DP Tool Club 24/CD_ASCQ_24_0995.iso/vrac/abool20.zip/BOOL.TXT

Text File | 1995-07-28 | 21KB | 417 lines

       Boole Text Searcher Version 2.0 c 1995 by Peter Neuendorffer
       for Windows 3.1         File: ABOOL20.ZIP


       Boole must be distributed as Shareware.
       After 30 days, register it for $30.00.

       1. The Program
       3. Auto Save Settings
          Text Conditions
       4. Directory Searching
       5. Mask Size
       6. Editing Text,
          Bookmarks, History List & Speed Buttons



                            The Program

       Notes:   Micheal Moreau. "Previous instance" code by Pat Ritchey.
       The program runs at 640X400 or 800X600 screen resolution.

       While you do a search, only run this program. "Boole" uses memory.
       This program finds text. It searches for text in a single file,
       and also an entire directory, or hard drive.
       A special feature in Directory Searches is to search just DOC and
       TXT text files. To do that, turn the File Filter "text" checkbox on.
       An improvement to version one ensures that you can search the
       entire drive at once. Up to 1000 files can be listed for each search.

       This software looks in files to find the text you request. This text
       can be more than one thing at once, such as "computer and disk." Note
       when you make search requests, do not use quotation marks. The
       words AND, OR, NOT have special meanings. Searches are supported
       for Hard Drives only.

       To register Boole, send $30.00 to Peter Neuendorffer,
       1399 Commonwealth Ave #11, Allston MA 02134.
       Tel: [phone]    Internet: [e-mail]
       This software not disabled in any way, no further media will be sent.

       To install, copy all files to a sub-directory on your hard drive.
       Then open up a program group in Windows, select File/New. Then browse
       to BOOL.EXE in your new directory. Select his, then click on
       Change Icon, OK, then OK again.
       It is recommended that you not run other programs on your desktop
       when running this software as it will require most of your 1MEG RAM.

       You need an IBM compatible 386 or higher, 486 preferred, and
       Windows 3.1. with 8 megs of memory. This software uses the short
       file names, and not the new Windows 95 long file names. Mouse required.

       You may be familiar with the File Manager's ability to
       scan your disk for file names. This software will scan your disk
       or directories for text that appears in files. It works best with
       text files or word processor files. A text file might be an email
       message, a manual, a story, letter, something created with
       Notepad, Megaedit, Brief, WordPerfect, MSWord.







       Boole p 2.

       The Program

       Searching for text on your drive helps you find files, find
       isolated ideas, especially when you do not know exactly
       what you are searching for, or what file it is in. This software
       has two main screens. The opening screen has the main menu,
       and you can view and search single files fow search words or
       special conditions. The directory search has searching of
       multiple files.

       A search request, if blank, finds all files. A simple search
       request could be "Tom" (without quotes.) A condition strings
       together words or phrases with special words AND  NOT  OR.
       "Tom and house" looks for both to be present within a mask.
       More on mask sizes later. "Tom or house" finds one or the
       other. You can have up to 4 words strung together - terms.
       When the manual, or the software talks about search conditions,
       it means these single or complex search words.

       You can search an entire Directory, including sub-directories of
       that directory by choosing Search/Directory Search. Simply put,
       you DOUBLE click on a directory name in the box at the top left.
       Then specify if you want the software to search subdirectories, enter
       in a text condition words and click on Search. A list of found files
       appears below (if any.) You can select one to view, and search. Click
       on "View Question" if you wish to preview each file before viewing.

       The second way to search is by and individual file. Click on
       File/Open from the main screen and select a text file to view.
       You may then use Find First and Find Next to search the file.
       You can Close any display with File/Close, but this is not
       neccessary. You can open a new file any time that a search is
       not in progress. A small scroll bar may appear at the top
       of any display screen. This is if the file is larger than
       29000 bytes. Click this bar to move forward and backwards in
       the file by 29000 bytes at a time.


       If you want to use the same text request you might have used
       in the Directory Section, you can click on the Button "use
       directory condition" after clicking on Find First Both selecting
       a file found in Directory Search, or opening a file from
       File/Open have the same effect of displaying the file, which
       you can then search for a text condition.

       When you view files, only 31-32 Kilobyte chunks of each file are
       loaded at a time. To continue on in the file, click on the small
       scrollbar at the top of the screen. If there is no scrollbar
       present, then the file is not large.

       When a file is displayed, you can get a quick list of 100 alpha-
       betized words sampled from the file. Click Search/Wordlist. Then
       you can search for one of the words by double clicking the word
       in the word list, or clicking on View in the wordlist window.


       When searching both ways, if you click on the "whole words"
       checkbox, the searches will look for whole words only. Thus, if
       whole words is checked, and you search for "book" it will find
       "book" but not "bookish" or "bookshelf." You should leave whole
       words off most of the time, because these searches are much slower.



       Boole p 3.

       Word Perfect (and some other data files) are automatically
       formatted for searching and viewing in Boole. If the file is
       wide, you may click on Edit/Font Small to change the font size
       in the main window so you don't have to scroll from left to right.

