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RACONTEX SEARCH SYSTEM Instruction Manual For Loading/Indexing and Searching Copyright (c) Edward Guy CDP 1987,8,9,90,1 A product of: GUY SOFTWARE 1752 Duchess Avenue West Vancouver British Columbia Canada V7V 1P9 December 17, 1993 Compuserve 71750,1036 CONTENTS DISCLAIMER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 RACONTEX FEATURES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 LOADING/INDEXING INSTRUCTIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Quick Start . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 MICROSOFT WINDOWS AND RACONTEX. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 FOR THE MORE TECHNICAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 File Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Stopwords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Delimiters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Formatting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Merging Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Copy Prevention . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 For the REALLY technical . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Updating licence information on an old database . . . . . . . . . . 11 Program Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 SEARCH SYSTEM INSTRUCTIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Simple Searches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Display Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Word Proximity Searches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Printer and File Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Please note that the SEARCH SYSTEM INSTRUCTIONS can stand alone and do not require an understanding of the LOADING/INDEXING INSTRUCTIONS. There may be more up to date instructions in the file README. Racontex Manual Page 1 DISCLAIMER: The supplier has no liability to the licensee or any other person or entity for any damage or loss, including special, incidental or consequential damages caused by this product directly or indirectly. The software is supplied "as is" without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied. Warranties of merchantability or of fitness for any purpose are specifically disclaimed. Racontex Manual Page 2 RACONTEX FEATURES. Many business uses. In addition to the obvious uses for statutes, legal transcripts, etc Racontex is valuable for use with collective agreements, policy manuals, office handbooks, library catalogues -- in fact anywhere that someone has to "look something up" and there is a personal computer available. Easy "Intuitive" Search. Can be started with a one line command (or from a batch file or menu), and prompts the user throughout. Context-sensitive HELP screens available at the press of a key. Contextual Search Tool. Does not lose the context of pages found, can "page up" and "page down" from each occurrence of the search criteria, (even if those pages do not contain the search criteria) and return to it instantly by pressing one key. Moves to next or previous incidence of search criteria by forward arrow or backward arrow keys. Makes full use of display. Supports 50 lines of on screen text with a VGA adapter, 36 lines of text on screen with an EGA or Hercules display as an alternative to regular 25 line text mode. 36 line display will fit a full page of court reporters' transcript on the screen at once. Proximity Search. Supports searches of word alternatives and combinations of alternatives within a given number of words of each other, or on the same page as each other. File Output. Supports file export of search occurrence pages either as ASCII, ASCII with search keys marked or Wordperfect with search keys in bold. Alternatively can copy to printer. Variable Stopword List. Licensees of the loading (indexing) program may specify their own list of stopwords (words not to be included in searches, such as "and" and "the") - this is a tremendous disk space saver. Racontex Manual Page 3 Variable Delimiter List. Licensees of the loading (indexing) program may specify their own list of delimiters. e.g. They may determine whether a hyphenated word is one word or two for search purposes. Self Optimising for Speed. Detects memory available and loads either all or part of the file into memory for sub-second response. Pages large files into memory for display (takes a fraction of a second from a hard drive). Powerful File Compression. Compresses text file to such a degree that, depending on the stop word list, all files (text, index and dictionary) fit in only slightly more space than the original ASCII text file. Copyright Protection. Licensees of the loading program can market "Self Searching" disk copies of their documents and thus compete with on-line text data base systems for statute search etc. The search program title screen will carry the copyright title of the licensee as well as the program author. Both are protected against "zapping" with a disk modifying utility. "Publisher Pack". A "Publisher's Package" is available which permits a publisher to include the publisher's client's names in the protected area of the title screen, as well as the publisher's name. Useful for subscription publishers of statutes etc. Includes install procedure requiring on screen assent by client to subscription terms. Optional copy prevention. The resulting self searching documents may be loaded onto computers other than the original (subject to the appropriate licence) and then made "non-portable" to prevent unauthorised copying. Useful for significant databases in companies with high staff turnover. Easy to Add to Files. Additional sections can be added easily to a document in the system. Ideal for daily transcript of an ongoing hearing. The whole record of a hearing can be built up on the hard drive of a laptop, and passages accessed in less than a second. Racontex Manual Page 4 Mouse interface. If Racontex detects a mouse, it may be used for navigation around the system. Windows Interface Windows interface in same package as DOS version. On-Line Manual A copy of this manual is provided on-line as a RACONTEX database. Racontex Manual Page 5 LOADING/INDEXING INSTRUCTIONS The Racontex search program operates on a text database produced by processing the document to be searched through a "Loading" process which performs indexing and text compression. The loading/indexing process has many options to allow for flexibility in use, but you do not need to study them to get started. Quick Start. There is an INSTALL procedure on the disk, just put the disk in drive A and type in A:INSTALL and press ENTER. It will set up a subdirectory on your hard drive and copy the files into it. The loading process requires that the program files be in the current directory, or an APPENDED one (which could include CD ROM, see the file READONLY.DOC). The database will be created in the current directory. (Please note that while the Racontex search program will work adequately on a "floppy only" machine, the loading process is severely limited if a hard drive is not available. However the loading process may be performed on a hard drive computer and the loaded files used on a machine without one.) If you wish to use the version designed for Microsoft Windows, you may start the system with the command WIN RCNTXWIN, and follow the instructions on the screen. That version provides a Windows "front end processor" which deals with the dialogue between you and the system. It then brings up the search in a full screen window and behaves exactly like the DOS version until you exit or minimise the window. To prepare a document for use with the Racontex search program, simply type in the command "LOAD", and when the computer prompts you for it type in the name of the text file you want to load. The load process creates a series of files all beginning with OUTFILE, which you may rename if you wish. (Although you may perform a database creation from the Windows screen, it will be a little slower than from DOS, because of the overhead which windows imposes.) To search those files type in RACONTEX OUTFILE and follow the prompts (or read the separate instructions on the use of the search program). If you want to use the search program on another computer (and assuming your licence permits it), place a formatted floppy disk in your A drive, type in COPY C:\RACONTEX\RACONTEX.* A:/V and press enter, then type in COPY C:\RACONTEX\OUTFILE.* A:/V and press enter. You may then run the search program from the floppy disk on another machine. Racontex Manual Page 6 PLEASE NOTE: Because many applications require frequent additions to a text data base (e.g. daily transcript of an ongoing legal proceeding) the LOAD command checks to see if a suite of files named OUTFILE exists and if it does, adds the new text to the end. If you do not want that simply rename or delete the OUTFILE files. The load command will remind you of this. MICROSOFT WINDOWS AND RACONTEX. The windows program RCNTXWIN provides all of the functions of RACONTEX through a single window in Microsoft Windows. If started from the subdirectory containing the loading programs which are used to create databases, it gives the options to create, rename and delete databases. If a search-only package of RACONTEX is being used, these options are not available and are not offered on the screen. Loading under DOS is faster! The options are chosen via the "RADIO BUTTONS" at the bottom left of the screen. Different drives and directories may be chosen using the standard Windows drive and directory boxes on the screen. Once a file has been selected by "clicking" on its name in the file or database selection box, the command button for starting the operation will appear. For a search or creation operation the window will call a DOS window up, and will run the standard RACONTEX programs in it. If you are not running in "enhanced mode", the screen will prompt you to maximise the icon for the operation. If you are running in enhanced mode, the program will start running in a full screen