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<title>RECOLL: a personal text search system for
Unix/Linux</title>
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"recoll is a simple full-text search system for unix and linux based on the powerful and mature xapian engine">
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<h1>Recoll features</h1>
<div class="intrapage">
<table width=100%>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><a href="#systems">Supported systems</a></td>
<td><a href="#doctypes">Document types</a></td>
<td><a href="#other">Other features</a></td>
<td><a href="#integration">Desktop and web integration</a></td>
<td><a href="#stemming">Stemming</a></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
<h2><a name="general">General features</a></h2>
<ul>
<li>Easy installation, few dependancies. No database daemon,
web server, desktop environment or exotic language necessary.</li>
<li>Will run on most Unix-based <a href="features.html#systems">
systems</a></li>
<li>Qt 4 GUI, plus command line, Unity Lens, KIO and krunner
interfaces.</li>
<li>Searches most common
<a href="features.html#doctypes">document types</a>, emails and
their attachments. Transparently handles decompression
(gzip, bzip2).</li>
<li>Powerful query facilities, with boolean searches,
phrases, proximity, wildcards, filter on file types and directory
tree.</li>
<li>Multi-language and multi-character set with Unicode based
internals.</li>
<li>Extensive documentation, with a
complete <a href="usermanual/usermanual.html">user
manual</a> and manual pages for each command.</li>
</ul>
<h2><a name="systems">Supported systems</a></h2>
<p><span class="application">Recoll</span> has been compiled and
tested on Linux, MacOS X and Solaris (initial versions Redhat 7,
Fedora Core 5, Suse 10, Gentoo, Debian 3.1, Solaris 8). It
should compile and run on all subsequent releases of these
systems and probably a few others too.</p>
<p>Qt versions from 3.1 to 4.8</p>
<h2><a name="doctypes">Document types</a></h2>
<p><span class="application">Recoll</span> can index many document
types (along with their compressed versions). Some types are
handled internally (no external application needed). Other types
need a separate application to be installed to extract the
text. Types that only need very common utilities
(awk/sed/groff/Python etc.) are listed in the native section.</p>
<h4>File types indexed natively</h4>
<ul>
<li><span class="application">text</span>.</li>
<li><span class="application">html</span>.</li>
<li><span class="application">maildir</span> and
<span class="application">mailbox</span> (
<span class="application">Mozilla</span>,
<span class="application">Thunderbird</span> and
<span class="application">Evolution</span> mail ok).
</li>
<li><span class="application">gaim</span> and
<span class="application">purple</span> log files.</li>
<li><span class="application">Scribus</span> files.</li>
<li><span class="application">Man pages</span> (needs
<span class="application">groff</span>).</li>
<li><span class="application">Dia</span> diagrams.</li>
<li><span class="application">Excel</span>
and <span class="application">Powerpoint</span>
for <span class="application">Recoll</span> versions 1.19.12
and later.</li>
</ul>
<h4>File types indexed with external helpers</h4>
<p>Many document types need the <span class="command">iconv</span>
command in addition to the applications specifically listed.</p>
<h5>The XML ones</h5>
<p>The following types need <span class="command">
xsltproc</span> from the <b>libxslt</b> package.
Quite a few also need <span class="command">unzip</span>:</p>
<ul>
<li><span class="application">Abiword</span> files.</li>
<li><span class="application">Fb2</span> ebooks.</li>
<li><span class="application">Kword</span> files.</li>
<li><span class="application">Microsoft Office Open XML</span>
files.</li>
<li><span class="application">OpenOffice</span> files.</li>
<li><span class="application">SVG</span> files.</li>
<li><span class="application">Gnumeric</span> files.</li>
<li><span class="application">Okular</span> annotations files.</li>
</ul>
<h5>Other formats</h5>
<p>The following need miscellaneous helper programs to decode
the internal formats.</p>
<ul>
<li><span class="application">pdf</span> with the <span class=
"command">pdftotext</span> command, which used to be installed
as part of <a href="http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf/">xpdf</a> but
is nowadays more often found with
<a href="http://poppler.freedesktop.org/">poppler</a>,
depending on your distribution (the package name is quite
often <tt>poppler-utils</tt>).</li>
<li><span class="application">msword</span> with <a href=
"http://www.winfield.demon.nl/">antiword</a>. It is also useful to
have <a href="http://wvware.sourceforge.net/">wvWare</a> installed
as it may be be used as a fallback for some files which antiword
does not handle.</li>
