If you do not like reading manuals (who does?) and would like to give Recoll a try, just install the application and start the recoll graphical user interface (GUI), which will ask to index your home directory by default, allowing you to search immediately after indexing completes.
Do not do this if your home directory contains a huge number of documents and you do not want to wait or are very short on disk space. In this case, you may first want to customize the configuration to restrict the indexed area.
Also be aware that you may need to install the appropriate supporting applications for document types that need them (for example antiword for ms-word files).
Recoll is a full text search application. Full text search applications let you find your data by content rather than by external attributes (like a file name). More specifically, they will let you specify words (terms) that should or should not appear in the text you are looking for, and return a list of matching documents, ordered so that the most relevant documents will appear first.
You do not need to remember in what file or email message you stored a given piece of information. You just ask for related terms, and the tool will return a list of documents where those terms are prominent, in a similar way to Internet search engines.
A search application tries to determine which documents are most relevant to the search terms you provide. Computer algorithms for determining relevance can be very complex, and in general are inferior to the power of the human mind to rapidly determine relevance. The quality of relevance guessing is probably the most important aspect when evaluating a search application.
In many cases, you are looking for all the forms of a word, not for a specific form or spelling. These different forms may include plurals, different tenses for a verb, or terms derived from the same root or stem (example: floor, floors, floored, flooring...). Search applications usually expand queries to all such related terms (words that reduce to the same stem) and also provide a way to disable this expansion if you are actually searching for a specific form.
Stemming, by itself, does not accommodate for misspellings or phonetic searches. Recoll supports these features through a specific tool (the term explorer) which will let you explore the set of index terms along different modes.
Recoll uses the Xapian information retrieval library as its storage and retrieval engine. Xapian is a very mature package using a sophisticated probabilistic ranking model. Recoll provides the mechanisms and interface to get data into and out of the system.
In practice, Xapian works by remembering where terms appear in your document files. The acquisition process is called indexing.
The resulting index can be big (roughly the size of the original document set), but it is not a document archive. Recoll can only display documents that still exist at the place from which they were indexed. (Actually, there is a way to reconstruct a document from the information in the index, but the result is not nice, as all formatting, punctuation and capitalization are lost).
Recoll stores all internal data in Unicode UTF-8 format, and it can index files with different character sets, encodings, and languages into the same index. It has input filters for many document types.
Stemming is the process by which Recoll reduces words to their radicals so that searching does not depend, for example, on a word being singular or plural (floor, floors), or on a verb tense (flooring, floored). Because the mechanisms used for stemming depend on the specific grammatical rules for each language, there is a separate stemmer module for most common languages where stemming makes sense. Storing documents written in different languages in the same index is possible, and commonly done. In this situation, you can specify several stemming languages for the index. Recoll stores the unstemmed versions of terms in the main index and uses auxiliary databases for term expansion (one for each stemming language), which means that you can switch stemming languages between searches, or add a language without needing a full reindex. Recoll currently makes no attempt at automatic language recognition, which means that the stemmer will sometimes be applied to terms from other languages with potentially strange results. In practise, even if this introduces possibilities of confusion, this approach has been proven quite useful, and, awaiting the addition of an automatic language recognition module to Recoll, it is much less cumbersome than separating your documents according to what language they are written in.
Recoll has many parameters which define exactly what to index, and how to classify and decode the source documents. These are kept in configuration files. A default configuration is copied into a standard location (usually something like /usr/[local/]share/recoll/examples) during installation. The default values set by the configuration files in this directory may be overridden by values that you set inside your personal configuration, found by default in the .recoll sub-directory of your home directory. The default configuration will index your home directory with default parameters and should be sufficient for giving Recoll a try, but you may want to adjust it later, which can be done either by editing the text files or by using configuration menus in the recoll GUI
The indexing process is started automatically the first time you execute the recoll GUI. Indexing can also be performed by executing the recollindex command.
Searches are usually performed inside the recoll GUI, which has many options to help you find what you are looking for. However, there are other ways to perform Recoll searches: mostly a command line interface, a Python programming interface, a KDE KIO slave module, and a Ubuntu Unity Lens module.
Indexing is the process by which the set of documents is analyzed and the data entered into the database. Recoll indexing is normally incremental: documents will only be processed if they have been modified. On the first execution, all documents will need processing. A full index build can be forced later by specifying an option to the indexing command (recollindex -z).
Recoll indexing can be performed with two different methods:
Periodic (or Batch) indexing: indexing takes place at discrete times, by executing the recollindex command. The typical usage is to have a nightly indexing run programmed into your cron file.
Real time indexing: indexing takes place as soon as a file is created or changed. recollindex runs as a daemon and uses a file system alteration monitor such as inotify, Fam or Gamin to detect file changes.
The choice between the two methods is mostly a matter of preference, and they can be combined by setting up multiple indexes (ie: use periodic indexing on a big documentation directory, and real time indexing on a small home directory). Monitoring a big file system tree can consume significant system resources.
Recoll knows about quite a few different document types. The parameters for document types recognition and processing are set in configuration files.
Most file types, like HTML or word processing files, only hold one document. Some file types, like email folders or zip archives, can hold many individually indexed documents, which may in turn be themselves compound ones. Such hierarchies can go quite deep, and Recoll can process, for example, an ms-word document stored as an attachment to an email message inside an email folder archived in a zip file...
Recoll indexing processes plain text, HTML, OpenDocument (Open/LibreOffice), email formats, and a few others internally.
Other file types (ie: postscript, pdf, ms-word, rtf ...) need external applications for preprocessing. The list is in the installation section. After every indexing operation, Recoll updates a list of commands that would be needed for indexing existing files types. This list can be displayed by selecting the menu option File->Show Missing Helpers in the recoll GUI. It is stored in the missing text file inside the configuration directory.
Without further configuration, Recoll will index all appropriate files from your home directory, with a reasonable set of defaults.
In some cases, it may be interesting to index different areas of the file system to separate databases. You can do this by using multiple configuration directories, each indexing a file system area to a specific database. See the section about using multiple databases for more information on multiple configurations and indexes.
In the rare case where the index becomes corrupted (which can signal itself by weird
search results or crashes), the index files need to be erased before restarting a clean
indexing pass. Just delete the xapiandb directory (see next section), or, alternatively, start the next recollindex with the -z option, which will
reset the database before indexing.
The default location for the index data is the xapiandb subdirectory of the Recoll configuration directory, typically $HOME/.recoll/xapiandb/. This can be changed via two different methods (with different purposes):
You can specify a different configuration directory by setting the RECOLL_CONFDIR environment variable, or using the -c option to the Recoll commands. This method
would typically be used to index different areas of the file system to different indexes.
For example, if you were to issue the following commands:
export RECOLL_CONFDIR=~/.indexes-email
recoll
Then Recoll would use configuration files stored in ~/.indexes-email/ and, (unless specified otherwise in recoll.conf) would look for the index in ~/.indexes-email/xapiandb/.
Using multiple configuration directories and configuration options allows you to tailor multiple configurations and indexes to handle whatever subset of the available data that you wish to make searchable.
You can also specify a different storage location for the index by setting the
dbdir parameter in the configuration file (see the configuration section). This method would mainly be
of use if you wanted to keep the configuration directory in its default location, but
desired another location for the index, typically out of disk occupation concerns.
The size of the index is determined by the document set size, but the ratio can vary a lot. For a typical mixed set of documents, the index size will often be close to the data set size. In specific cases (a set of compressed mbox files for example), the index can become much bigger than the documents. It may also be much smaller if the documents contain a lot of images or other non-indexed data (an extreme example being a set of mp3 files where only the tags would be indexed).
Of course, images, sound and video do not increase the index size, which means that nowadays (2012), typically, even a big index will be negligible against the total amount of data on the computer.
The index data directory (xapiandb) only contains data that can be completely rebuilt by an index run (as long as the original documents exist), and it can always be destroyed safely.
Xapian versions usually support several formats for index storage. A given major Xapian version will have a current format, used to create new indexes, and will also support the format from the previous major version.
Xapian will not convert automatically an existing index from the older format to the newer one. If you want to upgrade to the new format, or if a very old index needs to be converted because its format is not supported any more, you will have to explicitly delete the old index, then run a normal indexing process.
Unfortunately, using the -z option to recollindex is not sufficient to change the format, you will have to
delete all files inside the index directory (typically ~/.recoll/xapiandb) before starting the indexing.
The Recoll index does not hold copies of the indexed documents. But it does hold enough data to allow for an almost complete reconstruction. If confidential data is indexed, access to the database directory should be restricted.
Recoll (since version 1.4) will create the configuration directory with a mode of 0700 (access by owner only). As the index data directory is by default a sub-directory of the configuration directory, this should result in appropriate protection.
If you use another setup, you should think of the kind of protection you need for your index, set the directory and files access modes appropriately, and also maybe adjust the umask used during index updates.
Variables set inside the Recoll configuration files control which areas of the file system are indexed, and how files are processed. These variables can be set either by editing the text files or using the dialogs in the recoll GUI.
You can also use multiple indexes defined by separate configurations, typically to separate personal and shared indexes, or to take advantage of the organization of your data to improve search precision.
The first time you start recoll, you will be asked whether or not you would like it to build the index. If you want to adjust the configuration before indexing, just click Cancel at this point, which will get you into the configuration interface. If you exit at this point, recoll will have created a ~/.recoll directory containing empty configuration files, which you can edit by hand.
The configuration is documented inside the installation chapter of this document, or in the recoll.conf(5) man page, but the most current information will most likely be the comments inside the sample file. The most immediately useful variable you may interested in is probably topdirs, which determines what subtrees get indexed.
The applications needed to index file types other than text, HTML or email (ie: pdf, postscript, ms-word...) are described in the external packages section
Most parameters for a given indexing configuration can be set from a recoll GUI running on this configuration (either as default, or by setting
RECOLL_CONFDIR or the -c option.)
The interface is started from the Preferences->Indexing Configuration menu entry. It is divided in three tabs, Global parameters, Local parameters, and Beagle web history, which is explained in the next section.
The first tab allows setting global variables, like the lists of top directories, skipped paths, or stemming languages.
The second tab allows setting variables that can be redefined for subdirectories. This second tab has an initially empty list of customisation directories, to which you can add. The variables are then set for the currently selected directory (or at the top level if the empty line is selected).
The meaning for most entries in the interface is self-evident and documented by a ToolTip popup on the text label. For more detail, you will need to refer to the configuration section of this guide.
The configuration tool normally respects the comments and most of the formatting inside the configuration file, so that it is quite possible to use it on hand-edited files, which you might nevertheless want to backup first...
Beagle is (was?) a concurrent desktop indexer, built on Lucene and the Mono project (C#), for which a number of add-on browser plugins were written. These work by copying visited web pages to an indexing queue directory, which the indexer then processes. Especially, there is a Firefox extension.
If, for any reason, you so happen to prefer Recoll to Beagle, you can still use the Firefox plugin, which is written in Javascript and completely independant of C#, Beagle, Lucene..., and set Recoll to process the Beagle queue directory. This supposes that Beagle is not running, else both programs will fight for the same files.
