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This section contains information on the commands that are available in Myallo's menu bar.
This command shows what version of Myallo you are using. When communicating with Leptonic Systems about the software, please include the version of Myallo and of your Mac OS system.
The preferences command will present a window that lets you adjust global settings for Myallo.
The tabs at the top of the window divide the settings into General, Agent, and Search Site preferences.
Action at startup controls what happens when Myallo is started without double clicking a saved document. The first setting is "New Profile", which will cause a new, untitled interest profile window to appear. The other settings in the popup menu are "Open Dialog", which will cause Myallo's Open Document dialog to appear so you can pick an existing profile document to open, "Nothing", which will not open a window or dialog at all, or "Re-open Last Profile", which is the default setting.
The "Re-open Last Profile" setting will cause Myallo to automatically open the profile you most recently opened. This is a handy setting, as the typical thing to do is to open the same profile whenever you use Myallo. Using the same profile every time helps Myallo learn from your feedback over time. If the last profile can't be opened for some reason, a new untitled profile is displayed.
Auto-expand interest items during drags controls what happens when you drag an interest on top of another one that has children that are not exposed. When checked, it will cause the interest to expand, showing the children so you can drag to a position among them.
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The settings under the Agent tab control part of the activity of the Myallo agent when it runs an online search session.
Show status when agent starts will, when checked, cause the status drawer to automatically open when you start a session. This is the default and usually handy, so you can see the session's progress.
Open results in browser upon completion will, when checked, cause Myallo to automatically send all of the result article URLs to your Internet browser when the session finishes. Most browsers will open each article in a separate window, with the highest rated article on top.
Completion Sound lets you specify a sound to play when the session completes. You can also set no sound to be played.
Show Alert The Activity Limits section lets you place limits on Myallo's online search process. Myallo does need limits! It can easily be set to search almost endlessly, so be careful raising some of these the limits.
Minutes indicates the maximum number of minutes a session may last. After this amount of time, the agent will finish its session regardless of any other parameters. You can see this limit and how close the agent is getting to it, in the profile window's status drawer.
Evaluations indicates the maximum number of candidate articles it may evaluate. After it has looked at this many candidates, it will finish the session regardless of any other parameters. In a complex profile with many interests, it may take a bit of time to evaluate each article, since it involves a great deal of text searching. You can see this limit, and how close the agent is to it, in the profile window's status drawer.
Results indicates the maximum number of results which should be placed into the interest profile per session. Myallo might evaluate many articles during a session, but it will only keep the top requested number of them in the result section of the profile. You can see how many potential results there are so far, and how many it has currently placed in the profile, in the profile window's status drawer.
Search Width indicates the maximum number of "discovery links" it will select from an article as additional candidates. Myallo starts with its search sites when looking for candidate articles, but when it evaluates such an article, finds it interesting, and it contains HTML links within it, some of these links may be selected and placed back in the candidates queue for reading and evaluation. This value limits the number of such "discovered" links it can place back into the queue per page. Raising this value can substantially increase the number of items the agent may want to evaluate.
Search Depth also controls the "discovery" process. When the agent discovers additional links on a page, and that page is evaluated, it in turn may also contain links which may be discovered. This value controls how deep this discovery process can go. Raising this value can enormously increase the number of items the agent may want to evaluate. Be careful in raising the search width or depth.
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The search sites define the starting points for Myallo's agent. Generally, search sites are for search engines on the Internet. The list of search sites may vary from what is in this illustration. Some search sites may be built into Myallo, while others can be added on or created by you.
Myallo is not affiliated with any Internet search engines. You choose which search engines, if any, you want to use. Some engines may be more useful than others. This depends on the engine and what you are looking for. Running Myallo with a search engine should not overwhelm the search agent with requests, but the request made can vary depending on your profile, your settings, and how often you run your sessions. Be careful not to abuse any search engines.
The check mark column indicates which of the available search sites Myallo will use to find starting points. In general, you should use one search site. Selecting multiple search sites can greatly increase the time and network traffic.
The "+" and "-" buttons near the bottom of the window allow you to add and delete your own search site definitions. The appendix explains this process. Built-in search sites can't be deleted.
Myallo includes a built-in search site named "Spotlight". This site can only be enabled if you have Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) or above. When enabled, it will quickly search the text content of all local files on your computer, using the system's Spotlight feature. You can turn this site on alone, to only search your local files, or use it in addition to one or more of the Internet search sites to search both local files and Internet pages.
This command opens a new window containing an empty profile.
This command allows you to select and open several types of documents.
If you open a Myallo Interest Profile, it will appear in a new window as it was previously saved.
You can also open a plain text document. In that case, a new profile will be created, and the text in the file will be examined line by line. Each nonblank line will result in one interest in the profile.
In a text file, each line will be interpreted by the following rules:
If the file you select is an HTML file, it is interpreted differently from a regular text file. The text in the file will be examined for clickable hyperlinks starting with the <A> tag. Each one found will result in a new interest. The name of the interest will be the text between the <A> and </A> tags, and the location of the interest will be the URL in the href attribute of the <A> tag. Interest levels will be set to 0.0.
When opening HTML files, there are two additional point to know. Clickable images do create interests, and in that case the name of the interest will be set to the "alt" property of the image, or a default name if there is no "alt" property. And, links which have relative URLs in them may not be fetchable. In these situations, you might want to edit the names or locations of the interests.
