Let’s say you need users to filter a long list of items, but they may search using misspellings, alternate spellings, or disputed spellings. This often happens with community names, facility names, and animal names. For example:
- hyena vs hyaena
- kangaroo vs kangeroo
- giraffe vs girafe
It would be useful if the search appearance on select_one and select_multiple supported optional fuzzy_threshold as a parameter that represents the maximum allowed difference between the search term and the label, normalized by the length.
This would make it easier for enumerators to find the intended choice even when spelling is inconsistent or slightly incorrect.
I'd propose this formula:
threshold = edit_distance / max(length(search term), length(label))
For the filtered display, it'd be nice to show exact matches above fuzzy matches.