Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2006 21:42:43 +0200
From: Francesco Pietra <frapietra@alice.it>
To: Don Montgomery <donm@methodbydesign.com>
Cc: debian-user@lists.debian.org
Subject: Re: boolean search
Don:
I removed 64, if you mind.
The features you describe of that software, I never used. Actually, I prefer
the DOS version, which is faster, and it is faster using line commands than
graphical windows. The power is the speed of search of text and values along
my 200,000 records, each one of the length of a full paper. Yes, the
possibility of establishing fields by simply [ ..] is also a feature I use.
All that has allowed me to write review papers and books, as well as to act
as referee, that I could not ever done otherwise. I have a data base of
natural products that in some respects defeats chemical abstracts.
I would like to have something like that here, but I have arranged to have it
indirectly on unix because I know that unix people are not interested in such
affairs.
fp
On Sunday 18 June 2006 23:06, Don Montgomery wrote:
Francesco,
I checked out asksam.com, and it seems (on the face of it,
anyway) to be a windows product. I would describe it,
from my brief tour of the website, as something like an
archive manager. It has some neat features, like
import/build/export of web pages/directories, import of
pdfs, word docs, textfiles, etc. It seems to implement
wildcard and boolean search over the entire archive, while
still offering some way to treat some of the data in a
traditional "fields and records" database mode.
I don't know of an app like that for any of the *nix.
However, I don't think this is an amd64-specific topic.
Don
On Sun, 18 Jun 2006, Francesco Pietra wrote:
Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2006 20:18:49 +0200
From: Francesco Pietra <frapietra@alice.it>
To: Don Montgomery <donm@methodbydesign.com>
Cc: debian-user@lists.debian.org, debian_amd64
<debian-amd64@lists.debian.org> Subject: Re: boolean search
Hi Don:
do you know Asksam? I would like to have something like that, at that
speed and breath of search.
Cheers
francesco
On Sunday 18 June 2006 20:21, Don Montgomery wrote:
Francesco,
Any text editor will have hotkey search on
case-insensitive character strings, which allows you to
use a text file to store and find unstructured text data.
For ease of use, I especially like the "incremental
search" feature in emacs. A simple textfile, no matter
how searchable, may be too free-form for you (and it will
not support the embedding of binary objects). If so, what
_is_ on your wish list for such an application? Are you
thinking of a flat file database? Could you use a
spreadsheet?
Don
On Sun, 18 Jun 2006, Francesco Pietra wrote:
Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2006 18:01:46 +0200
From: Francesco Pietra <frapietra@alice.it>
To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
Cc: debian_amd64 <debian-amd64@lists.debian.org>
Subject: boolean search
Resent-Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2006 13:02:19 -0500 (CDT)
Resent-From: debian-amd64@lists.debian.org
What about a boolean search application? I mean to use it as a
free-form personal database, not for internet. Not for a relational
database, which is not what a scientists is aimed at to record
scientific literature abstracts.
It would be useful if records could accept embedded graphics, although
i do not pretend that a graphical search is made available.
If such a software is not available for deabian users, why not taking
that as a project? In the hands of an expert programmer, It could
simply start as a boolean search, but, step by step during use, it
could be developed also as a mathematical search (equal to, more than,
less than, etc). Such thing is an indispensable tool for disciplines
that are not purely theoretical but also make recourse to data.
Dont say, please, ask the science list, because what I am proposing is
much wider than that (which justifies the project; moreover, the
science list is dangerously becoming fractionated for specializations).
Boolean search is extremely useful also in business, legal affairs,
etc, and it is far less time consuming that maintaining a structured
database. Not to say of the boring maintaining of a structured
database. While you maintain a free-form database you just learn. It is
the same as traditional learning.
cheers
francesco pietra