This feature can be enabled in the GUI indexing configuration panel, or by editing the
configuration file (set processbeaglequeue to 1).
There are more recent instructions about how to find and install the Firefox extension on the Recoll wiki.
Unfortunately, it seems that the plugin does not work anymore with recent Firefox versions (tried with 10.0). This is not the trival installation version check issue, explicit manual indexing requests still work, but automatic indexing on page load does not.
Indexing is always performed by the recollindex program,
which can be started either from the command line or from the File menu in the recoll GUI program. When
started from the GUI, the indexing will run on the same configuration recoll was started on. When started from the command line, recollindex will use the RECOLL_CONFDIR variable or
accept a -c confdir
option to specify a non-default configuration directory.
If the recoll program finds no index when it starts, it will automatically start indexing (except if canceled).
The recollindex indexing process can be interrupted by sending an interrupt (Ctrl-C, SIGINT) or terminate (SIGTERM) signal. Some time may elapse before the process exits, because it needs to properly flush and close the index. This can also be done from the recoll GUI File->Stop Indexing menu entry.
After such an interruption, the index will be somewhat inconsistent because some operations which are normally performed at the end of the indexing pass will have been skipped (for example, the stemming and spelling databases will be inexistant or out of date). You just need to restart indexing at a later time to restore consistency. The indexing will restart at the interruption point (the full file tree will be traversed, but files that were indexed up to the interruption and are still up to date will not need to be reindexed).
recollindex has a number of other options which are described in its man page.
Of special interest maybe are the -i and -f options. -i allows indexing an explicit
list of files (given as command line parameters or read on stdin). -f tells recollindex to ignore file selection
parameters from the configuration. Together, these options allow building a custom file
selection process for some area of the file system, by adding the top directory to the
skippedPaths list and using an appropriate file selection
method to build the file list to be fed to recollindex -if .
recollindex -i will not descend into directory parameters, but just add them as index entries. It is up to the external file selection method to build the complete file list.
The most common way to set up indexing is to have a cron task execute it every night. For example the following crontab entry would do it every day at 3:30AM (supposing recollindex is in your PATH):
30 3 * * * recollindex > /some/tmp/dir/recolltrace 2>&1Or, using anacron:
1 15 su mylogin -c "recollindex recollindex > /tmp/rcltraceme 2>&1"
As of version 1.17 the Recoll GUI has dialogs to manage crontab entries for recollindex. You can reach them from the Preferences->Indexing Schedule menu. They only work with the good old cron, and do not give access to all features of cron scheduling.
The usual command to edit your crontab is crontab -e (which will usually start the vi editor to edit the file). You may have more sophisticated tools available on your system.
Please be aware that there may be differences between your usual interactive command line environment and the one seen by crontab commands. Especially the PATH variable may be of concern. Please check the crontab manual pages about possible issues.
Real time monitoring/indexing is performed by starting the recollindex -m command. With this option, recollindex will detach from the terminal and become a daemon, permanently monitoring file changes and updating the index.
Under KDE, Gnome and some other desktop environments, the daemon can automatically started when you log in, by creating a desktop file inside the ~/.config/autostart directory. This can be done for you by the Recoll GUI. Use the Preferences->Indexing Schedule menu.
With older X11 setups, starting the daemon is normally performed as part of the user session script.
The rclmon.sh script can be used to easily start and stop the daemon. It can be found in the examples directory (typically /usr/local/[share/]recoll/examples).
For example, my out of fashion xdm-based session has a .xsession script with the following lines at the end:
recollconf=$HOME/.recoll-home recolldata=/usr/local/share/recoll RECOLL_CONFDIR=$recollconf $recolldata/examples/rclmon.sh start fvwm
The indexing daemon gets started, then the window manager, for which the session waits.
By default the indexing daemon will monitor the state of the X11 session, and exit
when it finishes, it is not necessary to kill it explicitly. (The X11 server monitoring
can be disabled with option -x to recollindex).
If you use the daemon completely out of an X11 session, you need to add option
-x to disable X11 session monitoring (else the daemon will
not start).
By default, the messages from the indexing daemon will be discarded. You may want to
change this by setting the daemlogfilename and daemloglevel configuration parameters. Also the log file will only be
truncated when the daemon starts. If the daemon runs permanently, the log file may grow
quite big, depending on the log level.
When building Recoll, the real time indexing support can be
customised during package configuration with
the --with[out]-fam or --with[out]-inotify options. The default is currently to include
inotify monitoring on systems that support it, and, as of
recoll 1.17, gamin support on FreeBSD.
While it is convenient that data is indexed in real time, repeated indexing can generate a significant load on the system when files such as email folders change. Also, monitoring large file trees by itself significantly taxes system resources. You probably do not want to enable it if your system is short on resources. Periodic indexing is adequate in most cases.
When using the real time monitor, it may happen that some files need to be indexed, but change so often that they impose an excessive load for the system.
Recoll provides a configuration option to specify the
minimum time before which a file, specified by a wildcard pattern, cannot be reindexed.
See the mondelaypatterns parameter in the configuration section.
The recoll program provides the main user interface for searching. It is based on the Qt library.
recoll has two search modes:
Simple search (the default, on the main screen) has a single entry field where you can enter multiple words.
Advanced search (a panel accessed through the Tools menu or the toolbox bar icon) has multiple entry fields, which you may use to build a logical condition, with additional filtering on file type and location in the file system.
In most cases, you can enter the terms as you think them, even if they contain embedded punctuation or other non-textual characters. For example, Recoll can handle things like email addresses, or arbitrary cut and paste from another text window, punctation and all.
The main case where you should enter text differently from how it is printed is for east-asian languages (Chinese, Japanese, Korean). Words composed of single or multiple characters should be entered separated by white space in this case (they would typically be printed without white space).
Start the recoll program.
Possibly choose a search mode: Any term, All terms, File name or Query language.
Enter search term(s) in the text field at the top of the window.
Click the Search button or hit the Enter key to start the search.
The initial default search mode is Query language. Without special directives, this will look for documents containing all of the search terms (the ones with more terms will get better scores), just like the All terms mode which will ignore such directives. Any term will search for documents where at least one of the terms appear.
The Query Language features are described in a separate section.
File name will specifically look for file names. The entry will be split at white space characters, and each fragment will be separately expanded, then the search will be for file names matching all fragments (this is new in 1.15, older releases did an OR of the whole thing which did not make sense). Things to know:
The search is case- and accent-insensitive.
Fragments without any wild card character and not capitalized will be prepended and appended with '*' (ie: etc -> *etc*, but Etc -> etc). Of course it does not make sense to have multiple fragments if one of them is capitalized (as this one will require an exact match).
If you want to search for a pattern including white space, use double quotes (ie: "admin note*").
If you have a big index (many files), excessively generic fragments may result in inefficient searches.
As an example, inst recoll would match recollinstall.in (and quite a few others...).
All search modes allow wildcards inside terms (*, ?, []). You may want to have a look at the section about wildcards for more information about this.
You can search for exact phrases (adjacent words in a given order) by enclosing the input inside double quotes. Ex: "virtual reality".
Character case has no influence on search, except that you can disable stem expansion for any term by capitalizing it. Ie: a search for floor will also normally look for flooring, floored, etc., but a search for Floor will only look for floor, in any character case. Stemming can also be disabled globally in the preferences.
Recoll remembers the last few searches that you performed. You can use the simple search text entry widget (a combobox) to recall them (click on the thing at the right of the text field). Please note, however, that only the search texts are remembered, not the mode (all/any/file name).
Typing Esc Space while entering a word in the simple search entry will open a window with possible completions for the word. The completions are extracted from the database.
Double-clicking on a word in the result list or a preview window will insert it into the simple search entry field.
You can cut and paste any text into an All terms or Any term search field, punctuation, newlines and all - except for wildcard characters (single ? characters are ok). Recoll will process it and produce a meaningful search. This is what most differentiates this mode from the Query Language mode, where you have to care about the syntax.
You can use the Tools / Advanced search dialog for more complex searches.
After starting a search, a list of results will instantly be displayed in the main list window.
By default, the document list is presented in order of relevance (how well the system estimates that the document matches the query). You can sort the result by ascending or descending date by using the vertical arrows in the toolbar (the old sort tool is gone after release 1.15, because the new result table has much better capability).
Clicking on the Preview link for an entry will open an internal preview window for the document. Further Preview clicks for the same search will open tabs in the existing preview window. You can use Shift+Click to force the creation of another preview window, which may be useful to view the documents side by side. (You can also browse successive results in a single preview window by typing Shift+ArrowUp/Down in the window).
Clicking the Open link will attempt to start an external viewer. The viewer for each document type can be configured through the user preferences dialog, or by editing the mimeview configuration file. You can also check the Use desktop preferences option in the user preferences dialog to use the desktop defaults for all documents. This is probably the best option if you are using a well configured Gnome or KDE desktop.
The Preview and Open edit links may not be present for all entries, meaning that Recoll has no configured way to preview a given file type (which was indexed by name only), or no configured external editor for the file type. This can sometimes be adjusted simply by tweaking the mimemap and mimeview configuration files (the latter can be modified with the user preferences dialog).
The format of the result list entries is entirely configurable by using the preference dialog to edit an HTML fragment.
You can click on the Query details link at the top of the results page to see the query actually performed, after stem expansion and other processing.
Double-clicking on any word inside the result list or a preview window will insert it into the simple search text.
The result list is divided into pages (the size of which you can change in the preferences). Use the arrow buttons in the toolbar or the links at the bottom of the page to browse the results.
Apart from the preview and edit links, you can display a pop-up menu by right-clicking over a paragraph in the result list. This menu has the following entries:
Preview
Open
Copy File Name
Copy Url
Save to File
Find similar
Preview Parent document
Open Parent document
The Preview and Open entries do the same thing as the corresponding links.
The Copy File Name and Copy Url copy the relevant data to the clipboard, for later pasting.
Save to File allows saving the contents of a result document to a chosen file. This entry will only appear if the document does not correspond to an existing file, but is a subdocument inside such a file (ie: an email attachment). It is especially useful to extract attachments with no associated editor.
The Find similar entry will select a number of relevant term from the current document and enter them into the simple search field. You can then start a simple search, with a good chance of finding documents related to the current result.
The Parent document entries will appear for documents which are not actually files but are part of, or attached to, a higher level document. This entry is mainly useful for email attachments and permits viewing the message to which the document is attached. Note that the entry will also appear for an email which is part of an mbox folder file, but that you can't actually visualize the folder (there will be an error dialog if you try). Recoll is unfortunately not yet smart enough to disable the entry in this case. In other cases, the Open option makes sense, for example to start a chm viewer on the parent document for a help page.
In Recoll 1.15 and newer, the results can be displayed in spreadsheet-like fashion. You can switch to this presentation by clicking the table-like icon in the toolbar (this is a toggle, click again to restore the list).
Clicking on the column headers will allow sorting by the values in the column. You can click again to invert the order, and use the header right-click menu to reset sorting to the default relevance order (you can also use the sort-by-date arrows to do this).
Both the list and the table display the same underlying results. The sort order set from the table is still active if you switch back to the list mode. You can click twice on a date sort arrow to reset it from there.