This command lets you quickly select and open some of the profile documents that you have previously opened.
This command will close the active window. If the window holds an Interest Profile where changes have been made, you will be asked if you want to save it.
This command will let you save the active Interest Profile. If this is the first time the profile has been saved, it will ask for a file name and location.
This command lets you save a copy of the active Interest Profile with a new name.
This command will discard all the changes you have made to the active Interest Profile since it was last saved.
This is the standard command that lets you set some characteristics of your printer.
This command will cause the contents of the active Interest Profile to be printed.
This are the standard command to undo or redo the effects of the last command.
This is the standard command to remove the selection and place it on the clipboard.
This is the standard command to place a copy of the selection on the clipboard.
This is the standard command to replace the selection with a copy of what is on the clipboard.
This is the standard command to delete the selection. Pressing the Delete key has the same effect.
This is the standard command to select everything in the active text field or window.
The commands in this menu control how the interests in a profile window are displayed. The current view has a check mark next to its menu item.
Normally, an Interest Profile should be displayed as you created it, in its hierarchical outline format. The "as Outline" view does that. However, other choices in the View menu allow you to see the Interests in the Profile sorted in different ways.
When you choose a view other than "as Outline" several things happen:
The Hierarchical outline format disappears and all the Interests appear in a straight list, sorted according to the column you chose in the menu.
Editing of the Interest Profile is prohibited. You can't add, delete, or rearrange the Interests. To make changes, switch back to the "as Outline" view.
A shortcut for setting the view is to click on the headings in the profile window. Clicking in the outline icon at the rightmost part of the heading sets the window to display as an outline, and clicking in the other column headings sets the window to display as a list sorted by that column.
This causes the entire profile to be displayed in the outline order. This is the normal format, and the only one which allows you to create, delete, move, drop, or import Interests.
This causes all the interests to be displayed as a straight list, sorted by name.
This causes all the interests to be displayed as a straight list, sorted by check mark.
This causes all the interests to be displayed as a straight list, sorted by interest level.
This causes all the interests to be displayed as a straight list, sorted by the Opened date.
This causes all the interests to be displayed as a straight list, sorted by location URL.
This command will temporarily remove all the alias interests from view in the profile window. When aliases are hidden, a check mark appears next to this menu item. Choosing the command again will reveal the alias interests.
This will cause the profile window's side drawer to open and reveal interest detail settings. If the details are already being shown, the command will close the drawer. It will show the detail settings for the first interest selected in the profile.
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This will open the side drawer in the profile window and display the interest content, if any. If the first selected interest has a location URL, its contents will be displayed so you can peek at it.
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If the content was already showing, the drawer will be closed.
An icon can be placed in the profile window toolbar that will open and close the content drawer.
This will cause a new interest to be placed in the profile. It will be named "New Interest". The name will be selected for editing so that you can type its proper name immediately.
If the selected interest has a location URL associated with it, Myallo asks your Internet browser or other application to open and display the article at that location.
Double clicking an Interest's icon will also open it, as will selecting the Interest and pressing the Return key.
You can select several interests and use this command, and all the selected interests that have a location will be opened.
This command creates an alias interest that points to the interest that was selected. If an alias was selected, the created alias will point to the original interest that the alias pointed to (there is no such thing as an alias to an alias.) If multiple interests were selected, multiple aliases are created.
The created alias will have the same name and settings as the original. You can tell it is an alias because the icon will have an arrow on it.
After creating an alias, you may drag it to its desired position.
Any change you make to an alias' settings will immediately be reflected in the original interest and any other aliases the original may have. The name of the alias may be changed, however.
If you delete an interest, all its aliases are automatically deleted. The inverse is not true - if you delete an alias, the original interest and any other aliases it may have are not affected.
When an alias interest is selected, this command will change the selection to show the original interest.
This menu includes commands that control Myallo's online search session.
This will open the drawer at the side of the profile window and show the agent's status. If the status is already being displayed, it will close the window.
An icon in the profile window's toolbar can also open and close the status display.
This will cause Myallo to display a dialog box asking you to enter a single search string. When you click OK, Myallo will start the agent, looking for pages that include an exact match on the full text you entered. Pages that are found are evaluated in light of the interest profile, and the highest-rated pages are returned as results.
The Fast Lookup command differs from the Start Agent command in that instead of using the names of interests whose checkboxes are set as search strings, it uses only the single string you enter into the dialog.
This will cause Myallo to begin its session, usually by going online and querying search sites.
There is also a Start/Stop icon in the profile window toolbar that will start (or stop) the session.
This will cause the agent to pause its running session. Selecting it again will resume.
Pausing will suspend the agent's article reading and evaluation activity.
This will cause the Agent to finish quickly.
When the Agent finishes, it releases any of its connections to the Network, but this does not necessarily mean it will disconnect a dialup telephone line, even if starting the agent caused the dialup connection to be initiated. Disconnecting the line is a function of the operating system itself.
This command will open the Help Viewer application and show the Myallo online help document.
This command will check the Myallo web site on the Internet to see if your version of Myallo is the latest available. If it is not, it will show you a message and offer to cause your browser to open the Myallo Internet page so you can check further.