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1994-10-04
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Re.search.er
Version 2.1
Copyright 1993-94 by Mavo Software Ltd. All rights reserved.
Mavo Software Ltd. disclaims all other warranties, express
or implied, as to the merchantability or fitness of the
software or the printed documentaton for any particular
purpose. Mavo Software Ltd. shall not be liable for any
consequential damages (including, but not limited to, loss
of profit or interruption of business) caused by the use or
inability to use this product.
Chapter 1. Introduction 2
Chapter 2. The Re.search.er Model 3
Chapter 3. Using Re.search.er 5
Chapter 4. The Editor 10
Chapter 5. The Mouse 14
Chapter 6. Menu operation 16
Chapter 7. Papers, chapters and sections 20
Chapter 8. Searches, links and cross-references 25
Chapter 9. Maintenance 28
Chapter 10. Configuration 30
Chapter 11. External interfaces 31
Chapter 12. Error messages 33
- 1 -
Chapter 1. Introduction
About Re.search.er
Preparing a good term paper is an arduous task: you must
collect and organize notes obtained from written sources;
then you write the paper while referring to these notes.
Re.search.er is a software package that facilitates the
preparation of a paper on a computer.
Re.search.er stores raw research notes in the computer and
organizes your note cards so that any one of them can be
easily accessed. You can search for a particular phrase and
cross-reference your notes. Next you write the paper, using
data from the note cards. Quotes from the note cards can be
easily copied into the text. Finally, Re.search.er formats
and prints the text is formatted and printed. During
formatting, either by Re.search.er automatically collects
and numbers footnotes, and prepares an alphabetized
bibliography. The final draft can be extracted for further
processing by advanced programs such as LaTeX or WordPerfect
(WordPerfect is a registered trademark of the WordPerfect
Corporation.
Re.search.er has been designed so that it can be used by
teachers and students who have little or no experience
working with computers. For the benefit of those with prior
knowledge, several chapters and sections marked with a
double asterisk (**) provide details of the interface
between the software and the operating system.
- 2 -
Chapter 2. The Re.search.er Model
Any software program models some aspect of the real world.
In this chapter we define the concepts modelled by the
Re.search.er software program.
* [Paper] Re.search.er uses the term paper to describe a
specific project such as a term paper or a thesis. A paper
is composed of a set of cards and a document. First you
create a collection of cards containing the raw research
data, and then you write the document itself. While your
disk can store the data of many papers, you can only work on
one paper at a time.
* [Card] A card is the smallest piece of data that has its
own identity. It models the ``index cards'' typically used
in research, but there is no limitation the amount of
information a card can contain. Re.search.er recognizes
three types of cards: bibliography, topic and note cards.
* [Bibliography card] A bibliography card contains the
information on a bibliographic source: author, title, etc.
The bibliography cards will be automatically included in the
bibliography in the final document so you won't have to type
this information twice.
* [Topic card] A topic card is used to classify note cards.
You can define both a primary topic and a secondary topic.
* [Note card] The central concept in Re.search.er is the
note card. On the surface a note card is just a piece of
written text, but in Re.search.er it is the basic unit of
raw research material that is stored, classified and
referenced.
Note cards are stored in a two-dimensional table. Each note
card is placed in a row of the table that identifies its
bibliographic source and in a column that identifies its
topic. We will say that the note card is linked to one
bibliography card and to one topic card.
A stack of cards is the set of note cards associated with a
specifc pair of bibliography and topic cards. The elements
of a stack are distinguished by page numbers.
* [Document] There is one document in a paper. The document
is composed of the title page, an arbitrary number of
sections, the footnotes, the bibliography, the index and the
table of contents.
A document exists in two forms: the free-form that you type
in and a formatted form ready for printing. The use of two
distinct forms makes it easier to draft you paper because
you do not need to worry about pages, margins and so on, as
you write. Just before you submit your paper, you can modify
these visual aspects of your document.
- 3 -
A document is composed of the following elements:
* [Title card] In this card, you enter the information used
to format and print a title page.
* [Section] A section is a unit of text. Each section is
identified by a number and a title. In addition to text, a
section will usually contain formatter commands; for
example, you may designate a phrase to emphasized in print
or to be stored as a footnote. Longer papers may be divided
into chapters which are then sub-divided into sections.
* [Footnotes] As each section is formatted, text designated
as a footnote is extracted and a number is written in its
place. The footnotes themselves formatted at the end of each
chapter, or in a separate section at the end of the
document. If you later add another footnote, all footnotes
in the chapter are automatically re-numbered.
* [Bibliography] The data from the bibliography cards are
arranged alphabetically by author and title, and then
formatted at the end of the document.
* [Index] When you are writing the paper, you can designate
an occurence of a phrase to be designated as an index
occurence. When formatting the paper, Re.search.er computes
the actual page number of each occurence and prints a sorted
list at the end of the paper.
* [Table of contents] During formatting, section numbers and
titles are stored along with the page location and are used
to prepare a table of contents.
- 4 -
Chapter 3. Using Re.search.er
This chapter describes the operation of the core features of
Re.search.er. More advanced functions are described in later
chapters. The installation program will create a sample
paper on your disk. You can try out the various commands on
this paper, or you can create your own.
Menus
You interact with Re.search.er through menus; a menu is a
list of commands or names. You execute a command or choose a
name by selecting an entry on the list. The main menu
appears at the top of the screen and is called the menu bar.
The names of the command categories are displayed within the
bar.
One of the names in the menu bar will be highlighted by
having its color reversed. You press the left and right
arrow keys to move the highlighting through the menu bar.
Select a command category by pressing RETURN when the
highlighting is on the name you want.
Once you have choosen a selection, a sub-menu will appear
below the menu bar. When you choose one of the entries from
the sub-menus, Re.search.er will execute that command.
You move the highlighting on a sub-menu using the up and
down arrow keys. If you press F1 (Help), an explanation of
the command under the highlighting will be displayed. To
execute a command, press RETURN. When a command requires
more information or when a card must be selected, an
additional menu will pop-up in the middle of the screen.
After executing the chosen command, sub-menus and pop-up
menus remain on the screen in case you want to choose
another command or card from the same menu.
