[Zope] ZCatalog searching questions

[Dave Kimmel]

Hello all

I'm trying to re-implement the internal policy manual here at work using
Zope (it's currently hyperlinked WordPerfect documents), and after demoing
it to management there are now two things I need to solve with the search
feature.

First, is there any way I can search by regular expression or search for
part of a word?  Specifically, I need to search the content of a bunch of
DTML Documents (these only contain the text of the policies and references
to standard_html_header and standard_html_footer) for partial word matches.
For example, "vac" needs to match "vacation", "vacations", "vaccination",
etc.

Second, is there any way to use a list of synonyms when searching?  For
example, a search for "headstone" should also search for "monument" and
"gravestone", and likewise a search for "gravestone" should also search for
"monument" and "headstone".

Am I asking too much of this?  Should I be buying a Python book and adding
this functionality myself?  Should I be using something other than ZCatalog?
Should I be using something other than Zope?  (Please say no, I happen to
like Zope!)

Thank you!
-- Dave Kimmel
Systems Analyst
Office of the Public Trustee, Alberta Justice