                       NOTEFINDER 1.1

             Copyright (C) 1998 by Burt Leavenworth
                     All rights reserved

WHAT IS NOTEFINDER?

Notefinder allows you to store names, addresses, phone numbers,
references and notes in a database for later retrieval. Retrieval
is made more efficient by also storing keywords corresponding to
each note.

STATUS

Notefinder is Freeware and may be freely distributed (see the
file COPYRITE).

INSTALLATION

To install Notefinder, copy "note11.zip" into a directory of your
choice, unzip it (make sure your unzipper handles long file names)
and run setup in that directory.

To execute Notefinder, run notefind in that directory. For comments
and suggestions, send mail to: edlsoft@laker.net

HOW TO USE NOTEFINDER

In Notefinder, you can do one of two things: Add a New Note, or
Search for a Note. To Add a Note (if this is too much to absorb
at this stage, skip ahead to the example):

1. Type a new note in the IN/OUT box.

2. Type keywords associated with the note in the Keywords part of
   the ADD A NOTE box. A keyword is an individual word, or an
   exact phrase (sequence of words delimited by double quotes).
   Steps 1 and 2 can be reversed.

3. Click the ADD! button.

4. If you want to add another note, click the RESET button and
   repeat steps 1 thru 3.

To Search for a Note: in the SEARCH FOR A NOTE box:

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 SEARCH! 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:

5. 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.

To retrieve the above information online, click the HELP button.

To terminate the session, click the EXIT button.


EXAMPLE

The simplest example would be to store names and phone numbers in the
database. To do this, you would type the phone number in the IN/OUT
box and the name as a keyword.

Consider the following oversimplified and not very practical example
which shows the features of Notefinder. We first enter some facts
about two people in the database using Add a Note:

Add a Note                                      Keywords

1.  Bill comes from Boston                      Bill Boston
2.  Carol is a writer                           Carol writer
3.  Carol went to school in "New York"          Carol "New York"
4.  Bill is a lawyer                            Bill lawyer
5.  Bill met Carol in "New York"                Bill Carol "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. The above notes and keywords have already been entered into
Notefinder. Now we can search for notes, in this case, satisfying certain
conditions. Choosing 'all the words' and Carol in the 'Search for'
box, we get all the notes referring yo Carol in the 'IN/OUT' box:

.....Carol is a writer

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

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

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

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

.....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
'keywords' box and get the notes with mention of Bill or Carol:

.....Bill comes from Boston

.....Bill is a lawyer

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

.....Carol is a writer

.....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.

Here are some additional examples using Boolean phrases.

Typing: Bill OR (Carol NOT "New York"), we get notes referring to Bill
or to Carol not in New York:

.....Bill comes from Boston

.....Bill is a lawyer

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

.....Carol is a writer

Why do both Carol and "New York" appear above? Well, the first term
Bill appears in notes 1, 4 and 5; the second term Carol NOT "New York"
appears only in note 2. ORing them together gives us notes 1,2,4 and 5.


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

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


Notice that Notefinder creates two files:  file1, and file2.

To reset the above database and start your own from scratch, just
delete the above two files.