The header right-click menu allows adding or deleting columns. The columns can be resized, and their order can be changed (by dragging). All the changes are recorded when you quit recoll
Hovering over a table row will update the detail area at the bottom of the window with the corresponding values. You can click the row to freeze the display. The bottom area is equivalent to a result list paragraph, with links for starting a preview or a native application, and an equivalent right-click menu. Typing Esc (the Escape key) will unfreeze the display.
The preview window opens when you first click a Preview link inside the result list.
Subsequent preview requests for a given search open new tabs in the existing window (except if you hold the Shift key while clicking which will open a new window for side by side viewing).
Starting another search and requesting a preview will create a new preview window. The old one stays open until you close it.
You can close a preview tab by typing Ctrl-W (Ctrl + W) in the window. Closing the last tab for a window will also close the window.
Of course you can also close a preview window by using the window manager button in the top of the frame.
You can display successive or previous documents from the result list inside a preview tab by typing Shift+Down or Shift+Up (Down and Up are the arrow keys).
The preview tabs have an internal incremental search function. You initiate the search either by typing a / (slash) or CTL-F inside the text area or by clicking into the Search for: text field and entering the search string. You can then use the Next and Previous buttons to find the next/previous occurrence. You can also type F3 inside the text area to get to the next occurrence.
If you have a search string entered and you use Ctrl-Up/Ctrl-Down to browse the results, the search is initiated for each successive document. If the string is found, the cursor will be positioned at the first occurrence of the search string.
A right-click menu in the text area allows switching between displaying the main text or the contents of fields associated to the document (ie: author, abtract, etc.). This is especially useful in cases where the term match did not occur in the main text but in one of the fields.
You can print the current preview window contents by typing Ctrl-P (Ctrl + P) in the window text.
The advanced search dialog helps you build more complex queries without memorizing the search language constructs. It can be opened through the Tools menu or through the main toolbar.
The dialog has two tabs:
The first tab lets you specify terms to search for, and permits specifying multiple clauses which are combined to build the search.
The second tab lets filter the results according to file size, date of modification, mime type, or location.
Click on the Start Search button in the advanced search dialog, or type Enter in any text field to start the search. The button in the main window always performs a simple search.
Click on the Show query details link at the top of the result page to see the query expansion.
This part of the dialog lets you constructc a query by combining multiple clauses of different types. Each entry field is configurable for the following modes:
All terms.
Any term.
None of the terms.
Phrase (exact terms in order within an adjustable window).
Proximity (terms in any order within an adjustable window).
Filename search.
Additional entry fields can be created by clicking the Add clause button.
When searching, the non-empty clauses will be combined either with an AND or an OR conjunction, depending on the choice made on the left (All clauses or Any clause).
Entries of all types except "Phrase" and "Near" accept a mix of single words and phrases enclosed in double quotes. Stemming and wildcard expansion will be performed as for simple search.
Phrases and Proximity searches. These two clauses work in similar ways, with the difference that proximity searches do not impose an order on the words. In both cases, an adjustable number (slack) of non-matched words may be accepted between the searched ones (use the counter on the left to adjust this count). For phrases, the default count is zero (exact match). For proximity it is ten (meaning that two search terms, would be matched if found within a window of twelve words). Examples: a phrase search for quick fox with a slack of 0 will match quick fox but not quick brown fox. With a slack of 1 it will match the latter, but not fox quick. A proximity search for quick fox with the default slack will match the latter, and also a fox is a cunning and quick animal.
This part of the dialog has several sections which allow filtering the results of a search according to a number of criteria
The first section allows filtering by dates of last modification. You can specify both a minimum and a maximum date. The initial values are set according to the oldest and newest documents found in the index.
The next section allows filtering the results by file size. There are two entries for minimum and maximum size. Enter decimal numbers. You can use suffix multipliers: k/K, m/M, g/G, t/T for 1E3, 1E6, 1E9, 1E12 respectively.
The next section allows filtering the results by their mime types, or mime categories (ie: media/text/message/etc.).
You can transfer the types between two boxes, to define which will be included or excluded by the search.
The state of the file type selection can be saved as the default (the file type filter will not be activated at program start-up, but the lists will be in the restored state).
The bottom section allows restricting the search results to a sub-tree of the indexed area. You can use the Invert checkbox to search for files not in the sub-tree instead. If you use directory filtering often and on big subsets of the file system, you may think of setting up multiple indexes instead, as the performance may be better.
You can use relative/partial paths for filtering. Ie, entering dirA/dirB would match either /dir1/dirA/dirB/myfile1 or /dir2/dirA/dirB/someother/myfile2.
Recoll automatically manages the expansion of search terms to their derivatives (ie: plural/singular, verb inflections). But there are other cases where the exact search term is not known. For example, you may not remember the exact spelling, or only know the beginning of the name.
The term explorer tool (started from the toolbar icon or from the Term explorer entry of the Tools menu) can be used to search the full index terms list. It has three modes of operations:
In this mode of operation, you can enter a search string with shell-like wildcards (*, ?, []). ie: xapi* would display all index terms beginning with xapi. (More about wildcards here).
This mode will accept a regular expression as input. Example: word[0-9]+. The expression is implicitely anchored at the beginning. Ie: press will match pression but not expression. You can use .*press to match the latter, but be aware that this will cause a full index term list scan, which can be quite long.
This mode will perform the usual stem expansion normally done as part user input processing. As such it is probably mostly useful to demonstrate the process.
In this mode, you enter the term as you think it is spelled, and Recoll will do its best to find index terms that sound like your entry. This mode uses the Aspell spelling application, which must be installed on your system for things to work (if your documents contain non-ascii characters, Recoll needs an aspell version newer than 0.60 for UTF-8 support). The language which is used to build the dictionary out of the index terms (which is done at the end of an indexing pass) is the one defined by your NLS environment. Weird things will probably happen if languages are mixed up.
Note that in cases where Recoll does not know the beginning of the string to search for (ie a wildcard expression like *coll), the expansion can take quite a long time because the full index term list will have to be processed. The expansion is currently limited at 200 results for wildcards and regular expressions.
Double-clicking on a term in the result list will insert it into the simple search entry field. You can also cut/paste between the result list and any entry field (the end of lines will be taken care of).
Multiple Recoll databases or indexes can be created by
using several configuration directories which are usually set to index different areas of
the file system. A specific index can be selected for updating or searching, using the
RECOLL_CONFDIR environment variable or the -c option to recoll and recollindex.
A recollindex program instance can only update one specific index.
A recoll program instance is also associated with a specific index, which is the one to be updated by its indexing thread, but it can use any number of Recoll indexes for searching. The external indexes can be selected through the external indexes tab in the preferences dialog.
Index selection is performed in two phases. A set of all usable indexes must first be defined, and then the subset of indexes to be used for searching. Of course, these parameters are retained across program executions (there are kept separately for each Recoll configuration). The set of all indexes is usually quite stable, while the active ones might typically be adjusted quite frequently.
The main index (defined by RECOLL_CONFDIR) is always active. If this is undesirable, you can set up your base configuration to index an empty directory.
As building the set of all indexes can be a little tedious when done through the user interface, you can use the RECOLL_EXTRA_DBS environment variable to provide an initial set. This might typically be set up by a system administrator so that every user does not have to do it. The variable should define a colon-separated list of index directories, ie:
export RECOLL_EXTRA_DBS=/some/place/xapiandb:/some/other/db
A typical usage scenario for the multiple index feature would be for a system administrator to set up a central index for shared data, that you choose to search or not in addition to your personal data. Of course, there are other possibilities. There are many cases where you know the subset of files that should be searched, and where narrowing the search can improve the results. You can achieve approximately the same effect with the directory filter in advanced search, but multiple indexes will have much better performance and may be worth the trouble.
Another environment variable, RECOLL_ACTIVE_EXTRA_DBS allows adding to the active list of indexes. This variable was suggested and implemented by a Recoll user. It is mostly useful if you use scripts to mount external volumes with Recoll indexes. By using RECOLL_EXTRA_DBS and RECOLL_ACTIVE_EXTRA_DBS, you can add and activate the index for the mounted volume when starting recoll.
RECOLL_ACTIVE_EXTRA_DBS is available for Recoll versions 1.17.2 and later. A change was made in the same update so that recoll will automatically deactivate unreachable indexes when starting up.
Documents that you actually view (with the internal preview or an external tool) are entered into the document history, which is remembered.
You can display the history list by using the Tools/Doc History menu entry.
You can erase the document history by using the Erase document history entry in the File menu.
The documents in a result list are normally sorted in order of relevance. It is possible to specify a different sort order, either by using the vertical arrows in the GUI toolbox to sort by date, or switching to the result table display and clicking on any header. The sort order chosen inside the result table remains active if you switch back to the result list, until you click one of the vertical arrows, until both are unchecked (you are back to sort by relevance).
Sort parameters are remembered between program invocations, but result sorting is normally always inactive when the program starts. It is possible to keep the sorting activation state between program invocations by checking the Remember sort activation state option in the preferences.
It is also possible to hide duplicate entries inside the result list (documents with the exact same contents as the displayed one). The test of identity is based on an MD5 hash of the document container, not only of the text contents (so that ie, a text document with an image added will not be a duplicate of the text only). Duplicates hiding is controlled by an entry in the Query configuration dialog, and is off by default.
Term completion. Typing Esc Space in the simple search entry field while entering a word will either complete the current word if its beginning matches a unique term in the index, or open a window to propose a list of completions.
Picking up new terms from result or preview text. Double-clicking on a word in the result list or in a preview window will copy it to the simple search entry field.
Wildcards. Wildcards can be used inside search terms in all forms of searches. More about wildcards.
Automatic suffixes. Words like odt or ods can be automatically turned into query language ext:xxx clauses. This can be enabled in the Search preferences panel in the GUI.
Disabling stem expansion. Entering a capitalized word in any search field will prevent stem expansion (no search for gardening if you enter Garden instead of garden). This is the only case where character case should make a difference for a Recoll search. You can also disable stem expansion or change the stemming language in the preferences.
Finding related documents. Selecting the Find similar documents entry in the result list paragraph right-click menu will select a set of "interesting" terms from the current result, and insert them into the simple search entry field. You can then possibly edit the list and start a search to find documents which may be apparented to the current result.
File names. File names are added as terms during indexing, and you can specify them as ordinary terms in normal search fields (Recoll used to index all directories in the file path as terms. This has been abandoned as it did not seem really useful). Alternatively, you can use the specific file name search which will only look for file names, and may be faster than the generic search especially when using wildcards.
Phrases and Proximity searches. A phrase can be looked for by enclosing it in double quotes. Example: "user manual" will look only for occurrences of user immediately followed by manual. You can use the This phrase field of the advanced search dialog to the same effect. Phrases can be entered along simple terms in all simple or advanced search entry fields (except This exact phrase).
AutoPhrases. This option can be set in the preferences dialog. If it is set, a phrase will be automatically built and added to simple searches when looking for Any terms. This will not change radically the results, but will give a relevance boost to the results where the search terms appear as a phrase. Ie: searching for virtual reality will still find all documents where either virtual or reality or both appear, but those which contain virtual reality should appear sooner in the list.
