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: 617-254-2213 Internet: petern@channel1.com 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.