To indicate that you have finished working with a menu
simply press ESC. Repeated ESC's can return up the menu
``hierarchy'' until the menu bar appears.
When you have completed your work with Re.search.er, or wish
to leave the computer for more than a few minutes, choose
Exit.
You can use the mouse instead of the keyboard to execute
commands and choose cards. Bring the mouse cursor to the
menu entry and click the left mouse button. Clicking the
right mouse button is always equivalent to pressing ESC.
Entering text
To enter text in a card, simply type it in using the
keyboard. The characters that you type are inserted at the
point of the cursor which is a blinking underscore. The
- 5 -
arrow keys move the cursor one position left, right, up or
down.
Unlike a typewriter which prints on top of existing
characters, Re.search.er inserts new text at the point of
the cursor, moving the existing text to the right. So if you
forget a letter or word, simply move the cursor to the
current location and type the new text. If you need to
replace text, delete the old text and type in the new text.
For example, if you typed:
The quck brown wolf jumped over the lazy dog.
move the cursor to the c of quck and press i. This will
insert i and push ck and the rest of the line to the right
yielding quick. Then move the cursor to wolf, delete four
letters and type fox.
To delete text, press DEL which deletes forwards, that is,
it deletes the character under the cursor. BACKSPACE deletes
backwards, that is, the character before the cursor. Thus in
normal typing, if you make a mistake just hit the BACKSPACE
key as many times as required and type the correct text.
Chapter 4 describes the editor, which is the software
component that creates and modifies text. A detailed
description of all the editing commands is given in that
chapter.
Data entry into cards
The content of bibliography and topic cards is in a fixed
format of fields. To enter text into a field, you just type
it in as described in the previous section. To move between
fields, use the up and down arrow keys.
To terminate data entry, press F10 (Exit). If you are
modifiying a card and wish to terminate data entry without
saving the modifications, press CTRL-F10 (Quit). You will be
asked to confirm the termination so that you do not
accidently cancel your modifications. When browsing through
cards without making any modifications, the ESC key
terminates the display.
Papers
Every paper must be given a name which is the connection
between your data and the computer system. For example, you
can call your English Literature paper ELIT and your African
History paper AFH.
At the beginning of any session, you need to tell
Re.search.er which paper you want to work on. Select Access
Paper from the Paper sub-menu and a pop-up menu will appear
with the list of papers that you have created. Select one of
the papers. All subsequent work in Re.search.er is on the
- 6 -
selected paper until you leave Re.search.er or access
another paper.
The first time you use Re.search.er on a paper, you must
create the paper. Select Paper from the menu bar and then
Create paper from the sub-menu. You will be asked for the
name of the paper, and then you will be asked to fill in a
title card which will be used to create the title page of
the paper.
The field Top will be centered at the top of the page, the
field Middle will be centered in the middle of the page and
the field Remarks will be printed as paragraphs following
Middle.
Bibliography and topic cards
The menu choices for bibliography and topic cards include:
* [Show card] - A menu of existing cards will be displayed.
The card you choose will be shown on the screen.
* [Create card] - A card with empty fields will be
displayed. Fill in the fields with your information.
* [Modify card] - Similar to Show except that the
information in the card fields can be modified.
* [Delete card] - The selected card will be deleted. You
will be asked to confirm the deletion.
Re.search.er always makes a distinction between showing (or
displaying) and modifying. It assumes that once a card is
created, you will read it more often than you will change
it. To protect you from accidently modifying the card, use
the Show command when you are browsing through your cards.
Only if you truly intend to change something, use Modify. A
small colored M at the bottom left corner of the screen,
reminds you that you can modify the card.
When you choose a command such as Show card, a pop-up menu
will appear with the names of the cards in alphabetical
order. The names are automatically constructed from the
author and title fields for a bibliography card, and from
the primary and secondary fields for a topic card.
Note cards
The operations on note cards: Show, Create, Modify, Delete,
are similar to those of other cards. However, unlike
bibliography and topic cards, note cards are free-format:
you type information into the card using the editor.
When you create a note card, the bibliography card menu will
appear. Choose the name of the reference from which the
notes are taken. After you select a bibliography card, you
- 7 -
must similarly choose a topic card. Finally, you will be
prompted for a page number or range of page numbers.
Since the note card name can be rather crytic, pressing F1
(Help) when a note name is highlighted will successively
display the bibliography and topic cards for this note.
Press ESC to go from the bibliography card to the topic
card, and again to return to the menu.
Writing documents
When you have completed the collection of your notes, you
are ready to write the paper (or document, as it is called
in Re.search.er). This is the task of a software program
called a word processor. Word processing in Re.search.er is
done using a separate editor and formatter.
The document is composed of sections, and the familiar
operations of Show, Create, Modify and Delete exist for
sections. When a section is created, you will be prompted
for a Chapter number, a Section number and a Title in the
title card. The Chapter and Section numbers may be one or
two letters or numbers. (Because of a quirk of the way the
computer alphabetizes characters, single digit numbers will
appear in the Section menu with a leading zero. This zero
will be removed when the titles are printed.) After you
create the section title card, you use the editor to enter
the text of the section.
In order to convey information to the formatter, you must
insert formatter commands. This is conveniently done using a
menu to automatically insert the command in the correct
syntax. Press F8 (Formatter commands) when creating or
modifying a section and choose a command. The command will
be inserted and the cursor positioned appropriately. For
example, to insert a footnote at any point in the document,
choose Footnote from the menu. This will insert the string a
footnote command and any text typed between the braces will
be collected and later printed at the end of the document.
Re.search.er will automatically assign sequential numbers to
notes within a section, so that if you insert another
footnote, they will all be re-numbered correctly.
Formatting documents
When you have finished writing your paper, select Document
from the menu bar and Document again from the sub-menu.
Choose Format. Re.search.er will format the document by
performing the following functions:
* Fill lines - make sure that each line contains as may
words as possible.
* Justify lines by inserting spaces until the lines are
flush with both margins.
- 8 -
* Paginate - break off a page when it is full and write the
page number.
* Create chapter and section titles from the section title
cards.
* Create a title page from the paper title card.
* Collect, number and format the footnotes.
* Create an alphabetized bibliography from the bibliography
cards.
* Create a table of contents and an index.
