gistfile1.txt

Just a quick place to put this that's better than IRC:

Suppose mm="<2 -1"

As implemented now, the search
  dog cat => 
    dog AND cat

Likewise
  dog cat -mouse => 
    (dog AND cat) OR (dog AND NOT mouse) or (cat AND NOT mouse) OR (dog AND cat AND NOT mouse)

Which I understand -- dismax is treating '-mouse' as a term in its own right and doing what 
it's supposed to do according to the mm setting.

I just think that behavior is unexpected by most searchers. 

My expectation as a searcher would be that
  anyRandomSearch

...would be a (probably proper) superset of
  anyRandomSearch -someTerm


That is, if I do a search, and add a '-someTerm' to it, I'll end up with fewer results. 

So, in this example, I would expect

  dog cat mouse =>
   (dog AND cat) AND NOT mouse

The question is whether or not my expectations (and, I should add, those of all the 
folks in the library around me) is out of whack. 

It also appears that 

  cat mouse +dueber

devolves to just "+dueber"