Tres Seaver writes:

.... Given that any site manager can override the policy trivially, using only two lines of DTML, should we really be switching the (admittedly arbitrary) existing polciy embedded in the core?

Tres.

P.S.

<dtml-let search_terms="_.string.split( search_text )" search_with_and="_.string.join( search_terms, ' and ' )"> <dtml-var searchCatalog> </dtml-let>

OK, so it is two and a half lines. Be careful! The catalog supports "..." and "(...)". Your two lines may give spurious operators for white space inside "..." and after "(" or before ")"

Dieter