wais.el - GNU Emacs interface to WAIS

wais.el is a GNU emacs lisp file that allows people to use WAIS through
GNU Emacs.  It relies on the WAIS version 8 distribution, particularly on a
shell program called waisq.

wais.el has a number of configuration variables that must be set properly
at a site upon installation of the WAIS software.

(defvar *wais-top-directory* "/proj/wais/wais/")
(defvar waisq-program (concat *wais-top-directory* "bin/waisq")
  "Location of the waisq executable. 
   This comes in the bin directory of the wais release") 
(defvar waisindex-program (concat *wais-top-directory* "bin/waisindex")
  "Location of the waisindex executable. 
   This comes in the bin directory of the wais release")
(defvar *common-source-directory* (concat *wais-top-directory* "wais-sources/")
  "Where the common sources for you site live.  nil if there are none")

(defvar *wais-question-directory* "~/wais-questions/")
(defvar *wais-source-directory* "~/wais-sources/")
(defvar *wais-document-directory* "~/wais-documents/")
(defvar wais-tmp-directory "/tmp/")
(defvar wais-version 8)

The first four variables are site specififc, and should be modified
according to your site.

The GNU Emacs interface to WAIS (refered to as wais-gmacs from now on) is
based on the WAIS Station built for the Apple Macintosh, and xwais, which
you'll find in this distribution.  To a very large degree the applications
can be used interchangably, as they all use the same basic file structure.

The principle functions in wais-gmacs are:

wais:
 Find a wais question and go to it.
 First tries to find the question named Quick, then any wais question,
 finally it creates a Quick question, prompting for search words and source.

wais-select-question:
 Make a menu of questions so you can select one.  
 Type ? after invocation to get help on commands available.
 Type q immediately to make the question menu go away.

wais-select-source:
 Make a menu of sources so you can select one.  
 Type ? after invocation to get help on commands available.
 Type q immediately to make the source menu go away.

wais-create-question:
 Create a new Question named NAME

wais-create-source:
 Create a new Source and a database to go with it

wais-novice:
Create and run the 'Quick' novice question, and pop up
the novice Help

There are three new "modes" created by gmacs-wais:

1. waisq-mode
2. waisk-mode
3. waisd-mode

Each mode has some special keybindings associated with it.

waisq-mode is the pricipal mode for manipulating WAIS questions.  The
keybindings for waisq-mode are:

   Movement commands:

   C-n     Move to next document, or arg documents.
   C-p     Move to previous document, or arg documents.
   e,f,v   Edit, Find or View the current document (all are synonymous).
   n       Edit to next document, or arg documents.
   p       Edit to previous document, or arg documents.
   space   Scroll document in other window forward.
   delete  Scroll document backward.
   B       Go to the best line in the document
   C-l     Refresh Display and reset Question Window.

   Sources:

   A       Add a source to the question.
   D       Delete all sources from the question.

   Relevance Feedback:

   a       Add the current document to the question.
   d       Delete all relevant documents from the question.

   Action Commands:

   k       Replace the 'Find documents on' words
   G,RET   Go for it (submit the query).
   N       Make a new question.
   m       Toggle multiple document buffer mode. 
   s       Select another question.
   S       Save this document to a file.
   ? or h  Show this message (Help).
   q       quit WaisQ, but keep the question's buffer.
   Q       Quit WaisQ and kill this question's buffer.

waisd-mode is the principal mode for viewing WAIS documents, as retrieved
through a WAIS question.  The keybindings for waisd-mode are:

   Movement commands:

   All the usual text-mode cursor movement work.
   In addition the following commands are available:

   B       Go to the best line in the document
   space   Scroll document forward.
   delete  Scroll document backward.

   Action Commands:

   s       Add the marked region as a section to the Relevant Documents.
   ? or h  Show this message (Help).
   q       quit WaisQ, but keep the question's buffer.
   Q       Quit WaisQ and kill this question's buffer.

waisk-mode is the same as text-mode, but pressing RETURN will initiated the
search.

Some notes on retrieving and saving sources (from the directory of servers,
or from the help query):

If you use the S (capital-S, Save document to file) on a source, it will
prompt for the name of the source file, and automatically add the .src if
necessary.