Phrase searches can strongly slow down a query if most of the terms in the phrase are
common. This is why the autophrase option is off by default
for Recoll versions before 1.17. As of version 1.17,
autophrase is on by default, but very common terms will be
removed from the constructed phrase. The removal threshold can be adjusted from the
search preferences.
Phrases and abbreviations. As of Recoll version 1.17, dotted abbreviations like I.B.M. are also automatically indexed as a word without the dots: IBM. Searching for the word inside a phrase (ie: "the IBM company") will only match the dotted abrreviation if you increase the phrase slack (using the advanced search panel control, or the o query language modifier). Literal occurences of the word will be matched normally.
Using fields. You can use the query language and field specifications to only search certain parts of documents. This can be especially helpful with email, for example only searching emails from a specific originator: search tips from:helpfulgui
Ajusting the result table columns. When displaying results in table mode, you can use a right click on the table headers to activate a pop-up menu which will let you adjust what columns are displayed. You can drag the column headers to adjust their order. You can click them to sort by the field displayed in the column. You can also save the result list in CSV format.
Query explanation. You can get an exact description of what the query looked for, including stem expansion, and Boolean operators used, by clicking on the result list header.
Browsing the result list inside a preview window. Entering Shift-Down or Shift-Up (Shift + an arrow key) in a preview window will display the next or the previous document from the result list. Any secondary search currently active will be executed on the new document.
Scrolling the result list from the keyboard. You can use PageUp and PageDown to scroll the result list, Shift+Home to go back to the first page. These work even while the focus is in the search entry.
Forced opening of a preview window. You can use Shift+Click on a result list Preview link to force the creation of a preview window instead of a new tab in the existing one.
Closing previews. Entering Ctrl-W in a tab will close it (and, for the last tab, close the preview window). Entering Esc will close the preview window and all its tabs.
Printing previews. Entering Ctrl-P in a preview window will print the currently displayed text.
Quitting. Entering Ctrl-Q almost anywhere will close the application.
You can customize some aspects of the search interface by using the Query configuration entry in the Preferences menu.
There are several tabs in the dialog, dealing with the interface itself, the parameters used for searching and returning results, and what indexes are searched.
Highlight color for query terms: Terms from the user query are highlighted in the result list samples and the preview window. The color can be chosen here. Any Qt color string should work (ie red, #ff0000). The default is blue.
Style sheet: The name of a Qt style sheet text file which is applied to the whole Recoll application on startup. The default value is empty, but there is a skeleton style sheet (recoll.qss) inside the /usr/share/recoll/examples directory. Using a style sheet, you can change most recoll graphical parameters: colors, fonts, etc. See the sample file for a few simple examples.
Maximum text size highlighted for preview Inserting highlights on search term inside the text before inserting it in the preview window involves quite a lot of processing, and can be disabled over the given text size to speed up loading.
Prefer HTML to plain text for preview if set, Recoll will display HTML as such inside the preview window. If this causes problems with the Qt HTML display, you can uncheck it to display the plain text version instead.
Use <PRE> tags instead of <BR> to display plain text as HTML in preview: when displaying plain text inside the preview window, Recoll tries to preserve some of the original text line breaks and indentation. It can either use PRE HTML tags, which will well preserve the indentation but will force horizontal scrolling for long lines, or use BR tags to break at the original line breaks, which will let the editor introduce other line breaks according to the window width, but will lose some of the original indentation.
Use desktop preferences to choose document editor: if this is checked, the xdg-open utility will be used to open files when you click the Open link in the result list, instead of the application defined in mimeview. xdg-open will in term use your desktop preferences to choose an appropriate application.
Choose editor applications this will let you choose the command started by the Open links inside the result list, for specific document types.
Display category filter as toolbar... this will let you choose if the document categories are displayed as a list or a set of buttons.
Auto-start simple search on white space entry: if this is checked, a search will be executed each time you enter a space in the simple search input field. This lets you look at the result list as you enter new terms. This is off by default, you may like it or not...
Start with advanced search dialog open and Start with sort dialog open: If you use these dialogs all the time, checking these entries will get them to open when recoll starts.
Remember sort activation state if set, Recoll will remember the sort tool stat between invocations. It normally starts with sorting disabled.
Number of results in a result page
Result list font: There is quite a lot of information shown in the result list, and you may want to customize the font and/or font size. The rest of the fonts used by Recoll are determined by your generic Qt config (try the qtconfig command).
Edit result list paragraph format string: allows you to change the presentation of each result list entry. See the result list customisation section.
Edit result page html header insert: allows you to define text inserted at the end of the result page html header. More detail in the result list customisation section.
Date format: allows specifying the format used for displaying dates inside the result list. This should be specified as an strftime() string (man strftime).
Abstract snippet separator: for synthetic abstracts built from index data, which are usually made of several snippets from different parts of the document, this defines the snippet separator, an ellipsis by default.
Hide duplicate results: decides if result list entries are shown for identical documents found in different places.
Stemming language: stemming obviously depends on the document's language. This listbox will let you chose among the stemming databases which were built during indexing (this is set in the main configuration file), or later added with recollindex -s (See the recollindex manual). Stemming languages which are dynamically added will be deleted at the next indexing pass unless they are also added in the configuration file.
Automatically add phrase to simple searches: a phrase will be automatically built and added to simple searches when looking for Any terms. This will give a relevance boost to the results where the search terms appear as a phrase (consecutive and in order).
Autophrase term frequency threshold percentage: very frequent terms should not be included in automatic phrase searches for performance reasons. The parameter defines the cutoff percentage (percentage of the documents where the term appears).
Replace abstracts from documents: this decides if we should synthesize and display an abstract in place of an explicit abstract found within the document itself.
Dynamically build abstracts: this decides if Recoll tries to build document abstracts when displaying the result list. Abstracts are constructed by taking context from the document information, around the search terms. This can slow down result list display significantly for big documents, and you may want to turn it off.
Synthetic abstract size: adjust to taste...
Synthetic abstract context words: how many words should be displayed around each term occurrence.
Query language magic file name suffixes: a list of words which automatically get turned into ext:xxx file name suffix clauses when starting a query language query (ie: doc xls xlsx...). This will save some typing for people who use file types a lot when querying.
External indexes: This panel will let you browse for additional indexes that you may want to search. External indexes are designated by their database directory (ie: /home/someothergui/.recoll/xapiandb, /usr/local/recollglobal/xapiandb).
Once entered, the indexes will appear in the External indexes list, and you can chose which ones you want to use at any moment by checking or unchecking their entries.
Your main database (the one the current configuration indexes to), is always implicitly active. If this is not desirable, you can set up your configuration so that it indexes, for example, an empty directory. An alternative indexer may also need to implement a way of purging the index from stale data,
The result list presentation can be exhaustively customized by adjusting two elements:
The paragraph format
Html code inside the header section
These can be edited from the Result list tab of the Query configuration.
Newer versions of Recoll (from 1.17) use a WebKit HTML object by default (this may be disabled at build time), and total customisation is possible with full support for CSS and Javascript. Conversely, there are limits to what you can do with the older Qt QTextBrowser, but still, it is possible to decide what data each result will contain, and how it will be displayed.
No more detail will be given about the header part (only useful with the WebKit build), if there are restrictions to what you can do, they are beyond this author's HTML/CSS/Javascript abilities... There are a few examples on the page about customising the result list on the Recoll web site.
This is an arbitrary HTML string where the following printf-like % substitutions will be performed:
%A. Abstract
%D. Date
%I. Icon image name. This is normally determined from the mime type. The associations are defined inside the mimeconf configuration file. If a thumbnail for the file is found at the standard Freedesktop location, this will be displayed instead.
%K. Keywords (if any)
%L. Precooked Preview and Edit links
%M. Mime type
%N. result Number inside the result page
%R. Relevance percentage
%S. Size information
%T. Title or Filename if not set.
%t. Title or Filename if not set.
%U. Url
In addition to the predefined values above, all strings like %(fieldname) will be replaced by the value of the field named fieldname for this document. Only stored fields can be accessed in this way, the value of indexed but not stored fields is not known at this point in the search process (see field configuration). There are currently very few fields stored by default, apart from the values above (only author and filename), so this feature will need some custom local configuration to be useful. For example, you could look at the fields for the document types of interest (use the right-click menu inside the preview window), and add what you want to the list of stored fields. A candidate example would be the recipient field which is generated by the message filters.
The default value for the paragraph format string is:
<img src="%I" align="left">%R %S %L <b>%T</b><br>
%M %D <i>%U</i> %i<br>
%A %K
You may, for example, try the following for a more web-like experience:
<u><b><a href="P%N">%T</a></b></u><br>
%A<font color=#008000>%U - %S</font> - %L
Or the clean looking:
<img src="%I" align="left">%L <font color="#900000">%R</font>
<b>%T</b><br>%S
<font color="#808080"><i>%U</i></font>
<table bgcolor="#e0e0e0">
<tr><td><div>%A</div></td></tr>
</table>%K
Note that the P%N link in the above paragraph makes the title a preview link.
These samples, and some others are on the web site, with pictures to show how they look.
It is also possible to define the value of the snippet separator inside the abstract section.
The Recoll KIO slave allows performing a Recoll search by entering an appropriate URL in a KDE open dialog, or with an HTML-based interface displayed in Konqueror.
The HTML-based interface is similar to the Qt-based interface, but slightly less powerful for now. Its advantage is that you can perform your search while staying fully within the KDE framework: drag and drop from the result list works normally and you have your normal choice of applications for opening files.
The alternative interface uses a directory view of search results. Due to limitations in the current KIO slave interface, it is currently not obviously useful (to me).
The interface is described in more detail inside a help file which you can access by entering recoll:/ inside the konqueror URL line (this works only if the recoll KIO slave has been previously installed).
The instructions for building this module are located in the source tree. See: kde/kio/recoll/00README.txt. Some Linux distributions do package the kio-recoll module, so check before diving into the build process, maybe it's already out there ready for one-click installation.
As a sample application, the Recoll KIO slave could allow preparing a set of HTML documents (for example a manual) so that they become their own search interface inside konqueror.
This can be done by either explicitly inserting <a href="recoll:/..."> links around some document areas, or automatically by adding a very small javascript program to the documents, like the following example, which would initiate a search by double-clicking any term:
<script language="JavaScript">
function recollsearch() {
var t = document.getSelection();
window.location.href = 'recoll://search/query?qtp=a&p=0&q=' +
encodeURIComponent(t);
}
</script>
....
<body ondblclick="recollsearch()">
There are several ways ndex from stale data,
The result list presentation can be exhaustively customized by adjusting two elements:
The paragraph format
Html code inside the header section
These can be edited from the Result list tab of the Query configuration.
Newer versions of Recoll (from 1.17) use a WebKit HTML object by default (this may be disabled at build time), and total customisation is possible with full support for CSS and Javascript. Conversely, there are limits to what you can do with the older Qt QTextBrowser, but still, it is possible to decide what data each result will contain, and how it will be displayed.