By selecting Print from the sub-menu, you can print the
formatted document. The first time that you execute print,
you will receive the notification Name of list device
[PRN]:. Press RETURN. If the documented is not printed,
there is a problem in the connection of the printer to your
computer.
Since it may take several iterations of editing and
formatting until a satisfactory result is achieved, you can
save time and paper by selecting View which displays the
formatted form of the document on the screen. Special
characters for printing italics will appear on the screen
and can be ignored. When you are satisfied with the
appearance of the formatted document, you can select Print.
You now know enough to begin to use Re.search.er. You can
browse in the example paper, or begin to create your own.
When you feel that you are familiar with the basic operation
of Re.search.er, continue reading the following chapters.
- 9 -
Chapter 4. The Editor
The editor is the software component responsible for
displaying and modifying text. It is activated when a note
card or section is displayed and in addition, when F9 is
pressed in a bibliography, topic or title card.
The functions of the editor are described in the following
sections, which is arranged by category. During editing, a
list can be obtained by pressing F1 (Help).
Moving the cursor
The arrow keys move the cursor one position in each
direction. HOME and END move the cursor to the beginning and
end of the line, respectively. PGUP and PGDN move the cursor
to the top and bottom of the page, respectively. CTRL-
left-arrow moves the cursor one word to the left, while
CTRL- right-arrow moves the cursor one word to the right. (A
word is defined as a consecutive string of letters or
numbers terminated by a blank space or the end of a line.)
CTRL-HOME and CTRL-END move the cursor to the top and bottom
of the screen, respectively. This is different from PGUP and
PGDN which move through the document even if it requires
changing the screen display. CTRL-PGUP and CTRL-PGDN move
the cursor to the top and bottom of the document,
respectively.
Deleting text
DEL deletes the character under the cursor. BACKSPACE
deletes the character before the cursor. F3 (Delete word)
deletes an entire word---the characters from the location of
the cursor to the next blank or the end of the line.
You can delete the entire line in which the cursor appears,
by pressing F4 (Delete line). The keys CTRL-F4 (Delete to
end-of-line) and CTRL-BACKSPACE (Delete to
beginning-of-Line) delete from the character under the
cursor to the end or the beginning of the line,
respectively.
If you delete a word or line by mistake, press INS. This
will restore the most recently deleted text. This function
is also useful for moving or copying a word or line from one
place to another. Simply delete the word or line, move to
the new location using the cursor movement keys and press
INS. If you press INS immediately after the deletion, the
text is left in place and you can still insert a copy
somewhere else. The text saved after a deletion is not
modified until another deletion is done.
Note that single letters deleted by DEL or BACKSPACE are not
saved.
- 10 -
Searching and replacing
You can have the editor search for a string of characters.
Press F5 (Search) and you will be prompted for a string.
When you press RETURN, the cursor will be moved to the first
occurrence of the string, if any. Pressing CTRL-F5 (Search
again) will search for the next occurrence of the string.
Since the search is from the current position to the end of
the text, if you want to search the entire text first press
CTRL-PGUP to position the cursor at the top of the document.
To replace some or all occurrences of a string with another
string, press CTRL-F8 (Replace). You will be prompted for
the old string and the new string to replace it. The cursor
will move the the location of every potential replacement
(every occurence of the first string you entered). At each
occurence, you must enter y to do the replacement or n to
skip this occurence. Other possibilities are a to do all
further replacements without confirmation or q to
discontinue the replacement process. Pressing ESC during
replacing will cancel the process.
The string that you entered is saved so that the next time
that you request Search or Replace, you can can execute the
command again without re-typing the string. You can also
modify the string before pressing RETURN. If you want to
search for an entirely different string, press BACKSPACE and
hold it down until the prompt field is empty; then type in
the new string.
Moving and copying blocks of text
There is a set of functions for copying and moving blocks of
text. This is done by marking a block and then processing
it. If you press F2 (Mark) the marking process is started
from the current position of the cursor. As you move the
cursor, the color of the marked text is reversed. When all
the text you want to move is marked (that is when the cursor
is positioned just beyond the marked text), press CTRL-F2
(Extract) or CTRL-F3 (Cut). The former makes an internal
copy of the marked text, while the latter removes the marked
text and stores it internally. Now move the cursor to the
position where the text is to be inserted and press INS. The
saved text is ``pasted'' at the location of the cursor.
* The extracted text is NOT deleted when you exit the
editor! Hence you can use this feature to copy text from one
card to another or from a card to a section.
* Extract, but not Cut, will work even if you have chosen to
Show a card or section, but not modify it.
* If you change your mind while marking text, press ESC and
the marking is terminated.
- 11 -
* Executing Cut but not Paste is an easy way to delete large
quantities of text.
* For individual words or lines, deleting and inserting is
usually easier than marking and extracting.
Leaving the editor
* [ESC] If you have not made any modifications to the text,
ESC will also exit the editor just it terminates the
processing of a menu or card. If modifications have been
made, you must choose between:
* [F10 (Exit)] Normal exit.
* [CTRL-F10 (Quit)] Exit the editor without saving the
modifications to the text. You will be asked to confirm this
request, as all modifications will be lost. This option
should only be used if you have accidently deleted a large
portion of the text.
Limitations
A single note or section may not contain more than about
65,000 characters (about 1000 lines or 15-20 single-spaced
pages). Re.search.er works better if you have many small
notes and sections (up to 400 lines each) rather than a few
large notes and sections.
** Advanced features
* [Copy note (CTRL-F9)] This function copies the entire
content of a note into the current text. This is a
convenient shortcut: instead of using Display card several
times on the same note, you can copy the entire note and
then extract the sentences you need.
* [External files] Copy from file (CTRL-F7) imports an ASCII
text into the note or section being edited, while Copy to
file(CTRL-F1) copies a marked block to an external ASCII
file.
* [Wide lines] The editor is limited to text whose width is
less than the width of the display screen (77 characters,
allowing two for the frame and one for the cursor). You can
modify the configuration to enable the use of wider lines
(up to 117 characters). Wide lines are useful for examining
formatted files, however, they require much more memory and
this must be considered before selecting the option.
