Dirk Gomez is working on an RFC for a new search functionality that will work both in Postgres as well as Oracle. I think your feedback is welcome and right to the point and I hope Dirk finds ways on how to include your suggestions.
Ah, Dirk may be picking up this work again? Excellent. Others may
also want to read Dirk's brief
Feb. 2004
discussion of some of the serious failings of the existing Oracle
Site-Wide-Search package.