No more detail will be given about the header part (only useful with the WebKit build), if there are restrictions to what you can do, they are beyond this author's HTML/CSS/Javascript abilities... There are a few examples on the page about customising the result list on the Recoll web site.
This is an arbitrary HTML string where the following printf-like % substitutions will be performed:
%A. Abstract
%D. Date
%I. Icon image name. This is normally determined from the mime type. The associations are defined inside the mimeconf configuration file. If a thumbnail for the file is found at the standard Freedesktop location, this will be displayed instead.
%K. Keywords (if any)
%L. Precooked Preview and Edit links
%M. Mime type
%N. result Number inside the result page
%R. Relevance percentage
%S. Size information
%T. Title or Filename if not set.
%t. Title or Filename if not set.
%U. Url
In addition to the predefined values above, all strings like %(fieldname) will be replaced by the value of the field named fieldname for this document. Only stored fields can be accessed in this way, the value of indexed but not stored fields is not known at this point in the search process (see field configuration). There are currently very few fields stored by default, apart from the values above (only author and filename), so this feature will need some custom local configuration to be useful. For example, you could look at the fields for the document types of interest (use the right-click menu inside the preview window), and add what you want to the list of stored fields. A candidate example would be the recipient field which is generated by the message filters.
The default value for the paragraph format string is:
<img src="%I" align="left">%R %S %L <b>%T</b><br>
%M %D <i>%U</i> %i<br>
%A %K
You may, for example, try the following for a more web-like experience:
<u><b><a href="P%N">%T</a></b></u><br>
%A<font color=#008000>%U - %S</font> - %L
Or the clean looking:
<img src="%I" align="left">%L <font color="#900000">%R</font>
<b>%T</b><br>%S
<font color="#808080"><i>%U</i></font>
<table bgcolor="#e0e0e0">
<tr><td><div>%A</div></td></tr>
</table>%K
Note that the P%N link in the above paragraph makes the title a preview link.
These samples, and some others are on the web site, with pictures to show how they look.
It is also possible to define the value of the snippet separator inside the abstract section.
The Recoll KIO slave allows performing a Recoll search by entering an appropriate URL in a KDE open dialog, or with an HTML-based interface displayed in Konqueror.
The HTML-based interface is similar to the Qt-based interface, but slightly less powerful for now. Its advantage is that you can perform your search while staying fully within the KDE framework: drag and drop from the result list works normally and you have your normal choice of applications for opening files.
The alternative interface uses a directory view of search results. Due to limitations in the current KIO slave interface, it is currently not obviously useful (to me).
The interface is described in more detail inside a help file which you can access by entering recoll:/ inside the konqueror URL line (this works only if the recoll KIO slave has been previously installed).
The instructions for building this module are located in the source tree. See: kde/kio/recoll/00README.txt. Some Linux distributions do package the kio-recoll module, so check before diving into the build process, maybe it's already out there ready for one-click installation.
As a sample application, the Recoll KIO slave could allow preparing a set of HTML documents (for example a manual) so that they become their own search interface inside konqueror.
This can be done by either explicitly inserting <a href="recoll:/..."> links around some document areas, or automatically by adding a very small javascript program to the documents, like the following example, which would initiate a search by double-clicking any term:
<script language="JavaScript">
function recollsearch() {
var t = document.getSelection();
window.location.href = 'recoll://search/query?qtp=a&p=0&q=' +
encodeURIComponent(t);
}
</script>
....
<body ondblclick="recollsearch()">
There are several ways ndex from stale data,
The result list presentation can be exhaustively customized by adjusting two elements:
The paragraph format
Html code inside the header section
These can be edited from the Result list tab of the Query configuration.
Newer versions of Recoll (from 1.17) use a WebKit HTML object by default (this may be disabled at build time), and total customisation is possible with full support for CSS and Javascript. Conversely, there are limits to what you can do with the older Qt QTextBrowser, but still, it is possible to decide what data each result will contain, and how it will be displayed.
No more detail will be given about the header part (only useful with the WebKit build), if there are restrictions to what you can do, they are beyond this author's HTML/CSS/Javascript abilities... There are a few examples on the page about customising the result list on the Recoll web site.
This is an arbitrary HTML string where the following printf-like % substitutions will be performed:
%A. Abstract
%D. Date
%I. Icon image name. This is normally determined from the mime type. The associations are defined inside the mimeconf configuration file. If a thumbnail for the file is found at the standard Freedesktop location, this will be displayed instead.
%K. Keywords (if any)
%L. Precooked Preview and Edit links
%M. Mime type
%N. result Number inside the result page
%R. Relevance percentage
%S. Size information
%T. Title or Filename if not set.
%t. Title or Filename if not set.
%U. Url
In addition to the predefined values above, all strings like %(fieldname) will be replaced by the value of the field named fieldname for this document. Only stored fields can be accessed in this way, the value of indexed but not stored fields is not known at this point in the search process (see field configuration). There are currently very few fields stored by default, apart from the values above (only author and filename), so this feature will need some custom local configuration to be useful. For example, you could look at the fields for the document types of interest (use the right-click menu inside the preview window), and add what you want to the list of stored fields. A candidate example would be the recipient field which is generated by the message filters.
The default value for the paragraph format string is:
<img src="%I" align="left">%R %S %L <b>%T</b><br>
%M %D <i>%U</i> %i<br>
%A %K
You may, for example, try the following for a more web-like experience:
<u><b><a href="P%N">%T</a></b></u><br>
%A<font color=#008000>%U - %S</font> - %L
Or the clean looking:
<img src="%I" align="left">%L <font color="#900000">%R</font>
<b>%T</b><br>%S
<font color="#808080"><i>%U</i></font>
<table bgcolor="#e0e0e0">
<tr><td><div>%A</div></td></tr>
</table>%K
Note that the P%N link in the above paragraph makes the title a preview link.
These samples, and some others are on the web site, with pictures to show how they look.
It is also possible to define the value of the snippet separator inside the abstract section.
The Recoll KIO slave allows performing a Recoll search by entering an appropriate URL in a KDE open dialog, or with an HTML-based interface displayed in Konqueror.
The HTML-based interface is similar to the Qt-based interface, but slightly less powerful for now. Its advantage is that you can perform your search while staying fully within the KDE framework: drag and drop from the result list works normally and you have your normal choice of applications for opening files.
The alternative interface uses a directory view of search results. Due to limitations in the current KIO slave interface, it is currently not obviously useful (to me).
The interface is described in more detail inside a help file which you can access by entering recoll:/ inside the konqueror URL line (this works only if the recoll KIO slave has been previously installed).
The instructions for building this module are located in the source tree. See: kde/kio/recoll/00README.txt. Some Linux distributions do package the kio-recoll module, so check before diving into the build process, maybe it's already out there ready for one-click installation.
As a sample application, the Recoll KIO slave could allow preparing a set of HTML documents (for example a manual) so that they become their own search interface inside konqueror.
This can be done by either explicitly inserting <a href="recoll:/..."> links around some document areas, or automatically by adding a very small javascript program to the documents, like the following example, which would initiate a search by double-clicking any term:
<script language="JavaScript">
function recollsearch() {
var t = document.getSelection();
window.location.href = 'recoll://search/query?qtp=a&p=0&q=' +
encodeURIComponent(t);
}
</script>
....
<body ondblclick="recollsearch()">
There are several ways ndex from stale data,
The result list presentation can be exhaustively customized by adjusting two elements:
The paragraph format
Html code inside the header section
These can be edited from the Result list tab of the Query configuration.
Newer versions of Recoll (from 1.17) use a WebKit HTML object by default (this may be disabled at build time), and total customisation is possible with full support for CSS and Javascript. Conversely, there are limits to what you can do with the older Qt QTextBrowser, but still, it is possible to decide what data each result will contain, and how it will be displayed.
No more detail will be given about the header part (only useful with the WebKit build), if there are restrictions to what you can do, they are beyond this author's HTML/CSS/Javascript abilities... There are a few examples on the page about customising the result list on the Recoll web site.
This is an arbitrary HTML string where the following printf-like % substitutions will be performed:
%A. Abstract
%D. Date
%I. Icon image name. This is normally determined from the mime type. The associations are defined inside the mimeconf configuration file. If a thumbnail for the file is found at the standard Freedesktop location, this will be displayed instead.
%K. Keywords (if any)
%L. Precooked Preview and Edit links
%M. Mime type
%N. result Number inside the result page
%R. Relevance percentage
%S. Size information
%T. Title or Filename if not set.
%t. Title or Filename if not set.
%U. Url
In addition to the predefined values above, all strings like %(fieldname) will be replaced by the value of the field named fieldname for this document. Only stored fields can be accessed in this way, the value of indexed but not stored fields is not known at this point in the search process (see field configuration). There are currently very few fields stored by default, apart from the values above (only author and filename), so this feature will need some custom local configuration to be useful. For example, you could look at the fields for the document types of interest (use the right-click menu inside the preview window), and add what you want to the list of stored fields. A candidate example would be the recipient field which is generated by the message filters.
The default value for the paragraph format string is:
<img src="%I" align="left">%R %S %L <b>%T</b><br>
%M %D <i>%U</i> %i<br>
%A %K
You may, for example, try the following for a more web-like experience:
<u><b><a href="P%N">%T</a></b></u><br>
%A<font color=#008000>%U - %S</font> - %L
Or the clean looking:
<img src="%I" align="left">%L <font color="#900000">%R</font>
<b>%T</b><br>%S
<font color="#808080"><i>%U</i></font>
<table bgcolor="#e0e0e0">
<tr><td><div>%A</div></td></tr>
</table>%K
Note that the P%N link in the above paragraph makes the title a preview link.
These samples, and some others are on the web site, with pictures to show how they look.
It is also possible to define the value of the snippet separator inside the abstract section.
The Recoll KIO slave allows performing a Recoll search by entering an appropriate URL in a KDE open dialog, or with an HTML-based interface displayed in Konqueror.
The HTML-based interface is similar to the Qt-based interface, but slightly less powerful for now. Its advantage is that you can perform your search while staying fully within the KDE framework: drag and drop from the result list works normally and you have your normal choice of applications for opening files.
The alternative interface uses a directory view of search results. Due to limitations in the current KIO slave interface, it is currently not obviously useful (to me).
The interface is described in more detail inside a help file which you can access by entering recoll:/ inside the konqueror URL line (this works only if the recoll KIO slave has been previously installed).
The instructions for building this module are located in the source tree. See: kde/kio/recoll/00README.txt. Some Linux distributions do package the kio-recoll module, so check before diving into the build process, maybe it's already out there ready for one-click installation.
As a sample application, the Recoll KIO slave could allow preparing a set of HTML documents (for example a manual) so that they become their own search interface inside konqueror.
This can be done by either explicitly inserting <a href="recoll:/..."> links around some document areas, or automatically by adding a very small javascript program to the documents, like the following example, which would initiate a search by double-clicking any term:
<script language="JavaScript">
function recollsearch() {
var t = document.getSelection();
window.location.href = 'recoll://search/query?qtp=a&p=0&q=' +
encodeURIComponent(t);
}
</script>
....
<body ondblclick="recollsearch()">
There are several ways ndex from stale data,
The result list presentation can be exhaustively customized by adjusting two elements:
The paragraph format
Html code inside the header section
These can be edited from the Result list tab of the Query configuration.
