Orbis XyWin/Orbis NB

[jgordon@xxxxxxxx]

Thanks to Alan N for the info on the capabilities of Orbis NB. The version of
Orbis that is available for Xy4 definitely has a simpler menu structure, but it
appears to do most of what Orbis NB does. For instance the Opening
Menu is as follows:

Open (with sub-list of available textbases)
New (to create new t'base)
Update
Search
Exit

The New entry leads to dialog box from which one can select files from sub-dirs
across the hard disk for inclusion in the textbase. I don't know what the
selection limits are, but I selected 50+ files from more than a dozen sub-dirs
with no problem. Wildcards can be used, too.

The Parameters field of the New entry lets one select an OMIT list (what words
are NOT to be indexed) and define how each entry is delimited
 (by line, by paragraph, by file). Also, there is the option of creating a
NEXUS file which defines key words linked to one another such that searching
for one will search for all.

All told I am very pleased with Orbis for Xy4, but I have had a few problems
with it under both QEMM/DesqView and OS/2. In each case I solved the problem by
running Manifest after doing the QEMM Analysis procedure to find what areas of
memory were being accessed by Orbis/Xy4 that QEMM did not know about. When I
listed those areas to be EXCLUDED in both QEMM and OS/2 the problems stopped.
Under QEMM I was getting a system hangup with Exception
Error 13 reported and under OS/2 something similar: the DOS session would hang.

Cheers, John
Dr J.L. Gordon
Head, Department of Anthropology
The University of Western Australia
Nedlands, W.A. 6009, Australia fax: 61 9 380 1062 email:
jgordon@xxxxxxxx