       This software does not usually search \DOS or \WINDOWS,
       during directory searches. This speeds up your "entire
       disk" searches dramatically. To enable searching of
       DOS or WINDOWS, you must click on the "DOS/WINDOWS"
       checkbox in the Directory Window. When searching
       \WINDOWS\SYSTEM you may get a "Share" system error
       when it looks at the fonts. This is recoverable.

       Auto Save Settings

       You can restore all your directory settings each session. To do this,
       make sure Options/Auto Save Settings is clicked on -checked
       before ending a session. The next time you run the software,
       all your Directory Search settings will be restored. Also the
       last displayed file will be displayed again. Certain
       other settings are always restored, including bookmarks, the
       drop-down list in Directory Search, and your mask size.


       Text Conditions

       When you enter in a search request, you are looking for words
       (or imbedded words) to be found in the text tiles. A simple
       example would be "hello" searching for the word "hello".
       You can string together more then one word or phrase in a single
       condition with the words AND, OR, NOT. You can also use
       parentheses to group your request logically. When words are in
       parentheses, they are meant to be taken together. Conditions don't
       have to be capitalized, as the software will find "Hello" and
       "hello" the same way. Here are some examples of some text
       conditions, and what they would search for.

       Text Condition         What it searches for in the text file(s)
       ---------------------   --------------------------
          Hello                all occurrences of  word hello

          fun city             all occurrences of phrase "fun city" together.

          hello or goodbye     finds all occurrences of either hello or
                               goodbye but not necessarily both

          computer and disk    finds all occurrences of  both computer
                               and disk - both must be present. They
                               must be in the same group of lines set
                               by the Mask Size (see below), say
                               within 5 lines of each other. But not
                               necessarily together on the same line.

          tom and not bob      finds tom, but not if the word bob
                               in close bye.

          event and (Boston or Chicago)   finds event if either Boston or
                                          Chicago is mentioned close by.
          show or shown or showed         finds one of the three words.





     Boole p 4.

     Directory Searching:

     One of the two ways to search for text is with the Search/Directory
     Search screen. Choose this screen from the main menu.  It is the
     dark grey screen. You will search for files in an entire directory
     that contain your condition. Choose the directory by double clicking
     the large directory box at the top.

     Hypertext jumps:
     You can get to Directory Search another way. From the main file
     display window, highlight a word or phrase. You can double click
     a word to send it to the Directory Search. Or select text and click
     on Search/Hypertext. This is the same as going to the Directory Search
     except that your highlighted text is all set to do a multiple search on.

        ---> Directory searches that have "child directories" enabled will
        only search 3 directories deeper than the start directory.

        From Search / Search Directory, the dark gray screen. You choose a
        directory to search, then enter in a condition in  the white text
        box. Click on Search to search for the condition. Any files
        containing the text will be listed at the bottom white box.

        The blue bar that appears shows the directory that is being searched.
        The green bar shows the file that is being searched. To cancel your
        search, click on Cancel Search. You only have to cancel when the
        Blue bar is displayed. If a single file is taking a long time
        to search (listed in Green in the middle right), you can click
        on Jump File. The software asks you if you want to skip it, to
        make sure the timing is correct.


        Once you get your list, the condition is listed in black on gray,
        and the starting directory is listed in yellow just above the list
        box. This list stays up until you do another search that is
        successful, or you leave the program. Once you have the file list,
        you can view and search a single file by double clicking on the file
        name in the box at the bottom of the screen.

        Settings: For a plain search, you can leave all the checkboxes off
        and set to "entire file" and click on "Clear" (the default settings
        each time you start up). This will search all the files in the
        directory. Or hit "Panic Button" at the top of the screen to refresh
        original settings and clear out your current results.

        Search Child Directories? Make sure this is checked if you want
        to also search the directory structure that is in this directory.

        Ask Each Directory? If you want a box to pop up asking if you
        want to search the next directory. When you search, Yes means search
        it, No means skip the directory, Cancel means stop the search, and
        All means change back to searching all the subdirectories, nonstop.

        20 lines, 100 lines: If you want to search only the top of each file.
        File filter: For example *.doc will just search files with that
        extension. To search just text files, set the "text" checkbox on.
        If you skip the condition, a search will list all files.

        [More Settings on next page]





        Boole p 5.

        Directory Search More Settings.
        File Directory Search More Settings.

        DOS/Windows: LEAVE THIS OFF. To search the DOS or Windows
         directories you will have to turn this on first.
        Programs: LEAVE THIS OFF. You only need this if you are
        looking for program files. If off, it ignores all files with
        these extensions, guaranteeing much faster searches:
        EXE, COM, GIF, BMP, HLP, DLL, VBX, PIF, PAR, ZIP, BIN, SYS, OVL,
        OBJ, TPU, BAS, FOT, SCR, WAV, SYS, FON, 386, ICO, MOZ, AVI

        View Question: If this is checked you will be asked each time
        a file is displayed if you wish to continue viewing it. Optionally,
        when viewing files, instead of Clicking on View, you can click on
        File PEek, which will show the beginning of the file first.

