Welcome to Home
phraSEarch$™
A Utility for Helping You Search and Retrieve
Information—
Not just
Links-to-Information
Who are benefiting from phraSEarch$™ ?
People who
were tired of searching for words and phrases and getting only a list of
links-to-documents that contain the search object. Then, they had to retrieve
each document, one by one, and search again for their keywords and phrases. Then,
they had to cut and paste useful results into another document. They knew there
had to be a better way.
They are
people of the Information Age: Students, Researchers, Movie Buffs, Attorneys,
Off-line Browsers, Educators, Home Schoolers, Preachers, Medical Technicians,
Writers, Journalists, Historians, Genealogists, Chefs, Health Professionals,
Poets, Librarians, Scientists, Students of the Classics—People Like You.
The purpose of phraSEarch$™ is:
- To Search through a directory
structure (e.g. C:\My Documents, C:\My E-Books, C:\Program Files). It is Ideal for Off-line Browsing of stripped web sites, and
for searching through e-books of classical literature, from sites such as
Project Gutenberg’s 13,000 volumes.
- To Scan common document types, such as .doc MS Word documents, .htm Web pages, .ppt Power Point
presentations, .txt
Text files, .rtf
Rich Text Format files, .xml Instant
Messaging file archive, … [Note: .htm
implies .htm .shtml .html .asp and .xml ]
- To Locate multiple phrases or
keywords within any of the identified files;
- To Select the context that
precedes and follows those located phrases;
- To Build a single browseable web page, made up
of the contexts from all files that contain the phrases or keywords,
noting the file names from which the contexts were selected; and
- To Highlight words in the resulting .htm document that the
user chooses to highlight, whether search words or not.ccc
- To Archive Search Results Automatically.
Compared to Search
Engines or Operating System searches
When searching
with typical Web Search Engines or the usual search facilities
within operating systems, one usually gets a list of documents that contain the
search object. You must then open all the documents, one by one, and search
(again) for your keyword phrases, in each document.
But with phraSEarch$™, you get back
a single document (HTML web page) that contains:
1.
The full path filenames for all files that contain
your search phrases;
2.
The immediate context, before and after the found search
phrase, tailored to your specifications; and
3.
Highlighted multiple keyword phrases to help you while
browsing your results.
But, There’s More:
4.
You can specify the directory structure to be
searched;
5.
You can specify the amount of context to report, before
and after your search phrases;
6.
You can specify the full path for the output results file;
7.
You can specify whether to search sub-directories; and
8.
You can specify the file types that are of interest to you (.txt
.doc .ppt .htm
.rtf .xml any)
Example situations suggesting a
search—and the results from phraSEarch$™:
1. From files in the C:\Program Files
directory:
a. Assume that
you are interested in software in the C:\Program Files directory that
interfaces with SQL databases. You want to scan all of the documentation in the
C:\Program Files directory, together with its sub-directories, for the acronym,
“SQL,” and highlight in red, all occurrences of “SQL” and “Database.” You use phraSEarch$™ and your results look like
this. Note two entries. The first entry is the SEARCH.TXT file, showing you the search parameters.
Also, in the third file context from the end, notice how the total size of the
context expands, as additional search phrases are encountered within the
context range of a previous hit.
b.
In another case, you remember reading about permissions in a
ReadMe file, but you don’t remember if it was a .txt file or a .htm file. You
use phraSEarch$™ to search for “permissions” in any files
containing the characters “readme,” and produce the following file.
2.
From MSN Messenger conversations: You
are on your way to Kiev, Ukraine, and want to refresh your memory of several
MSN Messenger conversations, telling the comings and goings in Kiev. You search
on “Kiev” in your MSN_Messenger directory, only using .xml files, and produce this file. On using phraSEarch$™ you find the
following:
3.
From Private e-Book Collections: You
have a collection of Classics (Mark Twain, Shakespeare, various Poets, Jane
Austin, Jack London, Cervantes, Louis Carroll, etc.) This collection is on your
computer’s disk drive. You want to find a quotation, and remember that the word
“Vexed” is within the quotation. On using phraSEarch$™ you find the following file.
4.
