New release of SWISH-Enhanced

[Roy Tennant]

We are pleased to announce that version 1.1 of the free Web site indexing
software SWISH-Enhanced and its associated interface AutoSwish is now
available at http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/SWISH-E/ . They run under Unix
and Perl (only required for AutoSwish), and the current release has been
installed on tested on Sun Solaris 2.5.1 and DEC Alpha 3.2. 

The release notes are included below, which highlight changes to version
1.0. This project has benefited considerably from vigilant and imaginative
SWISH-E users, who have suggested enhancements or bug fixes, some of which
are implemented in this version. Thanks to all who have contributed to the
effort to provide a fast, powerful, and free indexing tool to the Internet
community. 

Roy Tennant 
SWISH-E Project Manager

Giulia Hill
SWISH-E Programmer

Kirk Hastings
AutoSwish Programmer


Bug Fixes and Enhancements in SWISH-Enhanced 1.1
================================================
 
Bug fixes
*********
 
Merge option - Problem before the fix: the merge option was creating an
   incorrect index when the first index to merge was empty.
 
Search option - Problem before the fix: during a search, all the indexes
after an empty index were disregarded. Fixed after a suggestion by J.
Winstead.
 
 
Enhancements
************
 
- Reporting number of hits
--------------------------
The header of the search results now contains the number of files
that contain the search words.
The following is an example of the result of a search:
 
# SWISH format 1.1
# Search words: hamlet* not mango
# Name: Improvement index
# Saved as: myindex3
# Counts: 9 words, 6 files
# Indexed on: 01/12/97 12:19:13 PST
# Description: This is an index to test bug fixes in swish.
# Pointer: http://sunsite/~ghill/swish/index.html
# Maintained by: Giulia Hill, (ghill at library.berkeley.edu)
# Number of hits: 4
1000 /home/ghill/swish/dir3/records/31.html "31.html" 72
1000 /home/ghill/swish/dir3/records/32.html "32.html" 96
405 /home/ghill/swish/dir3/records/34.html "34.html" 84
286 /home/ghill/swish/dir3/records/33.html "33.html" 97
..
 
 
- Ignore specified char's when in initial position.
--------------------------------------------------
It is sometimes convenient that certain char's are treated as normal
char when in the middle of a word while they are disregarded when in
initial position. To exercise this option there should be in the config.h
file the following line:
 
#define IGNOREFIRSTCHAR "<list of char>"
 
For example if "." is listed in the IGNOREFIRSTCHAR variable, words
will be indexed as follows:
Word            Indexed as
z39.50          z39.50
.z39.50         z39.50
 
Please note that the char's that are listed in the IGNOREFIRSTCHAR
variable need also to be listed in the BEGINCHARS variable, otherwise
the word is discarded as invalid. The char's in the list are written
in sequence within the quotes with no separation between them. If no
char's should be ignored, the variable IGNOREFIRSTCHAR should be
listed as an empty list rather than deleted.
The routine checks iteratively for all begining char's to discard i.e:

Word             Indexed as
{"swish          swish
 
 
- Iterative Discarding of IGNORELASTCHAR - Courtesy of P. Bergner
-----------------------------------------------------------------
In the earlier version of SWISH-E it was possible to ignore only one
char at the end of a word; in this new version, the process is
iterative so that more than one char's can be eliminated during
indexing.

Giulia Hill, SWISH-Enhanced programmer
ghill at library.berkeley.edu


AutoSwish 1.1 Changes
=====================

Changes implemented in AutoSwish version 1.1:

* Security check added to prevent illegal characters from being entered 
when executing the CGI script

* A minor directory path problem was fixed

* It is now possible to set FileRules, which allows you to specify files, 
directory paths, or other parameters for file exclusion (see the manual 
for more information)

Kirk Hastings, AutoSwish programmer
khasting at library.berkeley.edu


December 24, 1997
Berkeley, CA
USA