| <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> |
| <html> |
| <head> |
| |
| <meta name="copyright" content="Copyright (c) IBM Corporation and others 2000, 2005. This page is made available under license. For full details see the LEGAL in the documentation book that contains this page." > |
| |
| <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"> |
| <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Style-Type" CONTENT="text/css"> |
| <LINK REL="STYLESHEET" HREF="../book.css" CHARSET="ISO-8859-1" TYPE="text/css"> |
| <title>Searching online help</title> |
| </head> |
| |
| <BODY BGCOLOR="#ffffff"> |
| <h1>Searching online help</h1> |
| |
| <p>The help system includes a powerful text search engine that runs simple |
| or complex queries on the documentation to help you find the information you |
| are looking for. |
| </p> |
| |
| <p>To search the online help: |
| </p> |
| |
| <ol> |
| <li>Select <strong>Help > Search</strong>. type the term or terms for which |
| you want to search. |
| </li> |
| <li>Click <b>Go</b> or press Enter. The result set will be shown below.</li> |
| <li>To view the content of a topic in the result set, select it. Hits within |
| the selected topic are highlighted.</li> |
| </ol> |
| |
| <p><em>Tip:</em> You can also search local documentation from inside help browser |
| by typing the term in the search field of the toolbar. The results will be |
| shown in the Search view. |
| Click a result to open the topic in the contents area.</p> |
| |
| <h2>Refining the search results in the help view</h2> |
| |
| <p>If the result set is very large, the information you are looking for might |
| not appear in the top 10 or 15 results. You can then refine the search to reduce |
| the number of results. </p> |
| <p>To refine a search: </p> |
| <ol> |
| <li>Click the <b>Search Scope </b> link. to expand search scope section.</li> |
| <li>Click |
| the <b>Advanced Settings</b> link. Search Scope preference dialog |
| opens.</li> |
| <li>Click <b>Local Help</b> from the list.</li> |
| <li>Select <b>Search only the following topics</b> button to narrow down the |
| search scope.</li> |
| <li>In the working set content tree, <b>select</b> the topics to which you |
| want to narrow the search.</li> |
| <li>Click <b>OK</b>, to activate the changes and return to search page in the |
| help view.</li> |
| <li>Click <b>Go</b> again. The results will be shown in the Search Results |
| view in the Help browser.</li> |
| </ol> |
| <h2>Extending the search scope</h2> |
| <p>If you cannot locate information in the local help, you can extend search |
| scope to remote info-center or search engines.</p> |
| <p>To enable search engines: </p> |
| <ol> |
| <li>Click the <b>Search Scope </b> link. to expand search scope section. The |
| list of search engine is displayed.</li> |
| <li> Select the ones that contain information you are looking for.</li> |
| </ol> |
| <p>In addition to search engines provided, you may define additional search engines.</p> |
| <p>To define a new search engine: </p> |
| <ol> |
| <li>Click the <b>Search Scope </b> link. to expand search scope section. </li> |
| <li>Click the <b>Advanced Settings</b> link. Search Scope preference dialog |
| opens.</li> |
| <li>Click <b>New</b>.</li> |
| <li>Select the search engine type.</li> |
| <li>Click <strong>OK</strong>.</li> |
| <li>Provide a name and a description</li> |
| <li>Select engine specific settings and scope below. For the remote search |
| engines, accessed using URL, fill in a full URL to query the engine. Use <code>{expression}</code> in |
| the place of search expression.</li> |
| </ol> |
| <h2>Defining multiple search scopes</h2> |
| <p>By default, changing search scope modifies the search scope named "default". |
| You can define multiple search scope. They will be saved, allowing to quickly |
| change search scope to one of them.</p> |
| <p>To define a new search scope:</p> |
| <ol> |
| <li>Click the current search scope name, beside the <b>Search Scope </b> link. |
| .Search Scope Sets dialog appears.</li> |
