AApex Electronic Books Reference

All AApex Electronic Books use the AApex Text Retrieval System™, the easiest and fastest way to find information.

Every function available is accessible from the menu.  Some of these functions can also be accessed via keystrokes, or by the buttons at the top of the screen.  To see what a particular button does, just position the cursor over the button, and hold down the left mouse button.  The status line at the bottom of the screen will explain what the button does.  If you then move the cursor away from the button, that button function will not take effect.

More help is available on:

Finding Text by Words

Finding Text by Category

Copying an item into other software

Changing the Display Font

Changing the Search List Box Font

Moving Around

Marking Items

The Search List Box

Exiting


Finding Text by Words

You can find words, phrases, and use AND, OR, or NOT logic and wild card characters to find various items in this reference text.

1) Select Search, Text from the menu, or click on the [image] button

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2) Type the search text to find.

Examples of search text:

love -- finds all items with the word "love".

first love -- finds all items with the phrase "first love".

love AND man -- finds all items with the words "love" and "man".

love OR woman -- finds all items with either "love" or "woman".

love NOT hate -- finds all items with the word "love", but not the word "hate".

love* -- finds all items with words that start with "love", like "love", "lover", "loved", "loveless", etc.

*love -- finds all items with words that end in "love", like "love", "glove", etc.

*love* -- finds all items with words that contain "love", like "love", "glove", "loved", "beloved", etc.

(love AND man) OR woman -- finds items with both "love" and "man", in addition to all items with the word "woman".

Notes:

- The operators AND, OR and NOT must be typed in all capital letters.

- Other words should be entered in lowercase, but will match words that are capitalized, too.  For example, "shakespeare" will match "Shakespeare".

- The asterisk character (*) acts as a wild card character (see the examples above).

- You can use parentheses to make complicated searches (see the last example above).


Finding Text by Category

You can find items that contain different, subjects, authors, or other various categories.

1) From the menu, select Search, and then select the category type you wish to search upon.

2) Select the particular category (subject, author, etc.) from the list.

Hint: You can quickly find related items by clicking with the right mouse button.  For example, you can click once on a subject heading, and you will see a different item with the same subject heading.


Copying an item into other software

To transfer an item into another piece of software such as a word processor:

1) Hold down the left mouse button, and drag the mouse over the text you wish to copy.  If you drag down the left margin, you will highlight entire lines at once.  The highlighted text will appear with a green background.

2) From the menu, select Edit, Copy, or click on the [image] button.

3) From your word processor or other program, select Edit, Paste from the menu.

Helpful Hint:

If you wish to transfer the entire item, you can select Edit, Copy All from the menu.  You can also copy all your marked items by selecting Edit, Copy Marks.


Changing the Display Font

You can customize the type font used to display each data item:

1) From the menu, select View, Text Font, or click on the [image] button.

2) Choose the type font you wish to use to display every data item.

Notes:

This font will remain in effect until you change it again.


Changing the Search List Box Font

You can change the font used in the Category Search list boxes:

1) From the menu, select View, List Font.

2) Select the font you wish to have used in the Search list boxes.

Notes:

This font will remain in effect until you change it again.


Moving Around

You can move easily through every data item, using keystrokes, buttons, or menu items.

To move down a page to the next item, click on the [image] button, select Record, Next from the menu, or press the PgDn key.

To move up a page to the previous item, click on the [image] button, select Record, Previous from the menu, or press the PgUp key.

To move to a random item, click on the [image] button, select Record, Random from the menu, or press the F9 key.

To return to the item you saw previous to the item now showing, select Record, Last from the menu.

HINT: You can also move to items related to the item on screen.  For example, suppose you want to see items related to the subject of the item showing on-screen.  Position the cursor over the subject, and then click the right mouse button; you will immediately be taken to another item with the same subject.


Marking Items

To collect a series of items, you can mark them.  You can think of this as an electronic paper clip to help you collect different scraps of items.  These marked items can then be found quickly, and copied all at once into other software, such as your word processor.

To mark an item, do the following:

Select Mark, Mark from the menu, click on the [image] icon, or press F10.  The status line at the bottom of the screen will read "MARKED" if the item is marked.

To remove a mark, just mark the item again (see above).

To copy all marks to the clipboard, select Mark, Copy All Marks.

To remove all marks, select Mark, Clear Marks.

To move between marked items, select Mark, Previous Mark or Mark, Next Mark.


The Search List Box

The Search List box is a powerful, yet easy way to browse through the database.  You will see this list box when you choose Search from the main menu, and then one of the listed categories.

For example, you may have a list of author names. If you wanted to view an item by Aristotle, you would click once on Aristotle.  You can then view other items by Aristotle by clicking on the << or >> buttons.


Exiting

To exit and close this software, do the following:

Select File, Exit from the menu, or click on the [image] button.