                          INFOSEARCH v1.6

             Copyright (C) 1998-2000 by Burt Leavenworth
                        All rights reserved

WHAT IS INFOSEARCH?

InfoSearch allows you to store notes such as names, addresses,
phone numbers, documents, etc. in a free form database for later
retrieval. You can add and search for a note, edit and delete
notes, export, import and print notes, and automatically call
phone numbers contained in notes. Search terms can be
constructed that are similar to those used in Internet search
engines. InfoSearch was previously called Notefinder.

STATUS

InfoSearch v1.6 is Shareware and is fully functional. The user is
hereby granted a license to evaluate the software for an unlimited
period of time. However, the unregistered program is limited to 30
notes for evaluation purposes. In order to store an unrestricted
number of notes in the database, it is necessary to register the
software; please see the file REGISTER.

INSTALLATION

To install InfoSearch, unpack insrch16.zip (make sure your unzipper
handles long file names) into a directory of your choice, say
'mydir'. To run InfoSearch, click Start, Run and type:
'c:\mydir\info'.

HOW TO USE INFOSEARCH

In InfoSearch, the main operations are Add a Note and Search for
a Note. However, you can also edit, delete, amd print notes, and
automatically dial phone numbers that appear in notes. One or
more notes can be exported to a file or a note imported from a
file.

To Add a Note:

   Type a new note in the In/Out box, and click the Add! button.

To Search for a Note:

1. Click on either All the Words, Any of the Words, or Boolean
   phrase in the 'look for' box.

   If you clicked on All the Words or Any of the Words:

2. Type one or more keywords in the 'Search for' box. A keyword is
   an individual word, or an exact phrase (sequence of words
   delimited by double quotes).

3. Click the Go! button. One or more notes found will be
   displayed in the In/Out box.

4. If you want to search for another note, click the Reset button
   and repeat steps 1 thru 3.

If you clicked on Boolean phrase in Step 1:

   Type a Boolean phrase in the Search for box. This has the form:

   keyword AND keyword   -   find notes containing both keywords
   keyword OR keyword    -   find notes containing one or both
                                keywords
   keyword NOT keyword   -   find notes containing the first
                                keyword but not the second

   phrases can be parenthesized (see below) to make precedence
   explicit.

   Do steps 3 and 4.

Wild Card Searches

To search with a keyword prefix, append an asterisk (*) to the
prefix. For example to find all notes containing words starting
with 'comp',type comp* in the 'Search for' box. This will match
words like compaq, compile, computer, etc.

To Edit a Note:

First, find the note by using Search for a Note (this will result
in one or more notes displayed in the In/Out box). Each note is
preceded by a unique access number.

Click on 'Select' in the Edit pulldown menu. This will result in a
popup dialog box asking you to enter the number of the file to be
edited. After typing this number and pressing 'OK', the In/Out box
will show only the note to be edited. Edit the note and click on
'Edit' in the Edit pulldown menu. The edited note will be saved to
the database.

To Delete a Note:

First, find the note by using Search for a Note (this will result
in one or more notes displayed in the In/Out box. Each note is
preceded by a unique access number.

Click on 'Select' in the Edit pulldown menu. This will result in a
popup dialog box asking you to enter the number of the note to be
deleted.  After typing this number and pressing 'OK', the In/Out
box will show only the note to be deleted. Click on 'Delete' in
the Edit pulldown menu. The note will be deleted from the database.

Export to a file:

You can write the contents of the In/Out box to a file by clicking
on 'Export' in the File pulldown menu. This will result in a
dialog box which will ask for the filename.

Import from a file:

The contents of a file can be written to the In/Out box by
clicking on 'Import' in the File pulldown menu, This will result
in a dialog box which will ask for the filename.

Printing

The default printer port is LPT1. If your machine uses another
printer port, click 'Printer' in the Options pulldown menu, then
type the port identifier in the dialog box, press <Enter> and
then press OK.

To print a set of notes contained in the In/Out box, Click on
'Print' in the File pulldown menu. If you only want to print
a specific note, then click on 'Select' in the File pulldown menu.
This will result in a popup dialog box asking for the number of
the note to be printed. After typing this number and pressing
'OK', the In/Out box will show only the note to be printed.
Click on 'Print' in the File pulldown menu and the note will be
printed.

Dialing

If your communications port is COM1, it is not necessary to do
anything, as this is the default. If not, click on 'Modem' in
the Options pulldown menu, then type the proper port identifier
in the dialog box, then press OK. This will set up the new port
and exit the program. It will then be necessary to restart
InfoSearch.

To dial, selecet a phone number in any note by dragging your
mouse across the phone number in the In/Out box, thereby
highlighting it. Then click on 'Call' in the Options pulldown
menu. When the modem starts dialing, a popup dialog box will
appear. Lift the receiver and click 'Talk' in the dialog box,
To disconnect at any time, click 'Hangup' in the dialog box
and hang up the phone.

Multiple Databases.