<li><span class="application">Wordperfect</span> with the
<span class="command">wpd2html</span> command from <a href=
"http://libwpd.sourceforge.net">libwpd</a>. On some distributions,
the command may come with a package named <span
class="literal">libwpd-tools</span> or such, not the base <a
span="literal">libwpd</a> package.</li>
<li><span class="application">Lyx</span> files (needs
<span class="application">Lyx</span> to be installed).</li>
<li><span class="application">Powerpoint</span> and <span
class="application">Excel</span> with the <a href=
"http://vitus.wagner.pp.ru/software/catdoc/">catdoc</a>
utilities up to recoll 1.19.12. Recoll 1.19.12 and later use
internal Python filters for Excel and Powerpoint, and catdoc
is not needed at all (catdoc did not work on many semi-recent
Excel and Powerpoint files).</li>
<li><span class="application">CHM (Microsoft help)</span> files
with <span class="command">Python,
<a href="http://gnochm.sourceforge.net/pychm.html">pychm</a>
and <a href="http://www.jedrea.com/chmlib/">chmlib</a></span>.</li>
<li><span class="application">GNU info</span> files
with <span class="command">Python</span> and the
<span class="command">info</span> command.</li>
<li><span class="application">EPUB</span> files
with <span class="command">Python</span> and this
<a href="http://pypi.python.org/pypi/epub/0.5.0">Python epub</a>
decoding module.</li>
<li><span class="application">Tar</span> archives (needs <span
class="command">Python</span>). Tar file indexing is disabled
by default (because tar archives don't typically contain the
kind of documents that people search for), you will need to
enable it explicitely, like with the following in your
<span class="filename">$HOME/.recoll/mimeconf</span> file:
<pre>
[index]
application/x-tar = execm rcltar
</pre>
</li>
<li><span class="application">Zip</span> archives (needs <span
class="command">Python</span>).</li>
<li><span class="application">Rar</span> archives (needs <span
class="command">Python</span>), the
<a href="http://pypi.python.org/pypi/rarfile/">rarfile</a> Python
module and the <a
href="http://www.rarlab.com/rar_add.htm">unrar</a> utility.</li>
<li><span class="application">iCalendar</span>(.ics) files
(needs <span class="command">Python, <a href=
"http://pypi.python.org/pypi/icalendar/2.1">icalendar</a></span>).</li>
<li><span class="application">Mozilla calendar data</span> See
<a href=
"http://bitbucket.org/medoc/recoll/wiki/IndexMozillaCalendari">
the wiki</a> about this.</li>
<li><span class="application">postscript</span> with <a href=
"http://www.gnu.org/software/ghostscript/ghostscript.html">
ghostscript</a> and <a href=
"http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/doc/pstotext.htm">pstotext</a>.
Pstotext 1.9 has a serious issue with special characters in
file names, and you should either use the version packaged for
your system which is probably patched, or apply the Debian
patch which is stored <a href=
"files/pstotext-1.9_4-debian.patch">here</a> for
convenience. See http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/pstotext
and http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=356988
for references/explanations.
<blockquote>
To make things a bit easier, I also
store <a href="files/pstotext-1.9-patched.tar.gz">an
already patched version</a>. I added an
install target to the Makefile... This installs to
/usr/local, use <i>make install PREFIX=/usr</i> to
change. So all you need is:
<pre>
tar xvzf pstotext-1.9-patched.tar.gz
cd pstotext-1.9-patched
make
make install
</pre>
</blockquote>
</li>
<li><span class="application">RTF</span> files with
<a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/unrtf/unrtf.html">
unrtf</a>. Please note that up to version 0.21.3,
<span class="command">unrtf</span> mostly does not work
with non western-european character sets. If you have a need
for indexing, e.g., russian or chinese RTF files, make sure
that you have 0.21.3 or newer. Unrtf is easy to build from
source.</li>
<li><span class="application">TeX</span> with <span class=
"command">untex</span>. If there is no untex package for
your distribution, <a href="untex/untex-1.3.jf.tar.gz">a
source package is stored on this site</a> (as untex has no
obvious home). Will also work with <a href=
"http://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/trinkle/detex/">detex</a>
if this is installed.</li>
<li><span class="application">dvi</span> with <a href=
"http://www.radicaleye.com/dvips.html">dvips</a>.</li>
<li><span class="application">djvu</span> with <a href=
"http://djvu.sourceforge.net">DjVuLibre</a>.</li>
<li><span class="application">Audio file tags</span>.
Recoll releases 1.14 and later use a Python filter based
on <a href="http://code.google.com/p/mutagen/">mutagen</a>
for all audio types.</li>
<li><span class="application">Image file tags</span> with <a href=
"http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/">exiftool</a>.
