Welcome to AltaVista Search CD-ROM - a
personal productivity tool that enables you to search the content of CD-ROMS. The
AltaVista (TM) Search family is a collection of full-featured
exploration products that index, search, and display local, departmental,
and enterprise-wide information resources.
AltaVista Search built a compact, searchable personal index of the data on your vendors CD-ROM. That index resides on your CD-ROM.
You can search the indexed information for specific words and phrases, entered as a query. You create queries by entering a combination of words, phrases, or keywords associated with the document type.
AltaVista Search CD-ROM displays the results of your search by:
By using AltaVista Search CD-ROM, the following updates are made to the desktop environment:
To run searches the dispatcher must be running. Start the dispatcher by clicking on Search.exe which should be in the top level directory of the CD. (This will also load the initial search page into the default browser.)
AltaVista Search defines a word as any string of letters and digits that is separated by either
You can use AltaVista Search to find phrases, or groups of related words that appear next to each other. To indicate a phrase in a search query, enclose the words with double quotes. Phrasing ensures that AltaVista Search finds the words together, instead of looking for separate instances of each word individually. For example, to look for the phrase personnel policies, type
"personnel policies"
If you did not use the double quotes, AltaVista Search would find instances of "personnel" alone and "policies" alone, as well as any instances where the two words happen to appear together. Enclosing the words in quotes indicates that you want to find only instances of both words together.
AltaVista Search ignores punctuation except to interpret it as a separator for words. Placing punctuation or special characters between each word, with no spaces between the characters and the words, is also a way to indicate a phrase. As an example of when punctuation might be useful in indicating a phrase, consider searching for a telephone number. Entering
1-800-555-1212
is easier than entering "1 800 555 1212", which is an equally acceptable syntax, but is less natural. Hyphenated words, such as CD-ROM, also automatically form a phrase because of the hyphen.
Normally, however, using double quotes to indicate a phrase is recommended over the use of punctuation between words, because some special characters have additional meaning:
Case sensitivity of a search is based on the case in which you enter your query.
For example, if you enter turkey in the query field, AltaVista
Search will find all occurrences of the word turkey, including
those spelled TUrkey, TURKEY, turkey, and so forth.
For example, if you enter Turkey in the query field, AltaVista Search will find all occurrences of Turkey with initial capitalization only. It will not return documents containing the words TURKEY or turkey.
AltaVista Search supports exact-match searches for characters in the ISO Latin-1 character set. That is, you can enter a word containing an accent or other diacritical mark, and AltaVista Search will find only documents with the accented spelling of the word.
For example, if you search for the French word éléphant, AltaVista Search will find only documents containing an exact match for the French spelling of the word.
Entering a word with mixed case and an accent (for example, Éléphant) would produce only results that match the word in terms of both case and accent.
If you omit accents and other diacritical marks from a search query, AltaVista Search finds documents containing words both with and without the special marks. Although this feature might produce some irrelevant results for users doing an English language search, it enables users to enter queries for non-English words even when they do not have international support on their keyboard.
To support searching for special characters without their diacritical marks, AltaVista search makes a mapping to the closest possible plain character or combination of characters. The software then indexes words in both forms: with special characters as they appear, and also with special characters replaced by the mappings. The following table illustrates the special characters and their mappings:
| Character(s) | Mapping | Character(s) | Mapping |
|---|---|---|---|
| Æ | AE | æ | ae |
| Á Â À Å Ã Ä | A | á â à å ã ä | a |
| Ç | C | ç | c |
| Ð | D | ð | d |
| É Ê È Ë | E | é ê è ë | e |
| Í Î Ì Ï | I | í î ì ï | i |
| Ñ | N | ñ | n |
| Ó Ô Ò Ø Õ Ö | O | ó ô ò ø õ ö | o |
| Þ | TH | þ | th |
| Ú Û Ù Ü | U | ú û ù ü | u |
| Ý | Y | ý ÿ | y |
| ß | ss |
You can use the asterisk wildcard notation ( * ) to search for a group of words that contain the same pattern. This is convenient for finding derivatives and spelling variants of the same word.
For example, to look for the word sing and any derivatives, such as singer, singers, and singing, enter sing* in the query field. Searching for cantalo* will produce matches for cantaloup, cantaloupe, cantalope, and their plurals.
For example, if you want to find matches for both color and
colour, a query of the form col*r could also find matches
for the words collector and collider. Submitting a query for colo*r
is more precise, and results in matches for both color and colour.
The main advantages of the simple search interface are
For example, suppose you want to find a recipe for muffins that
includes either apples or pears, but ideally would contain both
fruits. You could enter the series of words apple pear muffin
recipe. If any document contains all four words, automatic
ranking places that document at the top of your results list.
Documents containing only some of the words would be next, and
documents containing only one of the words would be ranked last.
Simple searches use general syntax rules regarding phrasing, case sensitivity, and use of the asterisk (*) as a wildcard character. In addition, two operators can help to narrow a simple search:
| This Operator | Does This |
|---|---|
| + | includes only documents containing all specified words or phrases in the search results |
| - | excludes documents containing the specified word or phrase from the search results |
Specify the operator in front of the word that you want to include or exclude, with no spaces between the operator and the word.
To find the documents most relevant to your needs, construct your query as precisely as you can.
Example: Querying for sandals leather footwear instead
of just one of those words increases the chance of finding documents
about leather sandals.
Example: bicycle "for sale" finds documents
that contain both the phrase for sale and the word bicycle.
Example: quilt* finds the words quilts, quilter,
quilting, and quilted.
Example: noir +film -"pinot noir" finds
documents containing both noir and film but not
the phrase pinot noir.
AltaVista ranks the results of a search based on a score that includes these criteria:
If you are not happy with the documents that AltaVista ranks first as the result of a search, you might need to narrow the scope of your search.
The simple search interface support the use of keywords to restrict your searches to pages that meet specific criteria regarding the structure and contents of a web page. Using keywords, you can search based on the links, art, text, and coding that a web page contains.
To search based on keywords, enter a query in the format keyword:search-criteria where:
You must enter the keyword in lowercase, followed immediately by a colon. The conventions for specifying a phrase in the search criteria are the same as for specifying a phrase in a regular query; the most convenient method is to enclose the phrase in double quotes.
The following tables describe the keywords that AltaVista Search CD-ROM
supports:
| Keyword | Function |
|---|---|
| applet:class | Finds pages that contain a Java applet of the specified class. |
| location:directory location | Finds documents located at the value specified. |
| title:text | Finds pages that contain the specified word or phrase in the title. |
| extension:text | Finds files with that file extension. |
The title keyword restricts the search to text that the document's author coded as part of the <title> tag. The title is what appears in the window banner of your web browser. The title keyword can be a good way to hone your search to only the most significant pages about a topic.