Newer versions of Recoll (from 1.17) use a WebKit HTML object by default (this may be disabled at build time), and total customisation is possible with full support for CSS and Javascript. Conversely, there are limits to what you can do with the older Qt QTextBrowser, but still, it is possible to decide what data each result will contain, and how it will be displayed.
No more detail will be given about the header part (only useful with the WebKit build), if there are restrictions to what you can do, they are beyond this author's HTML/CSS/Javascript abilities... There are a few examples on the page about customising the result list on the Recoll web site.
This is an arbitrary HTML string where the following printf-like % substitutions will be performed:
%A. Abstract
%D. Date
%I. Icon image name. This is normally determined from the mime type. The associations are defined inside the mimeconf configuration file. If a thumbnail for the file is found at the standard Freedesktop location, this will be displayed instead.
%K. Keywords (if any)
%L. Precooked Preview and Edit links
%M. Mime type
%N. result Number inside the result page
%R. Relevance percentage
%S. Size information
%T. Title or Filename if not set.
%t. Title or Filename if not set.
%U. Url
In addition to the predefined values above, all strings like %(fieldname) will be replaced by the value of the field named fieldname for this document. Only stored fields can be accessed in this way, the value of indexed but not stored fields is not known at this point in the search process (see field configuration). There are currently very few fields stored by default, apart from the values above (only author and filename), so this feature will need some custom local configuration to be useful. For example, you could look at the fields for the document types of interest (use the right-click menu inside the preview window), and add what you want to the list of stored fields. A candidate example would be the recipient field which is generated by the message filters.
The default value for the paragraph format string is:
<img src="%I" align="left">%R %S %L <b>%T</b><br>
%M %D <i>%U</i> %i<br>
%A %K
You may, for example, try the following for a more web-like experience:
<u><b><a href="P%N">%T</a></b></u><br>
%A<font color=#008000>%U - %S</font> - %L
Or the clean looking:
<img src="%I" align="left">%L <font color="#900000">%R</font>
<b>%T</b><br>%S
<font color="#808080"><i>%U</i></font>
<table bgcolor="#e0e0e0">
<tr><td><div>%A</div></td></tr>
</table>%K
Note that the P%N link in the above paragraph makes the title a preview link.
These samples, and some others are on the web site, with pictures to show how they look.
It is also possible to define the value of the snippet separator inside the abstract section.
The Recoll KIO slave allows performing a Recoll search by entering an appropriate URL in a KDE open dialog, or with an HTML-based interface displayed in Konqueror.
The HTML-based interface is similar to the Qt-based interface, but slightly less powerful for now. Its advantage is that you can perform your search while staying fully within the KDE framework: drag and drop from the result list works normally and you have your normal choice of applications for opening files.
The alternative interface uses a directory view of search results. Due to limitations in the current KIO slave interface, it is currently not obviously useful (to me).
The interface is described in more detail inside a help file which you can access by entering recoll:/ inside the konqueror URL line (this works only if the recoll KIO slave has been previously installed).
The instructions for building this module are located in the source tree. See: kde/kio/recoll/00README.txt. Some Linux distributions do package the kio-recoll module, so check before diving into the build process, maybe it's already out there ready for one-click installation.
As a sample application, the Recoll KIO slave could allow preparing a set of HTML documents (for example a manual) so that they become their own search interface inside konqueror.
This can be done by either explicitly inserting <a href="recoll:/..."> links around some document areas, or automatically by adding a very small javascript program to the documents, like the following example, which would initiate a search by double-clicking any term:
<script language="JavaScript">
function recollsearch() {
var t = document.getSelection();
window.location.href = 'recoll://search/query?qtp=a&p=0&q=' +
encodeURIComponent(t);
}
</script>
....
<body ondblclick="recollsearch()">
There are several ways ndex from stale data,
The result list presentation can be exhaustively customized by adjusting two elements:
The paragraph format
Html code inside the header section
These can be edited from the Result list tab of the Query configuration.
Newer versions of Recoll (from 1.17) use a WebKit HTML object by default (this may be disabled at build time), and total customisation is possible with full support for CSS and Javascript. Conversely, there are limits to what you can do with the older Qt QTextBrowser, but still, it is possible to decide what data each result will contain, and how it will be displayed.
No more detail will be given about the header part (only useful with the WebKit build), if there are restrictions to what you can do, they are beyond this author's HTML/CSS/Javascript abilities... There are a few examples on the page about customising the result list on the Recoll web site.
This is an arbitrary HTML string where the following printf-like % substitutions will be performed:
%A. Abstract
%D. Date
%I. Icon image name. This is normally determined from the mime type. The associations are defined inside the mimeconf configuration file. If a thumbnail for the file is found at the standard Freedesktop location, this will be displayed instead.
%K. Keywords (if any)
%L. Precooked Preview and Edit links
%M. Mime type
%N. result Number inside the result page
%R. Relevance percentage
%S. Size information
%T. Title or Filename if not set.
%t. Title or Filename if not set.
%U. Url
In addition to the predefined values above, all strings like %(fieldname) will be replaced by the value of the field named fieldname for this document. Only stored fields can be accessed in this way, the value of indexed but not stored fields is not known at this point in the search process (see field configuration). There are currently very few fields stored by default, apart from the values above (only author and filename), so this feature will need some custom local configuration to be useful. For example, you could look at the fields for the document types of interest (use the right-click menu inside the preview window), and add what you want to the list of stored fields. A candidate example would be the recipient field which is generated by the message filters.
The default value for the paragraph format string is:
<img src="%I" align="left">%R %S %L <b>%T</b><br>
%M %D <i>%U</i> %i<br>
%A %K
You may, for example, try the following for a more web-like experience:
<u><b><a href="P%N">%T</a></b></u><br>
%A<font color=#008000>%U - %S</font> - %L
Or the clean looking:
<img src="%I" align="left">%L <font color="#900000">%R</font>
<b>%T</b><br>%S
<font color="#808080"><i>%U</i></font>
<table bgcolor="#e0e0e0">
<tr><td><div>%A</div></td></tr>
</table>%K
Note that the P%N link in the above paragraph makes the title a preview link.
These samples, and some others are on the web site, with pictures to show how they look.
It is also possible to define the value of the snippet separator inside the abstract section.
The Recoll KIO slave allows performing a Recoll search by entering an appropriate URL in a KDE open dialog, or with an HTML-based interface displayed in Konqueror.
The HTML-based interface is similar to the Qt-based interface, but slightly less powerful for now. Its advantage is that you can perform your search while staying fully within the KDE framework: drag and drop from the result list works normally and you have your normal choice of applications for opening files.
The alternative interface uses a directory view of search results. Due to limitations in the current KIO slave interface, it is currently not obviously useful (to me).
The interface is described in more detail inside a help file which you can access by entering recoll:/ inside the konqueror URL line (this works only if the recoll KIO slave has been previously installed).
The instructions for building this module are located in the source tree. See: kde/kio/recoll/00README.txt. Some Linux distributions do package the kio-recoll module, so check before diving into the build process, maybe it's already out there ready for one-click installation.
As a sample application, the Recoll KIO slave could allow preparing a set of HTML documents (for example a manual) so that they become their own search interface inside konqueror.
This can be done by either explicitly inserting <a href="recoll:/..."> links around some document areas, or automatically by adding a very small javascript program to the documents, like the following example, which would initiate a search by double-clicking any term:
<script language="JavaScript">
function recollsearch() {
var t = document.getSelection();
window.location.href = 'recoll://search/query?qtp=a&p=0&q=' +
encodeURIComponent(t);
}
</script>
....
<body ondblclick="recollsearch()">
There are several ways ndex from stale data,
The result list presentation can be exhaustively customized by adjusting two elements:
The paragraph format
Html code inside the header section
These can be edited from the Result list tab of the Query configuration.
Newer versions of Recoll (from 1.17) use a WebKit HTML object by default (this may be disabled at build time), and total customisation is possible with full support for CSS and Javascript. Conversely, there are limits to what you can do with the older Qt QTextBrowser, but still, it is possible to decide what data each result will contain, and how it will be displayed.
No more detail will be given about the header part (only useful with the WebKit build), if there are restrictions to what you can do, they are beyond this author's HTML/CSS/Javascript abilities... There are a few examples on the page about customising the result list on the Recoll web site.
This is an arbitrary HTML string where the following printf-like % substitutions will be performed:
%A. Abstract
%D. Date
%I. Icon image name. This is normally determined from the mime type. The associations are defined inside the mimeconf configuration file. If a thumbnail for the file is found at the standard Freedesktop location, this will be displayed instead.
%K. Keywords (if any)
%L. Precooked Preview and Edit links
%M. Mime type
%N. result Number inside the result page
%R. Relevance percentage
%S. Size information
%T. Title or Filename if not set.
%t. Title or Filename if not set.
%U. Url
In addition to the predefined values above, all strings like %(fieldname) will be replaced by the value of the field named fieldname for this document. Only stored fields can be accessed in this way, the value of indexed but not stored fields is not known at this point in the search process (see field configuration). There are currently very few fields stored by default, apart from the values above (only author and filename), so this feature will need some custom local configuration to be useful. For example, you could look at the fields for the document types of interest (use the right-click menu inside the preview window), and add what you want to the list of stored fields. A candidate example would be the recipient field which is generated by the message filters.
The default value for the paragraph format string is:
<img src="%I" align="left">%R %S %L <b>%T</b><br>
%M %D <i>%U</i> %i<br>
%A %K
You may, for example, try the following for a more web-like experience:
<u><b><a href="P%N">%T</a></b></u><br>
%A<font color=#008000>%U - %S</font> - %L
Or the clean looking:
<img src="%I" align="left">%L <font color="#900000">%R</font>
<b>%T</b><br>%S
<font color="#808080"><i>%U</i></font>
<table bgcolor="#e0e0e0">
<tr><td><div>%A</div></td></tr>
</table>%K
Note that the P%N link in the above paragraph makes the title a preview link.
These samples, and some others are on the web site, with pictures to show how they look.
It is also possible to define the value of the snippet separator inside the abstract section.
The Recoll KIO slave allows performing a Recoll search by entering an appropriate URL in a KDE open dialog, or with an HTML-based interface displayed in Konqueror.
The HTML-based interface is similar to the Qt-based interface, but slightly less powerful for now. Its advantage is that you can perform your search while staying fully within the KDE framework: drag and drop from the result list works normally and you have your normal choice of applications for opening files.
The alternative interface uses a directory view of search results. Due to limitations in the current KIO slave interface, it is currently not obviously useful (to me).
The interface is described in more detail inside a help file which you can access by entering recoll:/ inside the konqueror URL line (this works only if the recoll KIO slave has been previously installed).
The instructions for building this module are located in the source tree. See: kde/kio/recoll/00README.txt. Some Linux distributions do package the kio-recoll module, so check before diving into the build process, maybe it's already out there ready for one-click installation.
As a sample application, the Recoll KIO slave could allow preparing a set of HTML documents (for example a manual) so that they become their own search interface inside konqueror.
