        SWISH 1.2.1

     Overview

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     Note for pre 1.1 users: SWISH has changed considerably since
     version 1 .0! The format is different and configuration variables
     have changed. 1.0 SWISH users should reindex their files using
     version 1.2.1. Please read the list of changes since version 1.0.
     ------------------------------------------------------------------
                           [Index] [Next Chapter]

     What is SWISH?

     SWISH stands for Simple Web Indexing System for Humans. With it,
     you can index directories of files and search the generated
     indexes.

     For an example of swish can do, try various keyword searches on my
     home page. Everything you see there were indexed by swish. When
     you do a search, it's the swish program that's doing the actual
     searching (but hidden behind a web-based interface called w4ais).

     SWISH vs Other Programs

     SWISH was created to fill the need of the growing number of Web
     administrators on the Internet - many current indexing systems are
     not well documented, are hard to use and install, and are too
     complex for their own good. Here are some pros and cons regarding
     SWISH:

        * It's simple.

          We've tried to make SWISH as simple as possible while keeping
          some of the things that people look for in an indexer. The
          drawback is that you can't do many things that full-featured
          indexers and searching programs can do, such as stemming
          (searching for different versions of a word) or the use of
          synonyms.

        * It's made for Web sites.

          In indexing HTML files, SWISH can ignore data in tags and
          give higher relevance to information in header and title
          tags. Titles are extracted from HTML files and appear in the
          search results. SWISH can automatically search your whole Web
          site for you in one pass, if it's under one directory. You
          can also search for words that exist in HTML titles, META
          tags, comments, and emphasized tags, and 8-bit HTML
          characters can be indexed, converted, and searched.

        * It's fairly nice on disk space and is pretty fast.

          Index files consist of only one file, so they can be
          transported around and easily maintained. The SWISH source is
          not large and generated indexes average out to around half
          the size of comparable WAIS indexes, or 1 to 5% of the size
          of your original HTML data. Searching is as fast as or better
          than using a non-commercial WAIS-based solution.

        * You can fix the source.

          I encourage people to send in patches and suggestions on how
          to make SWISH better. Although it's not in the public domain,
          I am always more than happy to integrate contributed code
          into the distribution. Please note the license concerning its
          use. If you do have licensing questions, you should
          theoretically contact Jay Weber at weber@eit.com. Good luck!

     Platforms Supported

     Everything was written in pretty vanilla C, so it should work just
     about anywhere (at least anywhere with UNIX-style file I/O and
     directory names). It has been compiled with gcc or cc (and often
     both) on the following platforms by the current maintainer:

        * AIX 4.2
        * FreeBSD 2.2.2
        * HP/UX 9 and 10
        * Linux 1.2.8 and 2.0.34
        * Solaris 2.4 and 2.5

     Others, including the original author, have reported successful
     compilation and usage on these platforms as well:

        * BSDI 1.1
        * IRIX 5.2 and 5.3
        * OSF/1 2.0
        * SCO x.x
        * SunOS 4.1.3

     If you have successfully compiled SWISH for platforms other than
     these, please let me meo@rru.com know.
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     Great! How do I get started?

     If you don't already have it, you will need a current copy of the
     source from http://www.rru.com/~meo/useful/www.html#swish. Unpack
     the source and compile and install swish, per the directions in
     the SWISH Installation Guide. Then, configure SWISH per the
     instructions in the SWISH Configuration Guide. Setting up indexes
     and searching them is covered in the SWISH Users Guide.

     You will probably also want to install the w4ais package to
     provide a nice, web-based front end, unless you plan to use SWISH
     in a non-web environment.
                           [Index] [Next Chapter]
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     Last update: 18/Aug/1998