        Go to Find First In View: Turn this on if you want to immediatley
        search for your directory condition when you view each file
        with View. The condition used is the one that was originally
        used for the search -in yellow on the Directory screen. Note, the
        current search settings will be used which may be different from the
        ones used in the original multiple search.
        Drive Box: Select the Drive you wish to search in.


        Narrow Down
        You can narrow down your search list further by using "NARROW DOWN".
        You click on "NARROW DOWN" and enter a single word or condition to
        further narrow down your list. When you use NARROW DOWN, you are
        searching in the entire file. You can find one word that is at the
        top of the file, and also another word that is at the bottom. You
        search for the first word, get your list, then use Narrow down to
        search for the second word.

        To be safe, leave all settings alone. Searching files is not fast.
        The fruitless search takes the longest. If you use single words
        instead of conditions to search for, it is fastest. Next fastest are
        OR conditions (without using AND). 20 and 100 line searches are much
        faster, but only look in the top of each file. ALWAYS LEAVE "PROGRAMS"
        OFF (not checked.)


        Mask Size:         Used for "AND"  "NOT" requests only.
        This is the number of lines that the software groups at once when
        searching. The Mask Size is set from Search/Mask Size. For example,
        if the Mask Size is set to 5, then the software expects to find the
        various words in your condition within 5 lines of each other.

        The mask size can be set up to 30, but a value of 5 is recommended.
        In other words, if the mask size is 5 and you search for "computer
        and disk" the software expects to find the words "computer" and
        "disk" within 5 lines of each other to have a hit. Boole only uses
        the mask size only for search requests that have the words AND, NOT
        in them. Generally, leave the mask size  at 5 or less. Your mask
        size is saved for the next session.

        To search for AND conditions so that each word could be anywhere in
        the file, then disable the Mask Size. Click Disable from the Mask
        Size Window. This sets the mask size to zero. You could find "lamp
        and chair" but you don't care if the two words were far apart.
        A mask size of zero "disabled" makes for much faster "AND" searching.



        Bool p. 6

        Editing Text

        You can set one or even two editors (or a word processor) to
        use to edit the files you search and view. From "File" at the
        main menu, choose Set Editors. Then type in the full file name
        of the editor program(s). You can use the browse buttons to find
        the files. You only have to do this once, although you can change
        it again later. If you are not sure what files are in fact
        word editors, go to the Windows Program Manager, highlight an editor
        or word processor icon, and click Files/Properties. The file
        name will be listed. This software takes care of the "working
        directory" part.

        When you wish to edit a file -it must be displayed- click on
        Edit/Edit Text. when you are done editing, be sure to save
        and close the editor.  This is the best way to edit the file,
        so that Boole will update the display when you go back to it.
        If you used the editor without using the Edit/Edit Text menu option,
        then be sure to click on File/Open/OK to update your display,
        when you go back to Boole.

        Glossary

        Search: look for words or combinations of words in a file
              or all the files in a directory
        Directory search: look for words in entire directories or drive
        Find first, find next: look for next occurrence in a single file
        Child directories: search the subdirectories in a directory
        Prompt each directory : in directory search, you will be asked
                    in advance if you wish to search each child directory
        Whole words: if checked means the searches look for entire words.
                    thus "book" would be found but not "bookish"
        File filter: is the file mask used in directory search.
        Block:       the current chunk of a file that is displayed.
        Mask size:   for AND, NOT searches only is the groups of lines
                    taken together to look for your condition. 1-30.
        Condition:   a text query can be constructed by combining search
                    words with AND OR NOT and parentheses.
        Bookmark:   a list of displayed files you keep yourself.

        Book Marks

        You can keep a list of up to 50 files names from File / Bookmark.
        When you have any file displayed, you can add that file name
        to the bookmarks. The current search condition (if it was found
        in this file) will be added to the listing as well. This list
        can be viewed and changed at any time from File/Book Mark.

        This is a list to add names of files you have searched and
        displayed. It stays up for your next session. It will not be aware
        if you move the file, but will just say "could not load file" if
        you try to view one that has moved on your drive.

        Single click a file already in the box and either Remove
        it from the list or View it. The file itself is NEVER deleted,
        only the name in this list. This is different from the Directory
        Window list. Empty the Book Mark box with Clear. When it fills
        to 50 items the earliest item drops off. The list is in reverse
        order, with the most recent items listed first.

        History List: An automatic list of the last 50 files that have
        been displayed is always available from File/History.  You can
        add a file from this list to the bookmarks, or display it. This
        is useful to move back and forth to previous files. This list
        is saved for your next session. Please note, this is not the
        same as the list in the Directory Search, which is your current
        list of files meeting your search request.


        Speed Buttons  On the main screen from left to right:
        (open door)    Go to Directory Search.
        (paper)        Open Single File.
        (first arrow)  Find First in a file.
        (next arrow)   Find Next in a file.
        (?)            Help System.

                       In the Directory Search screen:
        (closed door)  Return to the main screen.
        (drive)        More settings including change search drive.