This can be done by either explicitly inserting <a href="recoll:/..."> links around some document areas, or automatically by adding a very small javascript program to the documents, like the following example, which would initiate a search by double-clicking any term:
<script language="JavaScript">
function recollsearch() {
var t = document.getSelection();
window.location.href = 'recoll://search/query?qtp=a&p=0&q=' +
encodeURIComponent(t);
}
</script>
....
<body ondblclick="recollsearch()">
There are several ways ndex from stale data,
The result list presentation can be exhaustively customized by adjusting two elements:
The paragraph format
Html code inside the header section
These can be edited from the Result list tab of the Query configuration.
Newer versions of Recoll (from 1.17) use a WebKit HTML object by default (this may be disabled at build time), and total customisation is possible with full support for CSS and Javascript. Conversely, there are limits to what you can do with the older Qt QTextBrowser, but still, it is possible to decide what data each result will contain, and how it will be displayed.
No more detail will be given about the header part (only useful with the WebKit build), if there are restrictions to what you can do, they are beyond this author's HTML/CSS/Javascript abilities... There are a few examples on the page about customising the result list on the Recoll web site.
This is an arbitrary HTML string where the following printf-like % substitutions will be performed:
%A. Abstract
%D. Date
%I. Icon image name. This is normally determined from the mime type. The associations are defined inside the mimeconf configuration file. If a thumbnail for the file is found at the standard Freedesktop location, this will be displayed instead.
%K. Keywords (if any)
%L. Precooked Preview and Edit links
%M. Mime type
%N. result Number inside the result page
%R. Relevance percentage
%S. Size information
%T. Title or Filename if not set.
%t. Title or Filename if not set.
%U. Url
In addition to the predefined values above, all strings like %(fieldname) will be replaced by the value of the field named fieldname for this document. Only stored fields can be accessed in this way, the value of indexed but not stored fields is not known at this point in the search process (see field configuration). There are currently very few fields stored by default, apart from the values above (only author and filename), so this feature will need some custom local configuration to be useful. For example, you could look at the fields for the document types of interest (use the right-click menu inside the preview window), and add what you want to the list of stored fields. A candidate example would be the recipient field which is generated by the message filters.
The default value for the paragraph format string is:
<img src="%I" align="left">%R %S %L <b>%T</b><br>
%M %D <i>%U</i> %i<br>
%A %K
You may, for example, try the following for a more web-like experience:
<u><b><a href="P%N">%T</a></b></u><br>
%A<font color=#008000>%U - %S</font> - %L
Or the clean looking:
<img src="%I" align="left">%L <font color="#900000">%R</font>
<b>%T</b><br>%S
<font color="#808080"><i>%U</i></font>
<table bgcolor="#e0e0e0">
<tr><td><div>%A</div></td></tr>
</table>%K
Note that the P%N link in the above paragraph makes the title a preview link.
These samples, and some others are on the web site, with pictures to show how they look.
It is also possible to define the value of the snippet separator inside the abstract section.
The Recoll KIO slave allows performing a Recoll search by entering an appropriate URL in a KDE open dialog, or with an HTML-based interface displayed in Konqueror.
The HTML-based interface is similar to the Qt-based interface, but slightly less powerful for now. Its advantage is that you can perform your search while staying fully within the KDE framework: drag and drop from the result list works normally and you have your normal choice of applications for opening files.
The alternative interface uses a directory view of search results. Due to limitations in the current KIO slave interface, it is currently not obviously useful (to me).
The interface is described in more detail inside a help file which you can access by entering recoll:/ inside the konqueror URL line (this works only if the recoll KIO slave has been previously installed).
The instructions for building this module are located in the source tree. See: kde/kio/recoll/00README.txt. Some Linux distributions do package the kio-recoll module, so check before diving into the build process, maybe it's already out there ready for one-click installation.
As a sample application, the Recoll KIO slave could allow preparing a set of HTML documents (for example a manual) so that they become their own search interface inside konqueror.
This can be done by either explicitly inserting <a href="recoll:/..."> links around some document areas, or automatically by adding a very small javascript program to the documents, like the following example, which would initiate a search by double-clicking any term:
<script language="JavaScript">
function recollsearch() {
var t = document.getSelection();
window.location.href = 'recoll://search/query?qtp=a&p=0&q=' +
encodeURIComponent(t);
}
</script>
....
<body ondblclick="recollsearch()">
There are several ways ndex from stale data,
The result list presentation can be exhaustively customized by adjusting two elements:
The paragraph format
Html code inside the header section
These can be edited from the Result list tab of the Query configuration.
Newer versions of Recoll (from 1.17) use a WebKit HTML object by default (this may be disabled at build time), and total customisation is possible with full support for CSS and Javascript. Conversely, there are limits to what you can do with the older Qt QTextBrowser, but still, it is possible to decide what data each result will contain, and how it will be displayed.
No more detail will be given about the header part (only useful with the WebKit build), if there are restrictions to what you can do, they are beyond this author's HTML/CSS/Javascript abilities... There are a few examples on the page about customising the result list on the Recoll web site.
This is an arbitrary HTML string where the following printf-like % substitutions will be performed:
%A. Abstract
%D. Date
%I. Icon image name. This is normally determined from the mime type. The associations are defined inside the mimeconf configuration file. If a thumbnail for the file is found at the standard Freedesktop location, this will be displayed instead.
%K. Keywords (if any)
%L. Precooked Preview and Edit links
%M. Mime type
%N. result Number inside the result page
%R. Relevance percentage
%S. Size information
%T. Title or Filename if not set.
%t. Title or Filename if not set.
%U. Url
In addition to the predefined values above, all strings like %(fieldname) will be replaced by the value of the field named fieldname for this document. Only stored fields can be accessed in this way, the value of indexed but not stored fields is not known at this point in the search process (see field configuration). There are currently very few fields stored by default, apart from the values above (only author and filename), so this feature will need some custom local configuration to be useful. For example, you could look at the fields for the document types of interest (use the right-click menu inside the preview window), and add what you want to the list of stored fields. A candidate example would be the recipient field which is generated by the message filters.
The default value for the paragraph format string is:
<img src="%I" align="left">%R %S %L <b>%T</b><br>
%M %D <i>%U</i> %i<br>
%A %K
You may, for example, try the following for a more web-like experience:
<u><b><a href="P%N">%T</a></b></u><br>
%A<font color=#008000>%U - %S</font> - %L
Or the clean looking:
<img src="%I" align="left">%L <font color="#900000">%R</font>
<b>%T</b><br>%S
<font color="#808080"><i>%U</i></font>
<table bgcolor="#e0e0e0">
<tr><td><div>%A</div></td></tr>
</table>%K
Note that the P%N link in the above paragraph makes the title a preview link.
These samples, and some others are on the web site, with pictures to show how they look.
It is also possible to define the value of the snippet separator inside the abstract section.
The Recoll KIO slave allows performing a Recoll search by entering an appropriate URL in a KDE open dialog, or with an HTML-based interface displayed in Konqueror.
The HTML-based interface is similar to the Qt-based interface, but slightly less powerful for now. Its advantage is that you can perform your search while staying fully within the KDE framework: drag and drop from the result list works normally and you have your normal choice of applications for opening files.
The alternative interface uses a directory view of search results. Due to limitations in the current KIO slave interface, it is currently not obviously useful (to me).
The interface is described in more detail inside a help file which you can access by entering recoll:/ inside the konqueror URL line (this works only if the recoll KIO slave has been previously installed).
The instructions for building this module are located in the source tree. See: kde/kio/recoll/00README.txt. Some Linux distributions do package the kio-recoll module, so check before diving into the build process, maybe it's already out there ready for one-click installation.
As a sample application, the Recoll KIO slave could allow preparing a set of HTML documents (for example a manual) so that they become their own search interface inside konqueror.
This can be done by either explicitly inserting <a href="recoll:/..."> links around some document areas, or automatically by adding a very small javascript program to the documents, like the following example, which would initiate a search by double-clicking any term:
<script language="JavaScript">
function recollsearch() {
var t = document.getSelection();
window.location.href = 'recoll://search/query?qtp=a&p=0&q=' +
encodeURIComponent(t);
}
</script>
....
<body ondblclick="recollsearch()">
There are several ways ndex from stale data,
The result list presentation can be exhaustively customized by adjusting two elements:
The paragraph format
Html code inside the header section
These can be edited from the Result list tab of the Query configuration.
Newer versions of Recoll (from 1.17) use a WebKit HTML object by default (this may be disabled at build time), and total customisation is possible with full support for CSS and Javascript. Conversely, there are limits to what you can do with the older Qt QTextBrowser, but still, it is possible to decide what data each result will contain, and how it will be displayed.
No more detail will be given about the header part (only useful with the WebKit build), if there are restrictions to what you can do, they are beyond this author's HTML/CSS/Javascript abilities... There are a few examples on the page about customising the result list on the Recoll web site.
This is an arbitrary HTML string where the following printf-like % substitutions will be performed:
%A. Abstract
%D. Date
%I. Icon image name. This is normally determined from the mime type. The associations are defined inside the mimeconf configuration file. If a thumbnail for the file is found at the standard Freedesktop location, this will be displayed instead.
%K. Keywords (if any)
%L. Precooked Preview and Edit links
%M. Mime type
%N. result Number inside the result page
%R. Relevance percentage
%S. Size information
%T. Title or Filename if not set.
%t. Title or Filename if not set.
%U. Url
In addition to the predefined values above, all strings like %(fieldname) will be replaced by the value of the field named fieldname for this document. Only stored fields can be accessed in this way, the value of indexed but not stored fields is not known at this point in the search process (see field configuration). There are currently very few fields stored by default, apart from the values above (only author and filename), so this feature will need some custom local configuration to be useful. For example, you could look at the fields for the document types of interest (use the right-click menu inside the preview window), and add what you want to the list of stored fields. A candidate example would be the recipient field which is generated by the message filters.
The default value for the paragraph format string is:
<img src="%I" align="left">%R %S %L <b>%T</b><br>
%M %D <i>%U</i> %i<br>
%A %K
You may, for example, try the following for a more web-like experience:
<u><b><a href="P%N">%T</a></b></u><br>
%A<font color=#008000>%U - %S</font> - %L
Or the clean looking:
<img src="%I" align="left">%L <font color="#900000">%R</font>
<b>%T</b><br>%S
<font color="#808080"><i>%U</i></font>
<table bgcolor="#e0e0e0">
<tr><td><div>%A</div></td></tr>
</table>%K
Note that the P%N link in the above paragraph makes the title a preview link.
These samples, and some others are on the web site, with pictures to show how they look.
It is also possible to define the value of the snippet separator inside the abstract section.
The Recoll KIO slave allows performing a Recoll search by entering an appropriate URL in a KDE open dialog, or with an HTML-based interface displayed in Konqueror.
The HTML-based interface is similar to the Qt-based interface, but slightly less powerful for now. Its advantage is that you can perform your search while staying fully within the KDE framework: drag and drop from the result list works normally and you have your normal choice of applications for opening files.
The alternative interface uses a directory view of search results. Due to limitations in the current KIO slave interface, it is currently not obviously useful (to me).
