

I agree completely, searching is hard as all heck- there are a lot of ways to do it.

You can't do a project like this thinking 'indexing and searching pdf files'- you'll go ape with the details- sounds simple.. but.. oh boy oh boy :-)

I wouldn't discourage writting things like these from scratch- I would advise against it if possible.. but.. Shucks.. maybe this hacker will come up with something interesting. Or at least be humbled out of the ryo idea next time !