AIX Version 4.3 System User's Guide: Operating System and Devices

Chapter 13. Documentation Search Service

Introduction

The documentation search service allows you to search online HTML documents. It provides a search form that you can use from your web browser to type the text you want to find. A search results page displays the results of the search with links to the documents containing the search target words.

Two types of forms are provided: a global search form that shows all the volumes installed on a search server, and a specific search form that just searches a specific set of volumes such as the manuals for an application.

The documentation search service allows you to search documents that have been registered with the search service. Registration is done by the system administrator. You cannot search the internet or any unregistered documents on your search server.

If you write HTML documents at your site, your system administrator can add these documents to the global search form or create specific search forms that just search those HTML documents.

Language Support

The Documentation Search Service can search documents that meet the following criteria:

The document is written in a supported language.
The document uses the ISO 8859-1 (Latin-1 Western European) Code Set.

For information on any changes in language support, be sure to read the README files that come with any updates to the Documentation Search Service.

Using the Documentation Search Service

To perform a search:

Open one of the following search forms:
- To open your system's default global search form, do one of the following:
  - Type docsearch at the command line.
  - Open the CDE Desktop Help subpanel. Click on the documentation search service icon (it looks like binoculars).
- To open the global search form for a non-default search server, type:
```
http://<server_name>
:[<port_number>
]/cgi-bin/ds_form
```
  into your browser's URL field. This opens the global search form to search the documents stored on the server with the name you specified in <server_name>. Note: You only need to type the <port_number> if the port is not the standard 80.
  For example, if you want to search the registered documents on a search server named "einstein" and it uses port 80, type:
```
http://einstein/cgi-bin/ds_form
```
  Once the search form for a server appears in your browser, you can create a bookmark that takes you back to the server. Your system administrator can also create a web page that contains links to all the different documentation servers in an organization.
- Specific search forms are usually launched from search links inside HTML documents. They typically appear on the pages of applications manuals or help files. For example, a "search" link is on each page in the AIX library. Clicking on one of these search links launches a specific search form that allows you to search just the AIX library volumes.
In the Search for: fields, type one or more words to search on. If you type a word into more than one field, click on the and button between the entry fields to select the type of search from the displayed list.
Select the number of matches you want to see on each results page. Click on the 20 items per results page button and select from the displayed list.
Select the volumes you want to search. Click on the checkbox next to each volume name displayed. By default, all volumes are searched unless you specify otherwise.
To start the search, click on the Search button.

The Search Form

This section describes the various parts of the search form.


Search for:	Type one or more words into the Search for: entry fields. Use the radio buttons described below to select the kind of search you want to perform. The search is not case-sensitive and punctuation is ignored. If you type more than one word into a field, a phrase search is performed. This means that all the words in the field must appear as one continuous string within the documents specified as the search target. Depending on how your system administrator configured the search program, very short words, articles (for example, a, an), and common words (for example, the) may be ignored during the search.
and	Select the and button to search only documents that contain words on both sides of the and. For example, `dog` and `cat` in the search field produces a list of documents containing both dog and cat. If either of the two words is not in a document, no match will be found.
or	Select the or button to search any document that contains the search words on either side of the or. For example, `dog` or `cat` in the search field produces a list of documents containing either or both dog and cat.
not	Select the not button to search only documents that contain the word to the right of the not. For example, `dog` not `cat` in the search field produces a list of documents containing dog, but not cat.
Items per Results Page	Click on the Items per Results Page button to select the number of matches that you want to see on each Results Page. If more matches are found than the number you specified, the extra matches display on the next Results Page. To view the next page, press Next Page at the bottom of the Results Page.
Select All	Click on the Select All button to select and search all listed volumes. This is the default selection in the Search Form.
Deselect All	Click on the Deselect All button to unselect the currently selected volumes so that you can select only specific volumes to search.
Search All	Click on the Search All button to select and search all listed volumes. This button performs the same function as the Select All button and only displays if your browser does not support JavaScript or if JavaScript is disabled.
Search Selected	Click on the Search Selected button to search only the selected volumes. This button displays only if your browser does not support JavaScript or if JavaScript is disabled.
Volume #1	Click on the Volume # checkbox to select that document index for searching. Each volume may contain one or more documents. To cancel the search before it is completed, use your browser's cancel download function.

The Results Page

This section describes the various parts of the Results Page.


Entry Fields	The top of the results page displays the top part of the search form that generated the results list so that you can easily perform another search.
List of Matches	Displays the list of documents that matched the words you entered in the search fields. The stars to the left of each document indicate how closely the document matched the search words. Next to each listed document is its URL. Depending on how the volume was created, the first header in the document may appear after a hyphen to the right of the document title. If you want to read the document, click on the title. The document opens in the browser window. Some browsers allow you to place the mouse pointer over the title, click the right mouse button, and select an Open in New Window choice to open the document in a separate window.
Next Page	Select the Next Page button to go to the next results page.
Previous	Select the Previous button to go to the previous results page.