window, which you may minimise if you wish. When you are selecting a database for searching, renaming or deleting, only the database name appears in the box, although RACONTEX databases consist of five files each. If you are selecting a file to create a database from, the full filenames appear. In the "create" mode a "view file" command button also appears. Clicking this gives you a preview of the beginning of the file you have selected, so that you may be sure it is the correct one. During the viewing of this, the controls of the window "float" in front of the text. In the "search" mode, a pull down menu at the top of the screen allows search output options to be set. You may select whether the search display screen is 25, 36 or 50 lines. The 50 line mode will usually get a full page on the screen at once. You may also select whether any WordPerfect files produced will be in the format of version 4.2 or version 5. FOR THE MORE TECHNICAL: The foregoing provides sufficient instructions for most applications, however a fair amount of customisation is possible. Racontex Manual Page 7 File Names. A document in Racontex form consists of a suite of files, all with the same name but with different extensions (.NDX .TXT .DCT .SPD .PGF). All must be present for the search engine to work and all must be transferred to transfer a document to another computer. These files are produced by the Loading/Indexing process. Stopwords. In any text data base application the most frequent 40 words in the language take up about 40% of the disk space. You do not usually want to able to search for words like AND, THE and similar words (each occurrence of a word which you do wish to be able to search for takes 10 bytes of space - if you do not wish to be able to search for a word it only takes 2 bytes.) A file called STOPWORD is included, and the words in that file will not be indexed for searching. You may edit the file with any ASCII word processor to change the selection of stopwords, or you may delete it entirely if you wish every word to be indexed for searching. Unless you include them in the STOPWORD file, initials are treated as words and it is advisable to STOPWORD them in most cases (computer people will probably not want to stopword the initial "C" since they will want to index references to the "C" language.) The system is "Case Blind", i.e. although it will display both capitals and lower case it treats them as identical for indexing and searching and it is therefore not necessary to STOPWORD "The" if you have done it to "the". If Racontex files produced by different runs with different stopword lists are merged using the merge facility referred to later, the resulting files will be stopworded as if the stopword lists had also been merged. Using this it is possible to load a document with a very small (or even non-existent) stopword list and then apply stopwords later if storage considerations make this necessary. If the Racontex files are still named "OUTFILE" with various extensions, this may be achieved by changing the stopword list and then issuing the command INDEX NUL, which will add no new text but will apply the new stopwords. Delimiters. The loading system needs to know what constitutes a separate word. A space always means the end of a word, but what about a hyphen? A "delimiter" means a character which indicates the end of a word, and because different applications may need a different set of delimiters the system allows you to change them. For example, if a period is embedded in a word it may just mean that the typist forgot a space and in pure text documents you probably want the period to be a delimiter. However in a document listing radio frequencies you probably want "142.299" to be treated as one word and not two. Racontex Manual Page 8 You may provide your own list of delimiters by including a file DELIMIT in the current directory when you run the LOAD program. It should contain just one line like -+\/,.!()[]{};: ending with a carriage return ([ENTER]). The string of characters which looks like a comic book cuss word indicates which characters will be used as delimiters. If you do not include a DELIMIT file, the loading process assumes you forgot and uses !&()-_+=\/,.:;[]{}?<> as delimiters. Formatting. The loading process takes the FormFeed character (ASCII 12) as the end of a "logical page", even though that may require more than one screen to display a page in the Racontex search program. That logical page is used in the search program when a search is made for words on the "Same Page". If you are formatting a text file specifically for use with Racontex you should bear in mind your screen characteristics to make your searches as convenient as possible. If the searches will be performed on a "text only" system or on a system with a Color Graphics Adapter (CGA) there is room for 24 lines of 80 characters each on the search screen at once. EGA will allow 35 lines of 80 characters each, VGA 49 lines of 80 characters each and Hercules will allow 35 lines of 90 characters wide. If the text file