Search Rev docs "at the speed of thought"

[Wilhelm Sanke]

On Mon, 21 Mar 2005, Jonathan Cooper <joncooper at swiftdsl.com.au>  wrote:

> Still no good.:-( I already had the stack in the same folder as 
> "Revolution.app", but I thought, maybe it needs to be actually INSIDE 
> the bundle (strange, but I thought ... why not? ... worth a try), so I 
> moved it to the folder "...Revolution[.app]/Contents/MacOS/" but still 
> no good. It starts off with stuff in the left-hand field (as though I 
> have just searched for the string "behavior") but, no matter what I 
> search for, I only get results in the right-hand field. Regards, 
> Jonathan On Sunday, March 20, 2005, at 05:03 AM, Thomas McGrath III wrote:
>
> -- Jonathan Cooper Manager of Information / WWW Art Gallery of New 
> South Wales http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/staff/jcooper


Jonathan,

Sorry that you have troubles, which however seems to be normal with new 
creations, but is not an excuse for oversights.
The stack works here - and apparently elsewhere as it should - both on 
Windows and MacOS.

Which version of Revolution do you use? You would need 2.5.1 with the 
latest version of the XML Help files.
Could it be that you opened "searchdocs" directly - i.e. not via the Rev 
MenuBar or Message Box - and possibly a different version of Revolution 
was started?

Anyway, an update 2.1 is available now from  
<http://www.sanke.org/MetaMedia/Screenshots.htm>.

Changes in the update:

- New "copy" feature: Text can be selected in the fields on the right 
and left using the mouse and the usual copy-and-paste procedures from 
the Menubar or through keyboard shortcuts can be applied

- "SearchDocs XML 2.1" can now be placed either in the main Revolution 
or Metacard folder (where the engine is) or in the "plugins" folder of 
Rev or the MC IDE; The stack will detect where it has been placed and 
set the directory paths for the search accordingly.-

- Simplified searchstring input and the extra option to search all of 
the XML files of the "Dictionary", "Faq", and "Topics" in one run.

and  "J. Landman Gay" <jacque at hyperactivesw.com> wrote:

> If you are getting results in the right-side field then the location of
> the stack on disk is probably fine.
>
> -- Jacqueline Landman Gay | jacque at hyperactivesw.com HyperActive 
> Software | http://www.hyperactivesw.com


That may not be sufficient proof as the search is carried out by 
searching the *pure-text* versions of the XML-Help files that are stored 
as arrays inside the stack. This arrangement contributes to the fast 
search speed of between 50 to 200 milliseconds.

I have got another "basic" version of the search stack that extracts the 
"pure text" of the XML files *during* the search; the search time needed 
for this solution is still tolerable, about 750 milliseconds to two 
seconds for each search depending on  platform, IDE (Rev is slower than 
the Metacard IDE), and speed of the computer.
However, for some reason, the very first search (after starting the 
computer and launching Revolution or MC) and only this first search with 
this "basic" stack needs about  three seconds with Metacard and up to 
seven with Rev. After the first search the search speed is back to 
normal , 750 milliseconds to two seconds.

I  sent a post about this "anomaly" to the improvement list, but so far 
nobody came up with an explanation.

Regards to you all,

Wilhelm Sanke
<www.sanke.org/MetaMedia>