When wide lines are displayed, the keys Alt-L and Alt-R move
the text on the screen left and right, respectively. Note
that the cursor is always in its correct place even if you
can't see it.
- 12 -
* [Special characters]
ASCII characters whose values are greater than 128 can be
entered using the DOS standard: press Alt and then type the
number of the character on the numeric keypad. In the
Re.search.er editor, pressing Alt-F1 displays a menu of
these characters and you can mark, extract and then paste
any character without knowing its ASCII value.
- 13 -
Chapter 5. The Mouse
The mouse is a pointing device that many (but not all!) find
convenient to use instead of the keyboard for selecting
options and moving the cursor. Of course, text must still be
typed in. In Re.search.er the mouse may be used for
selecting from menus and for certain Editor functions.
The mouse consists of a body which is rolled by the palm
along the surface of the desk (or a special pad), and two or
three buttons which can be pressed by the fingers. The mouse
cursor will appear as a large colored rectangle. As you move
the mouse on the table, the cursor will move. If you reach
the edge of the table before the mouse cursor has reached
the desired location, simply pick up the mouse and place it
down in a convenient place. Moving the mouse in the air will
not move the cursor. You signal the computer that the mouse
cursor has reached the correct position by pressing and
releasing a mouse button. This is called ``clicking'' the
mouse button.
If your mouse doesn't work (that is, the rectangular cursor
does not appear), your ``mouse driver'' is probably not
installed correctly. Have this fixed and try again.
* [Menu selection] The mouse can be used to select a menu
entry: move the mouse cursor until it rests on a menu entry
and click the Left button. This is equivalent to moving the
highlighting to that menu entry and pressing RETURN on the
keyboard.
* [Escape] Clicking the Right button is always equivalent to
pressing ESC on the keyboard.
* [Cursor movement] When a card or section is displayed, the
mouse can be used to move the regular cursor large
distances. Simply bring the mouse cursor to a character and
click the left button. Clicking a button is only valid if
the mouse cursor is within the text; otherwise, nothing will
happen.
* [Long menus] When a long menu of cards is displayed,
clicking the Left button on an arrow is equivalent to PGUP
or PGDN, clicking the Middle button. If you have only two
buttons on your mouse, clicking both simultaneously is
equivalent to clicking the middle button. on an arrow is
equivalent to CTRL-PGUP or CTRL-PGDN. Of course, the Right
button can still be used for ESC.
* [Special links] If the character under the mouse cursor is
an arrow indicating a special link, the command Display link
(F7) will be executed when the Left button is clicked.
* [Function keys] At the bottom of the editor screen and the
card screens, two help lines are displayed. If you click the
left button when the mouse cursor rests on the text
describing a function key, that function is executed.
- 14 -
The mouse can be used during editing to perform block
functions such as Mark and Extract. Position the mouse
cursor at the start of a block and press a the Middle
button. Now, without releasing the button, move the mouse
cursor. The color of the marked block will change as you
move the mouse. (This is known as dragging the mouse.) When
the cursor is at the end of the block, release the button.
The block will stayed marked.
Now a menu will appear asking if you want to Extract, Cut,
Paste, or Copy. If you select Extract (by pressing RETURN or
clicking the Left mouse button), the marked block will be
saved. Moving the cursor and pressing INS will insert the
block in a new location. Alternatively, click the Middle
button to position the cursor and recall the menu, and
select Paste. Copy executes the Copy to file function.
** Mouse parameters
You can adjust the sensitivity of the mouse by using the
tool program to modify the following parameters:
* X sensitivity - the number of mickeys that the mouse must
be moved to move the cursor one pixel in the X direction.
Lower values make the mouse more ``nervous'', while higher
values make the mouse more ``sluggish''. Suggested values:
8, 16 or 32.
* Y sensitivity - as above, for the Y direction.
* Threshold speed - the threshold in mickeys per second
above which the mouse cursor moves faster. A higher value
makes the mouse less sensitive to sudden movements.
Suggested values: 64 or 128.
- 15 -
Chapter 6. Menu operation
This section gives a complete description of the operation
of the menus:
* In the menu bar, the left and right arrows move the
highlighting through the bar. The movement is cyclic, that
is, right from the last entry is the first entry, and left
from the first entry is the last entry. HOME and END move to
the first and last entries, respectively.
* In a sub-menu or pop-up menu, the up and down arrows move
the highlighting one entry at a time. The movement is also
cyclic. PGUP and PGDN move the highlighting to the first and
last entries of the menu.
* The display of a menu is terminated by pressing ESC or by
clicking the Right mouse button.
* Pressing F1 (Help) displays a short explanation of the
command highlighted in a sub-menu or pop-up menu. When a
menu of note cards is displayed, Help successively displays
the bibliography and topic cards linked to the highlighted
note.
* If there are more menu entries than can be displayed on
the screen, a long menu will be displayed: the last entry
will be an arrow pointing down, which indicates that the
menu
extends in that direction. An arrow can also appear in the
top line indicating that the menu extends upwards. PGUP and
PGDN move the highlighting through one section of menu
entries. To go to the very first or very last entries in the
list (even if they are not currently displayed) press
CTRL-PGUP and CTRL-PGDN, respectively.
* When a sub-menu appears, left and right arrows cause the
neighboring sub-menu to appear.
* To facilitate movement through the menus, you can type one
or more characters and the highlighting will move to the
first entry whose name starts with those characters. To
reset the prefix string, press any of the keypad keys.
Fixed-format cards
- 16 -
The content of cards such as the bibliography and topic
cards is in a fixed format of fields. Use the left and right
arrow keys to move within the fields and the up and down
arrow keys to move from field to field (RETURN is equivalent
to the down arrow). PGUP and PGDN move to the first and last
fields, respectively. DEL and BACKSPACE delete a character
as in the editor.
If the text is longer than the single line provided,
pressing F9 will activate the Editor on the text in the
line. Of course, when you leave the editor, you may no
longer be able to see the entire text of the field, but it
is always possible to re-activate the editor. Similarly, you
cannot add text to a long field without entering the editor.
NOTE: Activating the editor on a field of a card can be used
only to display and modify the text, and not to access other
functions such as Display cards.
