Re: Search engine

["Robert Holmgren" holmgren@xxxxxxxx]

XySearch is Up and Running!
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Thanks sooo much to everyone for the offers of files, and
the interest in this quasi-archaeological endeavor to
recapture XyWrite's past and learning experience. I've had
a LOT of fun putting this together, no kidding. I would
love to present you with the complete package, neatly
wrapped, just in time for Christmas; but we're not quite
there, and I think the more pointful approach is to open
XySearch to your scrutiny, your SUGGESTION, COMMENT, and blunt
CRITICISM, and then to take the site down for a day or two,
implement improvements, and add the substantial
contributions you have donated -- about three to five
thousand "new" old messages -- to the database.

The database is current through 9 Dec 2002. Presently it
contains just shy of 16,000 messages, dated between 1994
and 2002. Because I have to travel for a week or so, and I
have yet to implement an automatic daily update of messages
(how does 5:30am EST 24x365 sound?), there will be no
changes until I return.

Please explore the facilities. The PRIMARY PURPOSE is to
reduce the amount of repetitive question-and-answering here,
of revisiting the same issues, with the same results, over
and over. XySearch is intended to be USED, to edify and
occasionally to amuse. To put a sharper point on it, to be
used *before* asking, if you suspect that the matter might
have been broached before. I assume that everyone is
familiar with DejaNews (now Google Groups), incontestably
the most important problem-solving tool on the Net. The
XySearch experience will be similar, although the query
syntax diverges somewhat -- look at the examples (How to
Search) -- we intend to enlarge this section of the site in
the near future.

A few tips:
I've found that this engine generally produces too many
 results on the first essay, and that I need to add search
 terms (keywords) to prune to manageable numbers.
Use the asterisk wildcard liberally, it's more necessary
 with this engine than say Google.
Find a productive thread, then follow the thread, not the
 search engine; when a thread peters out, toggle to the
 "Threads in Chronological Order" index, because you'll often
 find other discussion threads with similar toplevel Subject-
 names, clustered in the same time period.
The Index pages are large -- I cannot ABIDE looking at 10
 pages of 1/10th results, especially when they're
 alphabetical or chronological -- trying to remember what I
 just read two pages ago, the Back button, ugh! -- I want to
 see the whole thing at once. But that means longer download
 waits. So once you get a big page, keep it: open a New
 Window to look at individual messages, then just kill this
 secondary window when done (Alt-F4), and you're back on the
 big index page, no waiting around to reload. (Bear in mind
 that this applies only to you and not to me; I'm downloading
 at 100Mbps, whereas you won't top 120Kbps. Still, on a 53K
 *dial-up*, big indices appear within 2 seconds generally,
 and results seldom take more than 1-2 seconds to appear.
 Messages <1 second. Not bad for a 133DX P1.)

So: You'll find the XySearch URL at EOF. But first ...
a bit of memory lane?

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http://users.datarealm.com/xywwweb/xysearch.cgi

-----------------------------
Robert Holmgren
holmgren@xxxxxxxx
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