does not match these, there is no real problem as the search program will "wrap" lines that are too wide and will "scroll" pages that are too long. Since the objective is to maximise use of the display screen, "nul" lines often used for double spacing are eliminated. If there is a requirement for a blank line to appear on the display, include at least one space on the line. If you are preparing a copy of a file where paragraphs of it for some reason are logical units (e.g. sections of a statute, procedure manuals, library catalogues etc.) it often helps to set them up as "logical pages" so that the "same page" search will find combinations of words in the same paragraph. Merging Files The system provides the means to merge documents produced by different runs of the Loader/Indexer. You just enter the command MERGE filea fileb filec where filea and fileb are the names of the suites of files to be merged (without extension but optionally with pathnames) and filec is the name the merged suite of files is to be given (and cannot be the same as filea or fileb). Racontex Manual Page 9 Please note that the merge facility will not merge files produced by different licensed copies of the Loader/Indexer (this is to avoid compromising the copyright notice of those who publish documents in Racontex form with their own copyright notice showing on the title screen). Copy Prevention Once RACONTEX database files have been installed on a particular machine they may be "FIXED" on that machine. This does not prevent their being moved to other locations on that machine or backup copies being made, but the copies will only work with a copy of RACONTEX on that machine. If run on another machine the only action will be to display a message to that effect. (If run on another machine with an earlier version of Racontex, the message reports "Files damaged or altered", if run with a current version version of Racontex the message says "Removed from machine authorised to run" it.) This is achieved by using the program RCNTXFIX.EXE. The command RCNTXFIX FILEA will render non-portable the database files with the filename FILEA. If run on files produced by an unregistered version, this may be reversed by running the UPDATE program. Since the UPDATE program will not work on files produced by a registered version, such files will remain "fixed" no matter what. This feature prevents copies of a database being made by unauthorised persons. The originals are normally kept by an authorised person and installed on the user machine by that person and then "RCNTXFIX"ed. Additionally, the ability to do a one key unload of the whole database to a file is disabled by the "fixing" process, to protect the copyright of those using RACONTEX to publish proprietary material. The optional "Publishers' Package" produces an "install" procedure which automatically "fixes" files as they are installed on a client's machine. For the REALLY technical: The loading process operates as follows: The LOAD command invokes a batch file LOAD.BAT which calls a program BREAKIT. If the file you instruct it to load is longer than 200kb this program creates working files by breaking up the input file into a series of files (named P!.1, P!.2 etc) each no greater than about 200kb. It then writes a file INDEX1.BAT consisting of one line INDEX P!.1 P!.2 ...etc. After BREAKIT has executed LOAD.BAT chains to INDEX1.BAT which in turn calls INDEX.BAT (the main loading "engine"). INDEX.BAT takes as parameters the names of the files to be indexed and added to the OUTFILE.* database files. For custom applications you may replace the Racontex Manual Page 10 LOAD.BAT front end process with your own program provided that it leaves input files not significantly larger than 200kb, and is followed by a call to INDEX.BAT. (If you know that your files are within the size limit you may initiate the process by calling INDEX.BAT directly.) For example you may have an application designed to print a document (e.g. a library catalogue, Rolodex cards etc) with a standard number of heading lines on each page or with some consistent separator for "logical pages" of information. You could write a simple BASIC program which will read that file, ignoring the heading lines and inserting FormFeed characters between the logical pages, and writing out a series of files for input into INDEX.BAT. The file size limitation is there because Racontex can handle files whose index would be too large to fit into memory and it therefore loads them by indexing sections and merging the indexed sections on the hard disk. The programs used by INDEX.BAT are described below: INDBAT.EXE file1 file2 Reads in file1 and produces output files named file2 with various extensions. Defaults: file1=INFILE file2=OUTFILE. MERGBAT.EXE filea fileb filec Merges files produced by INDBAT.EXE, filea is the name of the first set of input files (without extension) fileb is the same for the second set of input files and filec is the name to be assigned to the output files. Defaults filea=INFILE1 fileb=INFILE2 filec=OUTFILE. Note