To terminate data entry, press F10 (Exit). If you are
modifiying a card and wish to terminate data entry without
saving the modifications, press CTRL-F10 (Quit). You will be
asked to confirm the termination.
Bibliography and topic cards
The commands that can be selected from the bibliography and
topic menus are:
* [Show card] - A menu of existing cards will be displayed.
The card you choose will be shown on the screen.
* [Create card] - A card with empty fields will be displayed
for you to fill in.
* [Modify card] - Similar to Show except that the
information in the card fields can be modified.
* [Delete card] - The selected card will be deleted. You
will be asked to confirm the deletion.
The display of the card is terminated when you press ESC. If
you have selected Modify card, a small colored M will be
displayed in the lower left-hand corner. If you actually
modify the card, you must leave with either F10 (Exit) or
CTRL-F10 (Quit).
The Author and Title fields are used to create the name used
to identify a bibliography card. If the Journal field is not
blank, the formatter will put quotation marks around the
string in the Title field and set the journal name in italic
or underlined. The other fields are arbitrary.
When a bibliography card is displayed, you can press F7 to
display in sequence the note cards linked to this card.
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When you create a footnote to cite a source, you usually
include a short form of the author's name and the title. To
save repeated typing of the same information, you can enter
this information once in the Reference field of a
bibliography card. When Reference is chosen from the
formatter command menu, the contents of this field is copied
into the footnote command. You may modify data once it has
been copied. The Reference field itself will not appear in
the document bibliography.
To save even more typing, Re.search.er will create a
suggested footnote Reference when you exit Create for a
bibliography card. You may Modify the card to change the
contents of this field.
You may wish to group bibliography cards, for example, into
primary and secondary sources. A segmented bibliography is
created by prefixing the author's name with a numeral (or
pair of numerals). The list will be sorted alphabetically
within each group.
In addition, a bibliography card with no Title field will
have its Author field formatted as is, including embedded
formatting commands. This can be used into introduce titles
into the sequence of bibliography entries.
Note cards
The operations on note cards are similar to those on other
cards: Show, Create, Modify, Locate string, Delete. Unlike
bibliography and topic cards, note cards are free-format:
you type information onto the card using the editor.
When you create a note card, the bibliography card menu will
appear. Choose the name of the reference from which the
notes are taken. After you select a bibliography card, you
must similarly choose a topic card. Finally, you will be
prompted for a page number or range of page numbers. Within
Re.search.er, the page numbers are only used to alphabetize
the note cards, so you can use any format such as arabic or
roman numerals.
The name of the note card is constructed from seven
characters each of the Author, Title, Primary topic,
Secondary topic and Page numbers. You cannot create two
cards with the same name.
When using the Editor to Show or Modify a card, pressing F9
brings up a menu. Bibliography, Topic, Note and Section
bring up the complete menus of the selected type and you can
choose a card to display. This is particularly useful if you
want to extract information from one card and paste it in
the current card.
Selecting Where? from this menu successively displays the
bibliography and topic cards for this note (like Help for
the menu of note cards).
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The choice Stack will display in series all the note cards
created from the same bibliography and topic pair. Press ESC
to advance from one card to another. When the pop-up menu
re-appears, the display sequence is completed. If you wish
to cancel displaying of the stack, press CTRL-F10.
Other paper allows you to display a note from another paper
(and extract text from it). You cannot preform any other
functions on the other paper, such as displaying links, etc.
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Chapter 7. Papers, chapters and sections
Papers
Every paper must be given a name which is the connection
between your data and the computer system. The name must be
no longer than six letters and since it does not appear in
the final document, you can use any convenient abbreviation.
The first time you use Re.search.er on a paper, you must
create the paper. Select Paper from the menu bar and then
Create paper from the sub-menu. You will be asked for the
name of the paper, and then you will be asked to fill in a
title card which will be used to create the title page of
the paper. The field Top will be centered at the top of the
page, the field Middle will be centered in the middle of the
page and the field Remarks will be printed as paragraphs
following Middle. NOTE: You must use the editor to create
and display multi-line fields.
Once you have created a paper, you will need to access it
any time you use Re.search.er. When you select Access paper
from the Paper sub-menu, a pop-up menu will appear with the
list of papers that you have created. Select one of the
papers. All subsequent work in Re.search.er is on the
selected paper until you leave Re.search.er or access
another paper.
The command Delete paper means what it says: the paper will
no longer exist. You will be asked to confirm the deletion.
Chapters and sections
The operations on sections are similar to those on cards:
Show, Create, Modify, Locate string, Delete.
When a section is created, you will be prompted for a
Chapter Number, Section Number and Title in a title card.
This information is stored in a title card and can be
modified by selecting Title card from the Section menu. If
you change the numbered fields, the section order will take
account of the new numbering.
Chapters are a special type of section characterized as
follows. A chapter:
* Begins a new page and has a centered title.
* Resets footnote numbers from 1.
* Can have footnotes printed after it.
* Formatting a chapter causes all sections in the chapter to
be formatted.
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For a short paper, you do not need chapters and can
construct the document as a sequence of sections. Otherwise,
it is more convenient to use chapters which contain
sections.
A chapter is denoted by a section with only a chapter
number; it may have an empty content if it serves only as a
framework for sections. For example, the following menu of
sections shows three chapters---the first and the third each
have two sections:
01 The first chapter
01 01 Introduction
01 02 Background
02 The second chapter
03 Concluding chapter
03 01 Summary
03 02 Future work
Formatter commands
The formatter is controlled by embedded commands and by the
Re.search.er configuration.
If you leave the first position of a line blank, the
formatter will not process the line. Instead, the entire
line will be printed ``as is''. This is useful for acheiving
effects not obtainable using other commands.
To force the formatter to commence a new line, enter two
back-slash characters.
All other commands can be selected from the formatter
command menu obtained by pressing F8. When you select an
option, the command will be inserted and the cursor
positioned appropriately.
Command description
* [Italic] Any text typed between the braces will be printed
in italic font or underlined (depending on you printer).
* [Footnote] Any text typed between the braces will be
collected and later printed at the end of the document.
Re.search.er will automatically assign sequential numbers to
notes within a section, so that if you insert another
footnote, they will all be re-numbered correctly. NOTE: The
only command that can appear within a footnote is the italic
command.