You can initialize a new database by clicking 'Database' in the
Options pulldown menu. Type the name of the database (8
characters maximum with no file extension) into the popup dialog
box. InfoSearch actually generates two filenames from the name you
give it. If you typed in 'example', InfoSearch produces two files:
example.1 and example.2. You can therefore have multiple
databases by associating a distinct name with each database.
InfoSearch starts off with the  database 'restdb' which has been
onitialized with one of the examples shown below (see EXAMPLES).

To work with a previous database, just click 'Database' as
describer above and type the name associated with that database.

Notes

You can display all the notes in your database by clicking on
'Notes' in the Options pulldown menu. If the list is too long to
bother with scrolling, you can either print them or export the
notes to a file.

EXAMPLES

The simplest example would be to store names, addresses and
phone numbers in the database. To do this, you would type the
name and phone number in the In/Out box and click on Add!. For
example

Let's assume that we have entered a few restaurant names,
addresses and phone numbers into a database called 'restdb'
so that the following appears when we select 'notes' in the
Options pulldown list.

1... Busch's Seafood Restaurant  278-7600
  Atlantic Ave.  Delray

2... Getty's Restaurant   743-8166
  Jupiter  seafood

3... La Trattoria Restaurant  750-1296
  Boca Raton   Italian

4... Peter's Crab Restaurant  278-0036
  Atlantic Ave.  Delray

5... Pete's Restaurant  487-1600
  Boca Raton

If we choose 'All the Words' and type 'seafood' in the 'Search
for' box , we will get the notes for Busch's and Getty's
restaurants in the In/Out box. It is not necessary to also type
'restaurant' because every note in this simple database contains
the word 'restaurant'. If we had a much larger database with
other categories, it would be necessary to type both words:
'seafood restaurant'. In order to type fewer letters, we could
type instead: 'rest*'.
If we type 'seafood delray', then we only get the note for
Busch's restaurant.

Suppose now that we want to find a restaurant that starts with
the letters 'pete'. So we type in pete* but the program returns
the message 'NOT FOUND'. The problem is that we are asking for
each note that contains every restaurant that starts with 'pete'.
If there is more than one restaurant with this common prefix
(which is the case here), we will not find either one. The
solution is to choose 'Any of the Words; which means find all
the notes that contain at least one of the keywords, and then
we get both restaurants.

Finally, suppose we want to find a restaurant in Boca that is not
Italian. We now choose 'Boolean phrase' and type 'boca NOT
italian' in the 'Search for' box. The result will be the note for
Pete's restaurant.

InfoSearch has been initialized with the above example, using the
filename 'restdb'.

Now consider the following example which enters some facts about
two people in the database using Add a Note:

Add a Note

  Bill comes from Boston
  Carol is a writer
  Carol went to school in "New York"
  Bill is a lawyer
  Bill met Carol in "New York"

Note that it makes little sense to put in 'New' and 'York' as
separate keywords, so we put them together as an exact phrase
delimited by quotes.

Search for a Note

Now we can search for notes, in this case, satisfying certain
conditions. Choosing 'all the words' and typing Carol in the
'Search for' box, we get all the notes referring to Carol in the
In/Out box:

2.....Carol is a writer

3.....Carol went to school in "New York"

5.....Bill met Carol in "New York"

Now we type both Carol and "New York" in the 'Search for' box
(All the words is still active) and get the notes referring to
both Carol and New York:

3.....Carol went to school in "New York"

5.....Bill met Carol in "New York"

in the 'In/Out' box.

Now, we choose 'Any of the words' and type both Bill and Carol
in the 'Search for' box and get the notes with mention of Bill
or Carol:

1.....Bill comes from Boston

4.....Bill is a lawyer

5.....Bill met Carol in "New York"

2.....Carol is a writer

3.....Carol went to school in "New York"

If we choose 'Boolean phrase' and type: Bill OR Carol, we get
the same results as the last example above.

If we type: Carol AND "New York" (Boolean phrase is still
active), we get the same results as the example preceding the
last.

IF we type: Bill AND (Carol OR "New York"), we get only one
note referring to Bill and to Carol or New York:

5.....Bill met Carol in "New York"

InfoSearch has been initialized with the above example using the
filename: example. So, if you want to try out these examples, you
have to change to this new database. Select 'database' from the
Options pulldown menu and type 'example' in the popup dialog box.

Legal

Permission to use, copy and/or distribute this unregistered
software and its documentation for any purpose and without fee is
hereby granted, provided that both the above copyright notice and
this permission notice appear in all copies and derived works.
Fees for distribution or use of this software and derived works
may only be charged with express written permission of the
copyright holder.

Disclaimer

THIS SOFTWARE IS MADE AVAILABLE AS IS, WITHOUT
WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED,
INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES
OF MERCHANTABILITY OR THE FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
PURPOSE. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER
BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL,
CONSEQUENTIAL, INDIRECT OR SIMILAR DAMAGES,
INCLUDING ANY LOST PROFITS OR LOST SAVINGS,
ARISING FROM THE USE OF OR INABILITY TO USE,
THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER
HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGES.