that before running MERGBAT.EXE it is necessary to rename "filea".TXT (i.e. the file with the extension .TXT produced by INDBAT.EXE) as "filec".TXT as is done in INDEX.BAT. As inspection of INDEX.BAT will show, the process of indexing and merging will continue until all of the files named on the INDEX.BAT command line have been processed. Please note that it is necessary to copy the file LICENCE.PGF to "filec".PGF after all of the indexing and merging, as shown in the batch file. SPEEDIND filec Examines the output files denoted by filec (defaults to OUTFILE) and writes a file used later by the Racontex search program in conjunction with the other files produced by INDBAT.EXE and MERGBAT.EXE. Racontex Manual Page 11 The file produced by SPEEDIND (with the extension .SPD) is the key to the speed of the Racontex reader/search engine when running from slow media e.g. over a LAN. Unlike many such programs, it does not read the whole file over the LAN, it brings "pages" of it only across the LAN. Unlike the full client/ server alternative it does not require the server to have a "query executing" engine - it uses the regular LAN redirector. However, an exeptionally complex word proximity query may cause it to "thrash" as it brings across sections of the index for comparison. If the loading process detects errors during the run, it writes details of the errors to a file called RCNTXERR.LST, and INDEX.BAT warns of the existence of such a file. Updating licence information on an old database. If you have databases produced by an unregistered version you may update them by using the UPDATE program provided. Syntax is UPDATE files, where "files" is the name of the database files (without extension). The new LICENCE.PGF must be in the current directory when the program is run. To protect the copyright of those who use Racontex to publish material, the UPDATE program will not work on databases produced by a registered version of the loader. Program Limitations. At present the system is limited to documents of 16000 pages long or less - there is no limitation to page size. The system is a "database" type system in that each word found in the input is stored only once (in lower case) and all subsequent references to it use pointers and case flags. The "dictionary" must reside in memory and is limited to 65000 bytes - this is always adequate since it allows for the storage of over 10,000 different words for use in a given document and most people have a normal vocabulary smaller than this (also a document is likely to refer to a sub-set of human experience and therefore use a more limited vocabulary). If the loading system runs out of dictionary space, it continues to run but substitutes ? for the word it cannot store and writes the word with an appropriate message to the RCNTXERR.LST file). In this extremely unlikely event you may elect to leave the document with the odd "?" in it or break up the document into two sections and handle each section as a separate document. You might also consider amending the delimiter list. The only other limitation is the size of the hard disk on the machine being used. Because the loading program substantially compresses the text it is not uncommon (with an appropriate stopword list) for the output files from the loading process to be smaller in total than the input text file. Racontex Manual Page 12 SEARCH SYSTEM INSTRUCTIONS This system is designed for the RApid CONTEXtual search of documents for keywords and combinations of words. It works quickly because it operates mainly in memory - bringing in a specially prepared copy of the document and then working on it (if your machine has insufficient memory to hold the document - often the case with large documents like statutes, Racontex will "page" the files into memory at a slight penalty in speed - if you use a hard drive or LAN connection you will not notice the difference). Simple Searches. The program is invoked by typing at the A> prompt (C> or D> with a hard drive): RACONTEX [FILE] where [FILE] is the name of the prepared database file set. For example to search the copy of the Industrial Relations Act saved as IRACT you would type RACONTEX IRACT (if you use a menu system, selecting the appropriate menu item would do this for you). If there are Racontex databases in the current directory, typing RACONTEX without a filename will present a menu of them for selection. If you use a hard drive you may copy all of the files on the distribution disk to that drive, and then run the program from its prompt (usually C>). Display Options. Racontex will detect whether you have a colour card installed for your monitor, and will use colours to enhance the menu if it finds one. Sometimes a computer has a colour card installed, but uses a monochrome monitor (a common situation with laptops using liquid crystal screens, and VGA (e.g. PS/2 50) machines with monochrome monitors) which causes some menus to be difficult to read. In that situation Racontex may be invoked by RACONTEX [FILE]/m and it will use its monochrome setup whether