* [Reference] The menu of bibliography cards is displayed.
When you choose an entry, a footnote command is inserted,
and the data from the card's Reference field is copied to
the command.
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To save even more typing, Re.search.er will create a
suggested footnote Reference when you exit Create for a
bibliography card. (More precisely, this occures when you
exit from Create or Modify, and the Reference field is
completely empty.) The field is composed of the first word
of the Author field and the contents of the Title field, up
to the colon indicating the subtitle. The title will contain
the formatter command for italics.
If you Mark and Extract or Copy a note, the highlighting of
the bibliography card menu will automatically be set to the
linked card of this note. You can then select Reference and
just press RETURN to insert the correct footnote.
* [Index] When the document is formatted, an index entry
will be created for the phrase within the braces. The page
number will be automatically updated if modifications to the
document cause the occurence to move to another page.
* [New page] This will cause the formatter to skip to a new
page.
* [Single] All text following this command will be set
single-spaced (the default).
* [Double] All text following this command will be set
double-spaced.
* [Quotation] Any text typed between the lines of the
command will be formatted indented from both left and right
margins.
* [Center] Any lines typed between the two lines of the
command will be centered between the left and right margins.
* [Enumerate, Item] Paragraphs typed between the lines of
the command will be automatically indented on the left and
numbered. Each numbered item (which may consist of several
paragraphs) must be introduced with the item command.
* [Table] The command Table will insert the lines:
\begin{tabular{lcr}
& & \\
& & \\
\end{tabular}
which define a table with two rows and three columns. You
can enter the data for each cell in the table---the &
character separates the columns in a row and the
double-backslash terminates the row. The parameter following
the command defines the number of columns and the
justification of each column (left, center or right).
To make your own table, first insert the above command, then
modify the for the correct number of columns and their
justifications. Finally, for each row, enter the data for
each column, separating columns by & and terminating each
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row by a double backslash. You do not have to worry about
the number of spaces surrounding each cell entry you
type---Re.search.er will insert the correct number of spaces
when it formats the table.
* [Parameters] There are several numerical parameters that
can be set to modify the appearance of the output:
Width - the number of characters per line (not including
margins) Margin - the number of characters in the left
margin Page - the number of text lines per page (not
including margins and the page number Top - the number of
blank lines at the top of a page Indent - the indentation
for quotes and enumerations Columns - the width of a table
column
The command may appear more than once in a document, for
example to change the width of a table column. the entire
document.
NOTE: Commands that apply to the entire paper (such as
parameters) should appear in the Top field of the paper
title card.
** Configuration
* [Italic escape sequences] The printer knows when to print
characters in italics or underlining when it receives a
command from the computer called an escape sequence (so
called because the first character is the ASCII escape
character). The escape character itself is automatically
prefixed to the characters you enter. The defaults are -1
and -0.
* [Footnote location] By default, footnotes are formatted in
a separate section at the end of a paper. You can request
that the formatter place the footnotes for each chapter (not
section) at the end of the chapter.
* [Page number] By default, the page number is printed at
the bottom of the page. It can be moved to the top by
setting a configuration parameter.
* [Justification] If you prefer that your text not be
justified, you can turn off this function by setting a
configuration parameter.
Formatting documents
When you have finished writing your paper, select Document
from the menu bar. You can format the entire document by
selecting Document or individually format the title page, a
section, the footnotes, the bibliography, the index or the
table of contents.
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If you choose to format an individual part of the document,
you will be prompted for the starting page number (pressing
RETURN or ESC is the same as entering 1). Thus you can
modify a part of the document and still retain its original
page number.
After formatting you can view and print the document or part
of the document. From within this menu you can also modify:
the title page, an individual section or a bibliography
card.
If you select a chapter, all sections in the chapter will be
formatted. If you select an individual section, it will
start at the top of a page.
Note that you cannot format the footnotes, the index or the
table of contents before the entire document has been
formatted, because it is the formatter which collects the
information needed to create these parts.
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Chapter 8. Searches, links and cross-references
Searches
In the menus for bibliography, topic and note cards, and for
sections, there is an entry Find string Select this entry
and you will be prompted for a string. Re.search.er will
search for this string and display every card in which it is
found.
For fixed-format cards (bibliography and topic) each card
will be displayed. Type Y (or ESC) to display the next card,
or CTRL-F10 to terminate the search.
When a note or section is displayed, the cursor will be
placed on the first letter of first occurence of the string.
Typing Y (or ESC) will cause the cursor to jump to the next
occurence of the string, if any. Typing N will continue
searching through the cards, and CTRL-F10 will terminate the
search.
If you press F2 (Mark), at any time during the search, the
displayed card will be ``marked''. The next time that you
display a menu of that type of card, the highlighting will
be on the name of the marked card. This is convenient if you
wish to modify the card that you have located.
Searching, as described in this section, is also possible in
the following situations:
* From the menu Display cards (F9) when editing a note or
section. Choose Find string and then a card type from the
following menu.
* When restricting the search to a row or column of note
cards as described below.
Note that the search is case-insensitive. You can request
that all searches be case-sensitive by modifying the
configuration.
Cross-references
If you have dozens of note cards, it can be very tedious to
repeatedly search through the cards, especially since many
cards may contain only incidental occurences of a phrase.
Re.search.er can create a cross-reference chain containing
only selected note cards containing a key phrase.
Select the entry Build cross from the topic menu. The
following menu will ask if you wish to restrict the
cross-reference to the note cards linked to a particular
bibliography or topic card. Now enter a string. Each card
(subject to the restriction) containing an occurence of the
string will be displayed in sequence and you can specify if
that card is to be included in the cross-reference (Y) or
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not (N). F10 requests that all subsequent cards containing
the string be included, and CTRL-F10 requests that no more
cards be included.
Later, you can select Display cross and a cross-reference
from the menu, and the cards will be displayed in sequence.
Display cross is also available as a selection in the
Display cards menu (F9).
Add cross enables you to add another note card to a
cross-reference. The new card must contain an occurence of
the string.
Since a cross-reference card is just a special type of topic
card, you can delete it from with the topic menu by
selecting Delete card. Cross-reference cards appear at the
end of the topic card menu with a distinctive first
character. The Primary field is the string defining the
cross-reference, the Secondary field contains the
restriction, if any, and the Remarks field contains the list
of cards. Do not try to modify a cross-reference yourself.