The interface is described in more detail inside a help file which you can access by entering recoll:/ inside the konqueror URL line (this works only if the recoll KIO slave has been previously installed).
The instructions for building this module are located in the source tree. See: kde/kio/recoll/00README.txt. Some Linux distributions do package the kio-recoll module, so check before diving into the build process, maybe it's already out there ready for one-click installation.
As a sample application, the Recoll KIO slave could allow preparing a set of HTML documents (for example a manual) so that they become their own search interface inside konqueror.
This can be done by either explicitly inserting <a href="recoll:/..."> links around some document areas, or automatically by adding a very small javascript program to the documents, like the following example, which would initiate a search by double-clicking any term:
<script language="JavaScript">
function recollsearch() {
var t = document.getSelection();
window.location.href = 'recoll://search/query?qtp=a&p=0&q=' +
encodeURIComponent(t);
}
</script>
....
<body ondblclick="recollsearch()">
There are several ways ndex from stale data,
The result list presentation can be exhaustively customized by adjusting two elements:
The paragraph format
Html code inside the header section
These can be edited from the Result list tab of the Query configuration.
Newer versions of Recoll (from 1.17) use a WebKit HTML object by default (this may be disabled at build time), and total customisation is possible with full support for CSS and Javascript. Conversely, there are limits to what you can do with the older Qt QTextBrowser, but still, it is possible to decide what data each result will contain, and how it will be displayed.
No more detail will be given about the header part (only useful with the WebKit build), if there are restrictions to what you can do, they are beyond this author's HTML/CSS/Javascript abilities... There are a few examples on the page about customising the result list on the Recoll web site.
This is an arbitrary HTML string where the following printf-like % substitutions will be performed:
%A. Abstract
%D. Date
%I. Icon image name. This is normally determined from the mime type. The associations are defined inside the mimeconf configuration file. If a thumbnail for the file is found at the standard Freedesktop location, this will be displayed instead.
%K. Keywords (if any)
%L. Precooked Preview and Edit links
%M. Mime type
%N. result Number inside the result page
%R. Relevance percentage
%S. Size information
%T. Title or Filename if not set.
%t. Title or Filename if not set.
%U. Url
In addition to the predefined values above, all strings like %(fieldname) will be replaced by the value of the field named fieldname for this document. Only stored fields can be accessed in this way, the value of indexed but not stored fields is not known at this point in the search process (see field configuration). There are currently very few fields stored by default, apart from the values above (only author and filename), so this feature will need some custom local configuration to be useful. For example, you could look at the fields for the document types of interest (use the right-click menu inside the preview window), and add what you want to the list of stored fields. A candidate example would be the recipient field which is generated by the message filters.
The default value for the paragraph format string is:
<img src="%I" align="left">%R %S %L <b>%T</b><br>
%M %D <i>%U</i> %i<br>
%A %K
You may, for example, try the following for a more web-like experience:
<u><b><a href="P%N">%T</a></b></u><br>
%A<font color=#008000>%U - %S</font> - %L
Or the clean looking:
<img src="%I" align="left">%L <font color="#900000">%R</font>
<b>%T</b><br>%S
<font color="#808080"><i>%U</i></font>
<table bgcolor="#e0e0e0">
<tr><td><div>%A</div></td></tr>
</table>%K
Note that the P%N link in the above paragraph makes the title a preview link.
These samples, and some others are on the web site, with pictures to show how they look.
It is also possible to define the value of the snippet separator inside the abstract section.
The Recoll KIO slave allows performing a Recoll search by entering an appropriate URL in a KDE open dialog, or with an HTML-based interface displayed in Konqueror.
The HTML-based interface is similar to the Qt-based interface, but slightly less powerful for now. Its advantage is that you can perform your search while staying fully within the KDE framework: drag and drop from the result list works normally and you have your normal choice of applications for opening files.
The alternative interface uses a directory view of search results. Due to limitations in the current KIO slave interface, it is currently not obviously useful (to me).
The interface is described in more detail inside a help file which you can access by entering recoll:/ inside the konqueror URL line (this works only if the recoll KIO slave has been previously installed).
The instructions for building this module are located in the source tree. See: kde/kio/recoll/00README.txt. Some Linux distributions do package the kio-recoll module, so check before diving into the build process, maybe it's already out there ready for one-click installation.
As a sample application, the Recoll KIO slave could allow preparing a set of HTML documents (for example a manual) so that they become their own search interface inside konqueror.
This can be done by either explicitly inserting <a href="recoll:/..."> links around some document areas, or automatically by adding a very small javascript program to the documents, like the following example, which would initiate a search by double-clicking any term:
<script language="JavaScript">
function recollsearch() {
var t = document.getSelection();
window.location.href = 'recoll://search/query?qtp=a&p=0&q=' +
encodeURIComponent(t);
}
</script>
....
<body ondblclick="recollsearch()">
There are several ways ndex from stale data,
The result list presentation can be exhaustively customized by adjusting two elements:
The paragraph format
Html code inside the header section
These can be edited from the Result list tab of the Query configuration.
Newer versions of Recoll (from 1.17) use a WebKit HTML object by default (this may be disabled at build time), and total customisation is possible with full support for CSS and Javascript. Conversely, there are limits to what you can do with the older Qt QTextBrowser, but still, it is possible to decide what data each result will contain, and how it will be displayed.
No more detail will be given about the header part (only useful with the WebKit build), if there are restrictions to what you can do, they are beyond this author's HTML/CSS/Javascript abilities... There are a few examples on the page about customising the result list on the Recoll web site.
This is an arbitrary HTML string where the following printf-like % substitutions will be performed:
%A. Abstract
%D. Date
%I. Icon image name. This is normally determined from the mime type. The associations are defined inside the mimeconf configuration file. If a thumbnail for the file is found at the standard Freedesktop location, this will be displayed instead.
%K. Keywords (if any)
%L. Precooked Preview and Edit links
%M. Mime type
%N. result Number inside the result page
%R. Relevance percentage
%S. Size information
%T. Title or Filename if not set.
%t. Title or Filename if not set.
%U. Url
In addition to the predefined values above, all strings like %(fieldname) will be replaced by the value of the field named fieldname for this document. Only stored fields can be accessed in this way, the value of indexed but not stored fields is not known at this point in the search process (see field configuration). There are currently very few fields stored by default, apart from the values above (only author and filename), so this feature will need some custom local configuration to be useful. For example, you could look at the fields for the document types of interest (use the right-click menu inside the preview window), and add what you want to the list of stored fields. A candidate example would be the recipient field which is generated by the message filters.
The default value for the paragraph format string is:
<img src="%I" align="left">%R %S %L <b>%T</b><br>
%M %D <i>%U</i> %i<br>
%A %K
You may, for example, try the following for a more web-like experience:
<u><b><a href="P%N">%T</a></b></u><br>
%A<font color=#008000>%U - %S</font> - %L
Or the clean looking:
<img src="%I" align="left">%L <font color="#900000">%R</font>
<b>%T</b><br>%S
<font color="#808080"><i>%U</i></font>
<table bgcolor="#e0e0e0">
<tr><td><div>%A</div></td></tr>
</table>%K
Note that the P%N link in the above paragraph makes the title a preview link.
These samples, and some others are on the web site, with pictures to show how they look.
It is also possible to define the value of the snippet separator inside the abstract section.
The Recoll KIO slave allows performing a Recoll search by entering an appropriate URL in a KDE open dialog, or with an HTML-based interface displayed in Konqueror.
The HTML-based interface is similar to the Qt-based interface, but slightly less powerful for now. Its advantage is that you can perform your search while staying fully within the KDE framework: drag and drop from the result list works normally and you have your normal choice of applications for opening files.
The alternative interface uses a directory view of search results. Due to limitations in the current KIO slave interface, it is currently not obviously useful (to me).
The interface is described in more detail inside a help file which you can access by entering recoll:/ inside the konqueror URL line (this works only if the recoll KIO slave has been previously installed).
The instructions for building this module are located in the source tree. See: kde/kio/recoll/00README.txt. Some Linux distributions do package the kio-recoll module, so check before diving into the build process, maybe it's already out there ready for one-click installation.
As a sample application, the Recoll KIO slave could allow preparing a set of HTML documents (for example a manual) so that they become their own search interface inside konqueror.
This can be done by either explicitly inserting <a href="recoll:/..."> links around some document areas, or automatically by adding a very small javascript program to the documents, like the following example, which would initiate a search by double-clicking any term:
<script language="JavaScript">
function recollsearch() {
var t = document.getSelection();
window.location.href = 'recoll://search/query?qtp=a&p=0&q=' +
encodeURIComponent(t);
}
</script>
....
<body ondblclick="recollsearch()">
There are several ways ndex from stale data,
The result list presentation can be exhaustively customized by adjusting two elements:
The paragraph format
Html code inside the header section
These can be edited from the Result list tab of the Query configuration.
Newer versions of Recoll (from 1.17) use a WebKit HTML object by default (this may be disabled at build time), and total customisation is possible with full support for CSS and Javascript. Conversely, there are limits to what you can do with the older Qt QTextBrowser, but still, it is possible to decide what data each result will contain, and how it will be displayed.
No more detail will be given about the header part (only useful with the WebKit build), if there are restrictions to what you can do, they are beyond this author's HTML/CSS/Javascript abilities... There are a few examples on the page about customising the result list on the Recoll web site.
This is an arbitrary HTML string where the following printf-like % substitutions will be performed:
%A. Abstract
%D. Date
%I. Icon image name. This is normally determined from the mime type. The associations are defined inside the mimeconf configuration file. If a thumbnail for the file is found at the standard Freedesktop location, this will be displayed instead.
%K. Keywords (if any)
%L. Precooked Preview and Edit links
%M. Mime type
%N. result Number inside the result page
%R. Relevance percentage
%S. Size information
%T. Title or Filename if not set.
%t. Title or Filename if not set.
%U. Url
In addition to the predefined values above, all strings like %(fieldname) will be replaced by the value of the field named fieldname for this document. Only stored fields can be accessed in this way, the value of indexed but not stored fields is not known at this point in the search process (see field configuration). There are currently very few fields stored by default, apart from the values above (only author and filename), so this feature will need some custom local configuration to be useful. For example, you could look at the fields for the document types of interest (use the right-click menu inside the preview window), and add what you want to the list of stored fields. A candidate example would be the recipient field which is generated by the message filters.
The default value for the paragraph format string is:
<img src="%I" align="left">%R %S %L <b>%T</b><br>
%M %D <i>%U</i> %i<br>
%A %K
You may, for example, try the following for a more web-like experience:
<u><b><a href="P%N">%T</a></b></u><br>
%A<font color=#008000>%U - %S</font> - %L
Or the clean looking:
<img src="%I" align="left">%L <font color="#900000">%R</font>
<b>%T</b><br>%S
<font color="#808080"><i>%U</i></font>
<table bgcolor="#e0e0e0">
<tr><td><div>%A</div></td></tr>
</table>%K
Note that the P%N link in the above paragraph makes the title a preview link.
These samples, and some others are on the web site, with pictures to show how they look.
It is also possible to define the value of the snippet separator inside the abstract section.