or not a colour card is in use. Racontex cannot always get a whole page of a document on the screen, and in this case it displays the page a screen at a time. The standard method of moving down such a page is to show each screen full separately, since this is the fastest method of display (particularly with liquid crystal screens). An Racontex Manual Page 13 optional method is to "scroll" the screen like credits on a film, and this may be preferable if the pages of a document are only slightly longer than the screen. This option is selected by invoking Racontex by RACONTEX [FILE]/s (If both of the above are wanted, use RACONTEX [FILE]/m/s) If Racontex detects that your computer has a graphics card which can support more than 25 lines of text on the screen (Hercules, EGA or VGA) it will offer you the opportunity to switch to graphics mode in order to get more of the page on the screen (36 lines for EGA and Hercules, 50 lines for VGA). If for some reason you do not want to be offered this choice (e.g. the slightly slower screen writing is a concern, or you don't like the smaller letters, or your display is not fully IBM compatible) you may force the non-graphics mode to be used by invoking Racontex by RACONTEX [FILE]/ng If Racontex detects a mouse, it will allow you to use it to navigate around the screens. If you do not wish this you may disable it by adding /nm as a start up option) If your system has a problem with programs which write directly to the hardware, add the option /DV and the program will use DOS Video calls, which are slower but may avoid some problems. The program will now load itself and the files it needs to operate and after a little chugging around will display "press any key to continue". After you have pressed a key it will display a screen like this: |Word to find? | | | | [ENTER] then [ESC] to quit. [F9] to display first page. [?] for help | Note that whenever you see a question mark "?" in the menu bar at the bottom of the screen you may display a help screen by pressing the [?] key. At this point you may press [F9] to jump straight to the first page of the document, or you may enter a word to search for. If you are searching the Industrial Relations Act for references to the word "oath", you would type in "oath" and press enter, like this: Racontex Manual Page 14 |Word to find? oath | | | | [ENTER] then [ESC] to quit. [F9] to display first page. [?] for help| and the computer would respond: |Word to find? oath | | oath 9 occurrences | | | |[ESC]=Quit [F1]=OR [F2]=Same Page[F3]=Word Proximity[F8]=Tally[F9]=Dsply[?]| You could then press [F9] and the computer would display: | Evidence | | 19. (1) The council may receive and accept such evidence and information | on oath, affidavit or otherwise as in its discretion it considers proper, | | whether or not the evidence is admissible in a court of law. | | (2) The council may request and receive a report from a person it | | appoints to investigate an application or to investigate and attempt to | | settle a dispute under this Act, a collective agreement or the regulations. | The council may, in its discretion, in a proceeding or class of proceedings | consider the contents of a report without disclosing them to any party. | | | |[ESC] [P] [PGDN] [PGUP] [END] [HOME] [<-] [v] [->] [^] ([?] for help) | Notice how the word "oath" is highlighted on the screen. {In these instructions [v] represents the down arrow and [^] represents the up arrow because some printers object to the codes for the actual characters.} The "menu" at the bottom of the screen allows you to navigate through the document. In the example given, the Industrial Relations Act has been set up with one "page" equal to one section (note that some "pages" fill more than one screen). Therefore the key [PGUP] takes you to the previous section (i.e. Section 18), [PGDN] takes you to the following section, [HOME] takes you to the beginning of the Act and [END] takes you to the end of the Act. The arrow keys take you around the pages your search found, [<-] will take you to the previous section containing your search key, [->] will take you to the next one, [^] will take you to the top of your current page (it may be too long to fit on the screen) and [v] will take you to the current one (you may have moved away from it with the [PGUP] and [PGDN] keys. [ESC] will take Racontex Manual Page 15 you back to search for a different set of key words. In this case we hit [->] and the computer displayed: | Summons and discovery of documents | | 20. On the recommendation of an officer appointed under section 8 or 96,| | or on its own motion, the council has power to summon and enforce the | | attendance of witnesses and compel them to give oral or written evidence on | oath and to produce the documents and things the officer or the council | | considers requisite to the full investigation and consideration of matters| | within his or its jurisdiction in the same manner as a court of record in | | civil cases. | | | |[ESC] [P] [PGDN] [PGUP] [END] [HOME] [<-] [v] [->] [^] ([?] for