This is a perl program, so you also need perl on the
system. This works with about any possible image file and
tag format (jpg, png, tiff, gif etc.).</li>
<li><span class="application">Midi karaoke files</span> with
Python, the
<a href="http://pypi.python.org/pypi/midi/0.2.1">
midi module</a>, and some help
from <a href="http://chardet.feedparser.org/">chardet</a>. There
is probably a <tt>python-chardet</tt> package for your distribution,
but you will quite probably need to build the midi
package. This is easy but see the <a href="helpernotes.html#midi">
notes here</a>.
</li>
<li><span class="application">Konqueror webarchive</span>
format with Python (uses the <tt>tarfile</tt> standard
library module).</li>
<li><span class="application">Mimehtml web archive
format</span> (support based on the mail
filter, which introduces some mild weirdness, but still
usable).</li>
</ul>
<h2><a name="other">Other features</a></h2>
<ul>
<li>Can use a Firefox extension to index visited Web pages
history. See <a href=
"http://bitbucket.org/medoc/recoll/wiki/IndexWebHistory">the
Wiki</a> for more detail.</li>
<li>Processes all email attachments, and more generally any
realistic level of container imbrication (the "msword attachment to
a message inside a mailbox in a zip" thingy...) .</li>
<li>Multiple selectable databases.</li>
<li>Powerful query facilities, with boolean searches,
phrases, filter on file types and directory tree.</li>
<li>Xesam-compatible query language.</li>
<li>Wildcard searches (with a specific and faster function
for file names).</li>
<li>Support for multiple charsets. Internal processing and
storage uses Unicode UTF-8.</li>
<li><a href="#Stemming">Stemming</a> performed at query
time (can switch stemming language after indexing).</li>
<li>Easy installation. No database daemon, web server or
exotic language necessary.</li>
<li>An indexer which runs either as a batch, cron'able
program, or as a real-time indexing daemon, depending on
preference.</li>
</ul>
<h2><a name="integration">Desktop and web integration</a></h2>
<p>The <span class="application">Recoll</span> GUI has many
features that help to specify an efficient search and to manage
the results. However it maybe sometimes preferable to use a
simpler tool with a better integration with your desktop
interfaces. Several solutions exist:</p>
<ul>
<li>The <span class="application">Recoll</span> KIO module
allows starting queries and viewing results from the
Konqueror browser or KDE applications <em>Open</em> dialogs.</li>
<li>The <a href="http://kde-apps.org">recollrunner</a> krunner
module allows integrating Recoll search results into a
krunner query.</li>
<li>The Ubuntu Unity Recoll Lens lets you access Recoll search
from the Unity Dash. More
info <a href="https://bitbucket.org/medoc/recoll/wiki/UnityLens">
here</a>. </li>
<li>The <a href="http://github.com/medoc92/recoll-webui">Recoll
Web UI</a> lets you query a Recoll index from a web browser</li>
</ul>
<p>Recoll also has
<a href="usermanual/RCL.PROGRAM.API.html#RCL.PROGRAM.API.PYTHON">
<span class="application">Python</span></a> and
<span class="application">PHP</span> modules which can allow
easy integration with web or other applications.</p>
<h2><a name="stemming"></a>Stemming</h2>
<p>Stemming is a process which transforms inflected words
into their most basic form. For example, <i>flooring</i>,
<i>floors</i>, <i>floored</i> would probably all be
transformed to <i>floor</i> by a stemmer for the English
language.</p>
<p>In many search engines, the stemming process occurs during
indexing. The index will only contain the stemmed form of
words, with exceptions for terms which are detected as being
probably proper nouns (ie: capitalized). At query time, the
terms entered by the user are stemmed, then matched against
the index.</p>
<p>This process results into a smaller index, but it has the
grave inconvenient of irrevocably losing information during
indexing.</p>
<p>Recoll works in a different way. No stemming is performed
at query time, so that all information gets into the index.
The resulting index is bigger, but most people probably don't
care much about this nowadays, because they have a 100Gb disk
95% full of binary data <em>which does not get
indexed</em>.</p>
<p>At the end of an indexing pass, Recoll builds one or
several stemming dictionaries, where all word stems are
listed in correspondence to the list of their
derivatives.</p>
<p>At query time, by default, user-entered terms are stemmed,
then matched against the stem database, and the query is
expanded to include all derivatives. This will yield search
results analogous to those obtained by a classical engine.
The benefits of this approach is that stem expansion can be
controlled instantly at query time in several ways:</p>
<ul>
<li>It can be selectively turned-off for any query term by
capitalizing it (<i>Floor</i>).</li>
<li>The stemming language (ie: english, french...) can be
selected (this supposes that several stemming databases
have been built, which can be configured as part of the
indexing, or done later, in a reasonably fast way).</li>
</ul>
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