Specialized Searches Using General Search Engines

[SSteffin]

Text searches in the public search engines are very limited with respect to conducting proximity searches, and I have yet to find any of them which enable "Within Sentence," or even "Within Paragraph" searches.

While TextStat, as well as some other concordance software, can do proximity searches, this is a slow and cumbersome process.

In later posts, I will describe some software I designed in the 1980's, which I will be pleased to make available for those having access to any Macintosh with OS 7.5 through 9.2 available.

What I am looking for now, is any search operator sets available on Google, Yahoo, Clusty, Ask.com, or any other major search engine, facilitating the search categories listed above.

[Tdol]

It sounds very interesting; I am not a Mac user, but I would like to try it. One thing I am not sure of is what text would be searched.

[SSteffin]

With this program, any text corpus can be searched , tagged and categorized. The complete text is typically separated into sections (nodes) from which word frequency lists can be produced in any combination desired.

Searches can be within sentence, paragraph, or node, with up to four boolean combnations of words, phrases, symbols, available.

Unique to this program is the ability to extract, by sentence, paragraph or node, any completed search results.

Graphic "maps" make linking of individual node windows, so that you can proceed from one to the next, or select nodes having new selections.

Because of the age of the code, i am looking for somone who can take this product, and develop it as an open source product which would be useable on all platforms.

[Red5]

What language did you code it in? It sounds very cool!

[SSteffin]

When originally developed (1988-89), it was coded in Mac Pascal. As you can imagine, with maximum RAM of 512K or 1 MB, then available, the code is very compact. Unfortunately, this meant a limited feature set, which any facelift should now include.

Over the next few weeks I'm going to be developing a series of articles on methods of text analysis, and their value for students and teachers, alike.

There are a number of free analysis programs, some of which are mentioned in these forums, but ArchiText, has features I have found nowwhere else, even in enterprize level products costing the thousands of dollars.

[Red5]

Hi again. Sorry I haven't replied sooner but I've been preoccupied with work on UsingEnglish.com. I would like to discuss this some more with you, especially since I am currently revamping our own text analyser here on-site. Could you email me via my profile, as I would like to chat.

Regards,

Red