help) | Word Proximity Searches Sometimes the computer indicates that there are too many instances of a word for anyone to want to look at all instances (try "picket$" in the Industrial Relations Act - the $ [or % or * for those familiar with other "wild card characters"] indicates that you want all words beginning with picket, and would include pickets, picketing etc.) In that case you might want to try combining it with another word. In our example we could look for oath only within a given number of words of some other word, in this case "eviden$". To do this we select "word proximity" from the "word to find" screen by pressing [F3] on that screen, and the computer responds with: | | |[F1]=Adj [F2]=Within 2 words [F3]=4 [F4]=8 [F5]=16 [F6]=32 [F7]=64 [F8]=128| | | To tell it that we only want to look for our next word within sixteen words of the last one, we press [F5] and then see: | | |Word to find? within 16 words of previous set| | | | | | [ENTER] then [ESC] to quit. [?] for help | Racontex Manual Page 16 to which we respond as follows, and get the result shown: |Word to find? eviden$ within 16 words of previous set| | evidence 31 occurrences | | evidentiary 1 occurrence | | | |[ESC]=Quit [F1]=OR [F2]=Same Page [F3]=Word Proximity[F8]=Tally[F9]=display| This time when we press [F9] we get the following result: | Evidence | | 19. (1) The council may receive and accept such evidence andinformation | on oath, affidavit or otherwise as in its discretion it considers proper, | | whether or not the evidence is admissible in a court of law. | | (2) The council may request and receive a report from a person it | | appoints to investigate an application or to investigate and attempt to | | settle a dispute under this Act, a collective agreement or the regulations. | The council may, in its discretion, in a proceeding or class of proceedings | consider the contents of a report without disclosing them to any party. | | | | | |[ESC] [P] [PGDN] [PGUP] [END] [HOME] [<-] [v] [->] [^] ([?] for help) | Notice that both "oath" and "evidence" ( also "evidentiary") are highlighted and how only pages containing both words are displayed as you proceed through the document using the [->] key. Sometimes it is necessary to find a combination of one of several words in combination with one of another set of words. e.g. to find all references to picketing an ally you would need to find the combinations given by: picket$ [F3] or [F2] (word proximity or same page) Ally [F1] ("or") Alli$ (to catch "allies" "allied" etc) [F9] ("display") The proximity search may continue for as many proximity combinations as needed, but it must be remembered that what the proximity "engine" is doing is dropping out references to the first search key set found which do not satisfy each succeeding condition. To assist this process the computer displays a history of "The Search So Far" in a box at the right of the Racontex Manual Page 17 screen. At the end of each set of "OR" conditions (indicated by selecting some key other than F1) the computer performs this dropping out operation and displays the number of pages remaining which satisfy the search criteria. When F9 is selected those remaining occurrences are displayed. The F8 "Tally" option is provided to allow a display of the number of hits remaining before the "display" option is selected so that if too many remain a further criterion may be specified. Printer and File Output. When you have a document displayed on the screen, another choice shown on the menu is [P]. Pressing the P key will tell the system that you wish to have a copy of the current page (or - for files not protected with the RCNTFIX feature - all pages or those pages with "found" occurrences) printed for some purpose. The first time you press the P key, you will be given a choice of output forms. You may either direct the output to your printer or to a file for later printing, or for incorporation in some other document. It makes it easier to find if you include the pathname of your word processing directory in the file name (otherwise the file will be placed in the DOS "current directory"). You may also select a file output format for later use. If you select plain ASCII, the file produced will contain straight text. If you select ASCII with {} highlighting, the keywords will appear in the file enclosed in { } brackets. You may then use your word processor to change these to whatever code it uses to turn on and off whatever form of highlighting you require. If you select WordPerfect with bold, the file will be written in WordPerfect format, with the keywords set to bold print. The file will be produced in WordPerfect version 5.0. WordPerfect 5.1 will also read this file format. If you require a file in WordPerfect 4.2 format, start up RACONTEX with /WP42 as an option on the command line (in Windows, select from the pulldown menu). If a file with the name you give exists, the new information will be appended to it, and if you specified WordPerfect format, RACONTEX will add its new information in the same version.