All cross-reference cards must be distinct. However, you can
include as many key phrases in your note cards as you wish,
and then create cross references for each one.
Linked note cards
The note cards in a row are said to be linked to the
bibliography card that defines the row. It is possible to
restrict display and search operations to a single row.
Choose Linked notes from the bibliography menu. You now have
three choices:
* A menu of all the linked note cards is displayed and you
can select and display a note card, just as you do from the
main Note menu.
* All the linked note cards are displayed one by one. Press
Y (or ESC) to skip to the next card, and CTRL-F10 to
terminate the display. As in a search, you can press F2 to
mark a card, so that it will be highlighted when the note
menu is next selected.
* You can search for a string; the search is restricted only
to the linked note cards.
The second option is also available whenever a bibliography
card is displayed: press F7 and the linked note cards will
be displayed.
The functions described in this section are also applicable
to the note cards in the column defined by a topic card.
Special links
- 26 -
Special links are used to cross-reference information in a
note card. Note that special links cannot be created in
sections. To create a special link when creating or
modifying a note, press F6 (Make link). A menu will appear
asking you to choose a card type: bibliography, topic or
note. When you select a type and a card of that type, a
colored arrow will be placed in the text.
Whenever you bring the cursor to an arrow and press F7
(Display link) the card you linked to will be immediately
displayed. Alternatively, bring the mouse cursor to the
arrow and click the Left button. There is no need to select
from a menu.
If you press CTRL-F6 (Remove link) while the cursor is
within the highlighted text the special link will be
removed. You will be asked to confirm the removal.
You cannot delete the arrow (or any word or line containing
an arrow) using a delete function other than Remove link.
Links can be Extracted or Cut and Pasted within a note card,
but not moved to other cards.
There is a limit of 32 links in any single card. The arrow
denoting a link is always associated with the letter it
precedes. If you create a link at the end of a line, or two
consecutive links, Re.search.er will insert an extra space
when you exit the editor.
- 27 -
Chapter 9. Maintenance
Backup copies
The data you enter into Re.search.er is stored on the disk
as microscopic magnetic fields. A bolt of lightning or an
accidental delete command can destroy all the data you have
so carefully collected for your thesis. The only way to
protect yourself from such catastrophes is to make
``back-up'' copies of your data on diskettes and to store
the copies in a safe place.
First make sure that your data is actually written to the
disk. This occurs when you leave Re.search.er, and after
every creation or modification of a card or section.
However, if you are currently editing the text of a note or
section, the modifications to this note or section will not
be saved. It is a good idea to occasionally leave the editor
(F10, Exit), so that the data on the disk will be up to
date.
At least once a day make a copy of your data to a diskette.
Simply insert a diskette into the computer and choose Backup
copy from the sub-menu. You will be prompted for a name,
which must include the name of the disk drive (the ``upper''
disk drive is usually called a: and the ``lower'' is called
b:):
New paper name: a:monday
We suggest the following method of saving backup copies. Use
one disk for each day of the week (labeled: monday, ...,
friday) and make the backup copy when you have finished
working for the day. Once a week, make an extra backup copy
for the entire week (labeled: week1, ..., week5), re-using
the diskettes each month. Thus you will lose at most one
day's work in the event that your disk fails and at most a
week's work if you accidentally delete some important
information and discover the deletion within a month.
To load a backup copy, first Access or Create a paper, then
insert the backup diskette and choose Load backup from the
Paper sub-menu.
Packing
If you frequently modify the data in your paper, the size of
the database on the disk will grow very rapidly since
Re.search.er does not automatically recover the unused
space. At least once a week, execute the command Pack paper
from the Paper sub-menu to recover the space.
** Automatice flushing to disk
It is possible to turn off the automatic flush to disk
described above by modifying a configuration parameter. This
- 28 -
may be useful if you have a very slow disk. You are then
responsible for flushing the data base occasionally by
pressing F10 from the main menu.
Note that flushing is done even if you press Ctrl-Break or
if the program terminates because of lack of memory or a
program error.
** Batch execution If you use an external program to create
backup files, you will want to pack your data base before
creating the backup. This can be done with the tool program:
tool x /p
where x is a paper name.
** Recovery
If Re.search.er terminates other than by selecting Exit (for
example, if a power failure occurs or you accidently press
the reset button on your computer), the data base containing
the paper may be in an inconsistent state. If you get an
error message Run Recover when attempting to access the
paper, choose this selection and almost always, the data
base will be returned to a consistent condition (though you
may lose some of the data entered just before the power
failure).
If a Re.search.er database is damaged and you don't have a
backup, the Recover feature in the tool program will attempt
to rescue as much data as possible.
Execute tool and select Recover cards This will try to
extract the cards just like the Export function. In
addition, the text of each note and section will be written
to a separate ASCII file. If successful, you can create a
new paper, import the cards, and then re-construct the
sections from the ASCII files.
As a last resort, Recover blocks processes the paper as a
sequential file, displaying each block. Each block you
select will be written to a file X.RCV where X is the paper
name. While a note or section may be split across blocks,
and many blocks will contain binary data that will be
displayed as garbage, you should be able to save most ASCII
text and re-arrange it with an editor.
- 29 -
Chapter 10. ** Configuration
Colors
Re.search.er uses four colors, one each for the menus, the
editor, the background and the link fields. Select Colors
from the tool menu, and choose choose one of of the above
window types from the next menu. A small window will appear
on the right side of the screen and on the left will appear
a color palette. As you move the arrow keys the color of the
window will change according to the palette. To accept a new
color, press RETURN; to cancel the modification, press ESC.
When you are finished, press ESC.
Parameters Parameters affecting the execution of
Re.search.er can be modified by choosing Values from the
tool menu. The parameters themselves are described in the
referenced sections. To modify a parameter which has a
value, select it and enter the new parameter in the window
which appears. The value entered must be within the range
shown next to the parameter. To toggle a parameter which
defines a state, just press RETURN. When you are finished,
press ESC.
