GENEALOG.SRCHFILE Updated 16 July 1996 In this file are discussed the main methods for searching the ROOTS-L archives, via the World Wide Web page maintained by Infobases at http://www.infobases.com/roots-l/. The traditional e-mail search of the archived messages, once they have been transferred to mail.eworld.com (which will happen any week now), will be temporarily unavailable for searching by e-mail. There will be a period during which the only searchable archives will be those on the Infobases WWW page. This file will be updated once the search feature is added to the eWorld site. Organization of this document: A. Directions on how to use the archives on the Infobases World Wide Web Page. B. Additional information for those with text only browsers, especially those who don't have a mouse. A. Searching the archives at Infobases's WWW page, based on a ROOTS-L messages from Doug McKay: I have updated the ROOTS-L archive infobase which has been mentioned here over the past few days. It now contains the full text of the archives up through the last archive file (24 Jun 1995). There are more than 85,000 messages in the archive comprising nearly 140 MB of original text. The infobase file itself is 109 MB (due to Folio's underhead technology). As the weekly archives continue to grow, I plan on keeping the infobase up to date as well. To use the infobase, point your Web browser at this URL: http://www.infobases.com/roots-l/ When you link to this URL, you will see the "Title Page" of the infobase (anyone have a better graphic?) with a little information about the infobase (like when it was last updated, etc.) There is a limited amount of online help available at this point, but clicking on the "Help" icon on the title page will give you what's currently available. The different items on the "Toolbelt" are briefly explained, etc. Note that the "Contents" button is not used at all in the ROOTS-L archive infobase. Once you've read the title page and are ready to search the infobase, press the "Query" button and you'll end up with a screen which will allow you to perform queries on the infobase. You can simply type in a word ("or" and "and" can be used also) and press the "Search" button to perform a full text query on the entire infobase. If you want to look for two words together (John Smith), then you can specify a phrase search by putting them together between quotation marks: "John Smith". The results will be shown in the graphical "Results Map" window. Once you are satisfied with the number of "hits" your search has generated, press the "Document" button (at the top of the screen) to view the results of your search. Hits will be highlighted with little red triangles. Since each message is a "record" in the infobase, you may not see any hits on your screen without scrolling down in your browser. In order to keep results displays to a reasonable size, a maximum of 20 records are returned at a time. Your browser's window will act as a window to the infobase which you can scroll up and down. The "Next" and "Previous" options will scroll the window 20 records at a time. The "Next Hit" and "Prev Hit" options will act somewhat differently depending upon what settings you have in effect at the time. Most of the time they will display the next record at the top of the window. This way you can scroll through the hits one at a time without having to scroll your browser's display very much (at least not more than one message at a time) until you find what you are after. Note that once you receive 20 records in you browser, you can also use the "Find" feature that most browsers include to move quickly through long messages (I've seen some doosies here :-). In addition to full text queries, the following fields are available for searching: Date, From, Subject To Query the infobase using these fields, use the following syntax in the Query dialog descibed above: [Field Date: '6 Mar 1993'] or [Field From: karen isaacson] or [Field Subject: software review] or [Field Caps: xxx] The last (Caps) is used to perform a case sensitive search. Copy these strings into your clipboard (or write them down) then use them when you select the option Query from the toolbelt. Obviously, you'll want to use your own text when performing the searches, but this should serve as an example. These examples are also available at the top of the infobase for future reference. More advanced searching (such as date ranges and combinations of fields) is possible, but the above should at least get you started. To find out more about advanced searching techniques (or infobases in general) consult the complete Folio VIEWS documentation at the following URLs (the first is graphical, the second text only): http://www.folio.com/folio.pgi/3.1_Windows_Online_User's_Guide? http://www.folio.com/folio.pgi/3.1_Windows_Online_User's_Guide/buttons=text? I apologize if this all sounds convoluted and unintelligable, I'm not a documentation writer. I hope that someone will be able to take these explanations and rework them into something that the general subscribership can use. I'd love to help out in any way I can, and I suppose the best way may be for you to tell me what you wish to find so that I can attempt to describe a way to get the desired results. * * * B. Additional info for those with text-only browsers, especially those without a mouse, based on a communication from Bill Davis: I just tried this and this worked for me, maybe it'll work for you, I don't know. With my commnications program, the arrow keys are disabled but I can go up by hitting the - (dash) key, and I can go through the choices by hitting TAB, and it'll drop down to the next option. To fill in a button, I highlight it and hit ENTER, and that fills the button. The space bar pages down for me. When I got to the text-only Search page, I hit TAB until it highlights the query line. Then I fill in the query line, then TAB to move off that line, then I either highlight the word SEARCH or I went farther down, highlighted the one of the three hit buttons, and hit ENTER to put a marker in the button, then I hit TAB to go down to highlight SEARCH and hit ENTER to send off the request. I get back a page that says there were so many hits, and I have a highlighted line telling me to either use the arrows or hit ENTER to see the hits. It's confusing at this point because I don't see anything highlighted, but when I hit ENTER I get the messages, and if there are too many, there is something at the end of the messages to highlight and hit ENTER to see further messages. [Doug McKay wrote about accessing the archives in text mode: You will not be able to see the "Results Map" after performing a query and hits will be highlighted with ASCII characters instead of graphics but the rest of the functionality is avaiable.] It's awkward, but it has worked. Maybe if you play with it you'll be able to get it to work for you. I don't know all the variables that goes into this situation. I suppose different people with different software and different internet providers could be getting entirely different screens and options. Good Luck with it.