        SWISH 1.2.1

     User Guide

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     Most users will probably never access swish directly; they will
     probably use a web interface, such as w4ais. But somebody has to
     test swish and configure it to work the way people expect it to
     work locally, with whatever interface is used. This document is
     primarily for such people.

     Searching with SWISH

     In the SWISH distribution, there's a sample SWISH index (called
     sample.swish). If you have the source tree available, you can do a
     simple search on it; otherwise, try the commands below on your
     index, but substituting words you expect to find indexed at your
     site.

       swish -f Test/sample.swish -w swish and relevance

     This will search the file sample.swish for files consisting of the
     words swish and relevance.

     NOTE: All swish searches are case-insensitive.

     You should get something back like this:

     # SWISH format 1.1
     search words: swish and relevance
     # Name: Samples swish search
     # Saved as: sample.swish
     # Counts: 957 words, 5 files
     # Indexed on: 02/08/98 21:26:30 CDT
     # Description: If it's in here, swish can find it!
     # Pointer: http://www.rru.com/
     # Maintained by: Suzi Styrofoam (suzi@rru.com)
     1000 Docs/swish.text "swish.text" 31656
     131 Docs/swish.html "SWISH Documentation" 34383
     .

     The results tell you:

       1. The format the results are in (so future versions of swish or
          other searching programs know this),

       2. The search words you used,

       3. Administrative information about the index (so you know who
          maintains it and where to find the original),

       4. A result line - this is made up of:

             o The relevance rank. This number is generated with each
               result and is the program's "best guess" as to how
               relevant it thinks the file is to your query. This rank
               number, which can range from 1 to 1000, depends on a
               number of factors, such as how many times your search
               word appears in the file, how many words are in the
               file, and if the word appears in a title or header tag
               (if it's an HTML file), among other factors.

             o The path name to the file. This may be an address, such
               as a URL, or a full path to the file.

             o The title of the file. If this is an HTML file, this is
               the title. This may also be the name of the file (if
               there is no title).

             o The size of the file. This size is always in bytes.

       5. A period. This signifies the end of the results. A line with
          a period always signifies the end of swish output.

     If there are errors, instead of the results list, you may get one
     of the following error lines. These lines will always be prefixed
     with err:.

        * err: no results
          There were no results of the search.

        * err: could not open index file
          Either the index file could not be found or it couldn't be
          opened.

        * err: no search words specified
          No words were specified for searching.

        * err: a word is too common
          A search word was used that was too common to give any
          meaningful feedback.

        * err: the index file is empty
          No words are in the index file.

        * err: the index file format is unknown
          SWISH can't read the particular format of the file.

     Likely command line options

     Other variants you are likely to use for searching include:

       swish -c some_path/swish.conf -w swish and relevance

     In this case, everything is defined in the config file, including
     the path to the index itself.

       swish -c some_path/swish.conf -f other_path/index.swish \
         -w swish and relevance

     In this case, the index file is either not included in the config
     file, or you wish to override it. This is especially useful for
     situations like multiple users with their own indexes, but a
     sitewide configuration file for consistency, or because the users
     aren't technically inclined, or simply don't need to worry about
     it.
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     Indexing with SWISH

     To index a site using the options in a configuration file, type:

       swish -c /usr/local/httpd/conf/swish/swish.conf -v 1

     This assumes that everything, including the files to index, and
     the location of the index, are defined in
     /usr/local/httpd/swish/swish.conf . If this is not the case, the
     above invocation will probably fail.

     The -v option isn't necessary - it just gives you a summary of
     what happened after the indexing operation is through. The first
     couple of times you index a given directory or set of files, you
     may wish to set the verbosity to 2 or 3 to see details of what's
     being indexed. This may show you some directories or files you can
     remove from the indexing process via the Configuration Guide.

     For a common configuration file and multiple indexes, you might do
     something like this:

       swish -c /usr/local/httpd/conf/swish/swish.conf \
         -i /Users/edo/public_html -f /Users/edo/public_html/index.swish
       swish -c /usr/local/httpd/conf/swish/swish.conf \
         -i /Users/jbo/public_html -f /Users/jbo/public_html/index.swish

     This would index the public_html directories for two different
     users (edo and jbo), giving them each an index file (index.swish)
     of their personal web pages. This can also be done in a script for
     all users:

       for u in /Users/*/public_html ; do
         swish -c /usr/local/httpd/conf/swish/swish.conf -i $u -f $u/index.swish
       done

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     Last update: 18/Aug/1998