Function keys
You can modify the mapping between the ten function keys
(and the ten control-function keys) and the editor
functions. When you Keys, a menu will be displayed listing
the twenty keys and their current mapping. To modify, bring
the highlighting to an entry and press RETURN. Now a menu
will appear listing the twenty available editor functions.
The function you select will be assigned to the editor key
you selected previously. When the mapping is complete, press
ESC.
You can map the same function to more than one key (this
will occur temporarily when you exchange two key mappings).
Note also that the help lines at the bottom of the editor
screen and the help display obtained by pressing will
reflect the new mapping.
- 30 -
Chapter 11. ** External interfaces
Re.search.er as a word processor
The editor and formatter can be used as a word processor.
The Document sub-menu includes the choice External file. A
file menu will appear and you can choose an external file to
modify, format, view and print.
To create an empty file, select tt Create file from the
Document sub-menu and enter the new file's name.
Extraction for other word processors
Re.search.er currently supports extraction of the document
in the format of a LaTeX or WordPerfect document. Obviously,
the extraction is useful only if one of these software
packages is available to you and if you are familiar with
it. The extracted file may require several hours' work with
the target package to achieve best results and thus
extraction should be reserved for the final draft.
To extract a document, run the tool program. A sequence of
menus will enable you to select the extraction format, the
paper and whether you want to extract the document in a
single file or in several files---one per chapter.
LaTeX
Since the formatting commands in Re.search.er are generally
identical to those in LaTeX, the extraction is fast and
straightforward. The text is extracted ``as is'', except
that commands not in LaTeX are removed. The bibliography is
extracted in the form of a BibTeX file. If separate files
are requested, include commands are written in the main
file.
Following extraction, you may want to modify the title page
and the style. You will need to process the index file and
to run BibTeX and LaTeX in the usual order.
WordPerfect
The format of a WordPerfect file is quite different from
that of Re.search.er and the extracted file will need some
work. Enter WordPerfect and Retrieve the extracted document.
Now add the base font, page and line layouts, and so on. You
will need to execute Generate to create the table of
contents and the index.
Separate extraction causes sub-documents to be created. You
can Expand the master document to see the entire text.
Numbered paragraphs are extracted as Outlines and footnotes
as Endnotes.
- 31 -
Exporting and importing cards
Re.search.er can export and import the bibliography, topic
and note cards, so that you can use existing bibliographies
or transfer information to another program. Choose Export or
Import from the tool menu.
Exported cards are written to a file with individual fields
delimited by the ASCII field separator (FS = 28 decimal) and
cards are delimited by group separators (GS = 29 decimal).
Individual fields must be terminated by a blank but they can
contain newline delimiters (LF = 10 decimal). If there are
empty fields, a blank and a delimiter and must still appear
for each field. Exported bibliography, topic and note cards
for paper P are written to files P.EXB, P.EXT and P.EXN,
respectively. Files of imported cards must have these same
names.
Exporting and importing text
To import a block of text from an external file, move the
cursor to the point at which you wish to insert new text.
Press CTRL-F7 (Copy from file) and choose a file from the
menu. When the file is displayed, mark and extract a block.
The display of the original text will be restored and you
can Paste (INS) the marked block.
To export text, mark a block of text and press CTRL-F1 (Copy
to file). You will be prompted for the file name. The marked
text will be written to the external file.
- 32 -
Chapter 12. Error messages
* [Cannot read config file, run TOOL/D] You probably deleted
the configuration file accidently. The configuration file is
created automatically during installation. You can modify it
at any time by running the tool. To reset the default
values, simply run tool/d before running Re.search.er.
* [Cannot read config file, using defaults] You are
attempting to modify the configuration file and something is
wrong with the file. The program will restore the defaults
and you can modify these.
* [Card/section with duplicate name] Two cards or sections
cannot have the same name. This is most likely to occur when
attempting to create a note card, since only seven letters
of each field are used to form the note name. If an author
has written two books with similar titles, you may have to
modify one title slightly and correct it in the final
document.
* [Database was not closed, run Recover nnnn] A power
failure occurred or you turned off the computer while the
program is writing data to the disk. After running Recover
paper check if you have lost any data. You can ignore the
number that is displayed.
* ["Exit" or "Quit" after modification] When you modify a
card or section, you cannot use ESC to leave the card or
editor. Instead you must explicitly choose F10 to save the
modification before exiting, or CTRL-F10 to exit without
saving.
* [File too big] There is not enough memory in the computer
to read the entire file. This will typically occur when you
try to View a file since the the formatting process inserts
additional characters.
* [Function not allowed in this type of card] This message
occurs when you are trying to do something that is not
allowed in Re.search.er. If it occurs, read the relevant
section in the manual. For example: you can only create a
special link from a note card and not from a section;
Display card cannot be called if the editor is displaying a
field from a fixed-format card.
* [Insufficient memory n] This can be caused if you go too
``deep'' into the data: displaying a note within a note
within a note, ldots. It can also be caused by insufficient
memory, in which case you may need to remove resident
programs (have a DOS expert help you with this). You can
ignore the number displayed.
* [No linked note cards] There are no note cards linked to
the bibliography or topic card you have selected.
- 33 -
* [No modifications during "Display"] Functions such as cut
and paste which modifiy the text cannot be used during
"Display". Select "Modify" instead.
* [No such file] You tried to access a paper but none exist,
or you tried to import from a non-existent file.
* [Recover failed] You are trying to run the recover cards
option and the database could not be opened. Your only
remaining option is to recover blocks.
* [String not found] You are searching for a string (or
trying to create a cross-reference but no occurences of the
string can be found in the cards. Check the spelling of the
string.
* [System error] An unexpected error has occurred. PLEASE,
write down the additional information that appears in the
error window and a description what you were trying to do
when the message occurred, and send them to the address on
the first page.
* [There are no cards/sections of this type] You are trying
to display the menu of cards of a certain type before you
have created such cards. The message will also appear if you
try to create a note card before you have created at least
one bibliography and one topic card.
* [Too many links] You may not create more than 32 special
links from a single note card.
* [You must Access a paper first] You cannot display or
create a card or section until you have accessed (or
created) a paper. Return to the Paper sub-menu.
* [Your diskette is write-protected] You tried to make a
backup copy to a diskette which has been protected again
writing.
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