| <li>Click <strong>New</strong>.</li> |
| <li>Type a name, and confirm.</li> |
| <li>Select the newly created search scope.</li> |
| <li>Click <strong>OK</strong>. The new search scope becomes current.</li> |
| </ol> |
| <p>Changes to the search scope affect current search scope.</p> |
| <h2>Local search query syntax</h2> |
| <p>Remember the following search expression rules: |
| </p> |
| <ul> |
| <li>Unless otherwise stated, there is an implied AND between all search terms. |
| In other words, topics that contain all the search terms will be returned. |
| For example: |
| <pre>Java project</pre> |
| <p>returns topics that contain the word <i>Java</i> and the word <i>project</i>, |
| but does not return topics that contain only one of these words.</p></li> |
| <li>Use OR before optional terms . For example: |
| <pre>applet OR application</pre> |
| <p>returns topics that contain the word <i>applet</i> or the word <i>application</i> |
| (or both).</p></li> |
| <li>Use NOT before terms you want to exclude from search results. For example: |
| <pre>servlet NOT ejb</pre> |
| <p>returns topics that contain the word <i>servlet</i> and do not contain |
| the word <i>ejb</i>. <b>Note:</b> NOT only works as a binary operator (that |
| is, "NOT servlet" is not a valid expression).</p></li> |
| <li>Use ? for a single-character wildcard and * for a multi-character wildcard. |
| For example: |
| <pre>par?</pre> |
| <p>returns topics that contain <i>part</i> or <i>park</i>, but not <i> participate</i>. |
| On the other hand:</p> |
| <pre>par*</pre> |
| <p>returns topics that contain <i>part</i>, <i>park</i>, <i>participate</i>, |
| <i>pardon</i>, and so on. <b>Note:</b> The search engine does not accept |
| terms with a wild card at first character position.</p></li> |
| <li>Use double quotation marks around terms you want treated as a phrase. For |
| example: |
| <pre>"creating projects"</pre> |
| <p>returns topics that contain the entire phrase <i>creating projects</i>, |
| and not <i>creating</i> or <i>project</i> on its own.</p></li> |
| <li>Punctuation acts as term delimiters. For example: |
| <pre>plugin.xml</pre> |
| <p>returns hits on topics that contain <i>plugin.xml</i>, <i>plugin</i>, and |
| <i>xml</i>, which is likely broader than you want. If you want to find just |
| those topics containing <i>plugin.xml</i>, use double quotes, as in:</p> |
| <pre>"plugin.xml"</pre></li> |
| <li>The search engine ignores character case. For example: |
| <pre>Workbench</pre> |
| <p>returns topics that contain 'workbench', 'Workbench', 'WorkBench', and |
| 'WORKBENCH'.</p></li> |
| <li>The following stop words are common English words which will be ignored |
| (not searched for) if they appear in the search expression: a, and, are, as, |
| at, be, but, by, in, into, is, it, no, not, of, on, or, s, such, t, that, |
| the, their, then, there, these, they, to, was, will, with.</li> |
| <li>The search engine does "fuzzy" searches and word stemming. If |
| you enter <i>create</i>, it will return hits on topics that contain <i>creates</i>, |
| <i>creating</i>, <i>creator</i>, and so on. To prevent search engine from stemming |
| terms, enclose them in double quotes.</li> |
| </ul> |
| |
| <h2>Search index generation</h2> |
| <p>The first time you search the online help, the help system might initiate |
| an index-generation process. This process builds the indexes for the search |
| engine |
| to use. It may take several minutes, depending on the amount of documentation |
| and whether prebuilt indexes are installed. Results of the search will be available |
| upon completion of the indexing process.</p> |
| |
| <p>Each time you add or modify the documentation set (for example, when you install |
| a new feature or update an existing one), the index will be updated to reflect |
| the new information set. |
| </p> |
| |
| <p><img border="0" src="../images/ngrelt.png" alt="Related tasks" ><br> |
| <a href="taccess.htm">Accessing and navigating online help</a> |
| </p> |
| |
| |
| |
| </body> |
| </html> |
