--- a/src/README
+++ b/src/README
@@ -142,6 +142,9 @@
The resulting database can be big (roughly the size of the original
document set), but it is not a document archive. Recoll can only display
documents that still exist at the place from which they were indexed.
+ (Actually, there is a way to reconstruct a document from the information
+ in the database, but the result is not nice, as all formatting,
+ punctuation and capitalisation are lost).
Recoll stores all internal data in Unicode UTF-8 format, and it can index
files with different character sets, encodings, and languages into the
@@ -185,6 +188,15 @@
interface to real time file modification monitors. The typical usage is to
have a nightly indexation run programmed into your cron file.
+ +------------------------------------------------------------------------+
+ | Side note: there is nothing in Recoll and Xapian that would prevent |
+ | interfacing with a real time file modification monitor, but this would |
+ | tend to consume significant system resources for dubious gain, because |
+ | you rarely need a full text search to find documents you just |
+ | modified. recollindex -i can be used to add individual files to the |
+ | index if you want to play with this, see the manual page. |
+ +------------------------------------------------------------------------+
+
Recoll knows about quite a few different document types. The parameters
for document types recognition and processing are set in configuration
files Most file types, like HTML or word processing files, only hold one
@@ -258,13 +270,17 @@
3.1. Simple search
- Start the recoll program, then enter search term(s) in the text field at
- the top left of the window. Clicking the Search button or hitting the
- Enter key will start a search. By default, this will look for documents
- with any of the terms (the ones with more terms will get better scores).
- You can check the All terms checkbox to ensure that only documents with
- all the terms will be returned. Use the Tools / Advanced search dialog for
- more complex searches.
+ 1. Start the recoll program.
+
+ 2. Enter search term(s) in the text field at the top of the window.
+
+ 3. Click the Search button or hit the Enter key to start the search.
+
+ By default, this will look for documents with any of the search terms (the
+ ones with more terms will get better scores). You can check the All terms
+ checkbox to ensure that only documents with all the terms will be
+ returned. Use the Tools / Advanced search dialog for more complex
+ searches.
After starting a search, a list of results will instantly be displayed in
the main list window. Clicking on an entry will open an internal preview
@@ -276,14 +292,18 @@
the system estimates that the document matches the query). You can specify
a different ordering by using the Tools / Sort parameters dialog.
+ You can click on the first paragraph (Query results or No results found)
+ in the result list to get an exact display of the query actually
+ performed, after stem expansion and other processing.
+
----------------------------------------------------------------------
3.2. Complex/advanced search
The advanced search dialog has fields that will allow a more refined
search, looking for documents with all given words, a given exact phrase,
- or none of the given words (all fields may be combined by an implicit AND
- clause).
+ or none of the given words (all relevant fields will be combined by an
+ implicit AND clause).
It will let you search for documents of specific mime types (ie: only
text/plain, or text/html or application/pdf etc...)
@@ -293,6 +313,8 @@
Click on the Start Search button in the advanced search dialog to start
the search. The button in the main window always performs a simple search.
+
+ Click on the result list header paragraph to see the query expansion.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
@@ -347,15 +369,46 @@
It is possible to customise some aspects of the search interface by using
Query configuration entry in the Preferences menu.
- There are two tabs in the dialog, to modify the appearance of the user
- interface (result list appearance), or the parameters used for searching
- (language used for stem expansion).
-
- The stemming language can be chosen among those that were specified in the
- configuration file, or later added with recollindex -s (See the
- recollindex manual). Stemming languages which are dynamically added will
- be deleted at the next indexation pass unless they are also added in the
- configuration file.
+ There are two tabs in the dialog, dealing with the interface itself, and
+ with the parameters used for searching and returning results.
+
+ User interface parameters:
+
+ * Number of results in a result page
+
+ * Result list font: There is quite a lot of information shown in the
+ result list, and you may want to customise the font and/or font size.
+ The rest of the fonts used by Recoll are determined by your generic QT
+ config (try the qtconfig command.
+
+ * Html help browser: this will let you chose your the preferred browser
+ which will be started from the Help menu to read the user manual. You
+ can enter a simple name if the command is in your PATH, or browse for
+ a full pathname.
+
+ * Show document type icons in result list: icons in the result list can
+ be turned off. They take quite a lot of space and convey relatively
+ little useful information.
+
+ Search parameters:
+
+ * Stemming language: stemming obviously depends on the document's
+ language. This listbox will let you chose among the stemming databases
+ which were built during indexing (this is set in the main
+ configuration file), or later added with recollindex -s (See the
+ recollindex manual). Stemming languages which are dynamically added
+ will be deleted at the next indexation pass unless they are also added
+ in the configuration file.
+
+ * Dynamically build abstracts: this decides if Recoll tries to build
+ document abstracts when displaying the result list. Abstracts are
+ constructed by taking context from the document information, around
+ the search terms. This can slow down result list display significantly
+ for big documents, and you may want to turn it off.
+
+ * Replace abstracts from documents: this decides if we should synthetize
+ and display an abstract in place of an explicit abstract found within
+ the document itself.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
@@ -367,10 +420,11 @@
At the very least, you will need to download and install the xapian core
package (Recoll currently uses version 0.9.2), and the qt runtime and
- development packages (Recoll currently uses version 3.3.3).
+ development packages (Recoll development currently uses version 3.3.5, but
+ any 3.3 version is probably ok).
You will most probably be able to find a binary package for qt for your
- system. You may have to compile Xapian, but this is not difficult (if you
+ system. You may have to compile Xapian but this is not difficult (if you
are using FreeBSD, there is a port).
You may also need libiconv. Recoll currently uses version 1.9 (this should