From Files While Preparing for
a Presentation: You must discuss the
“Law of Requisite Variety” in a presentation, tomorrow. You know that you have
several web pages on your website that address the subject. To ensure that you
do not overlook one of your usual examples, you use phraSEarch$™ to scan your
personal website files, on disk, picking out all the pages containing “Requisite Variety.”
5.
From Recipe Files Collected Over
the Years, Or Browsing Offline: You are
having a macadamia nut attack. You know that there is a recipe for a dark
chocolate tart, with bourbon. You remember Martha Stewart’s drooling over them,
so you decide to search your Martha directory. But, you find that the filenames
contain general categories and numbers (like DESS1234). It is phraSEarch$™ time. And,
after using phraSEarch$™ you find the
recipe’s filename in the following file.
However, on inspection, you notice that the HTML formatting has all been
stripped from the context. So, you check the “Keep HTML Formatting” check box
and re-run phraSEarch$™ making the
following formatted file. In this file
the recipe is useable—as is. Yum!
6.
For Those Who May Be Visually
Impaired With Respect to Color: Whether
you are visually impaired, and have trouble with reds and greens, or whether
you just want to add a different highlighting color to your output, you have
nine highlighting colors from which to choose: Red Purple Orange
Rose Lavender
Lime Green
Aqua and Blue.
Those users
who find that reading Blue
Highlighted Key Phrases is easier than reading Red Highlighted Key Phrases, etc., may switch
colors. Using the macadamia attack example 6, you can use the phraSEarch$™ >Options>Preferences>Color
for Highlighting Output pull-down menu to select the color Blue, with the following results.
Starting the phraSEarch$™ program:
- Start the
phraSEarch$™ program by either
double-clicking the
icon on your computer’s desktop (placed
there at installation) or double-clicking the filename
C:\Phrasearch\SEARCH.exe. - The phraSEarch$™ form will appear, as follows (containing
different arguments):
Da 9:25“Know therefore and understand, That from the going forth of the command
To restore and build Jerusalem Until Messiah the Prince, There shall be seven weeks and sixty-two
weeks; The street shall be built again, and the wall, Even in troublesome times.
Da 9:26“And after the sixty-two
weeks Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself; And the people of the
prince who is to come Shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end of it shall be with a flood, And till the end of
the war desolations are determined.
3. On startup, depending on your
display settings, you may need to increase or decrease the screen font size. To
do this, use the pull-down menu >View>Decrease
Form Font Size or >View>Increase
Form Font Size. Wait a second between each increase or decrease.
Watch for the labels, down the left of the form, to assume the proper shape.
You may move or resize the form, if you like.
Viewing the phraSEarch$™ results:
1. Press the View Results button. You may also use the
Pull-Down Menu option: >View >View Results With Browser.
2. On viewing the results, you
will sooner or later have the experience of recognizing words that you wish you
had highlighted. The Re-Highlight
button is enabled after each output file is written. If you add those
additional words or phrases to be highlighted, and click the Re-Highlight button, the highlighting will
be accomplished almost instantaneously, using those new words and phrases, without having to re-search the web site or
directory structure. This makes the process of cleaning up the output more
efficient and more rewarding.
3. Of course, if you decide that
you should have searched on more words or phrases, you will need to add those
words and phrases to the Search Phrase:
input area, and click the “Search”
button, rather than the “Re-Highlight”
button.
4. If you have found nothing with
your search (i.e. the resulting file contains only the title), and few (or no)
files appeared to have been searched, as you watched the message area, then,
you may have forgotten to check the Sub-Directories?
check Box.
5.
Since you are in control of the search parameters
which define the number of characters to select for the output document, before
and after, there is a small chance that you will select partial formatting
control characters from searched .htm,
.doc, and .rtf documents. These selected strings,
including their (partial) formatting control characters, will then be placed
into the resulting HTM file, and may inadvertently become part of the
formatting that you view when the results are displayed by your browser. When
this happens, you may get strange results. If you want to remove all HTML
formatting strings from the documents that are searched, then un-check the Keep HTML Formatting Check Box. This will not preempt the
standard formatting (red highlighting, file names, etc…) in the normal output
file. You may also change the Characters
Before: and Characters After:
values in order to avoid or work around control characters from the original
documents.
Technical
Support for phraSEarch$™
If you wish to recommend changes, or report errors, we
welcome your emailing them to us at:
Thank
you for using phraSEarch$™