Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!munnari.oz.au!comp.vuw.ac.nz!dsiramd!csnz!paul
From: paul@csnz.co.nz (Paul Gillingwater)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: BRS/Search
Message-ID: <276@csnz.co.nz>
Date: 5 Dec 89 20:58:30 GMT
Reply-To: paul@csnz.co.nz (Paul Gillingwater)
Organization: Computer Sciences of NZ Limited
Lines: 39

In article <1989Dec4.082749.17245@comp.vuw.ac.nz> moseley@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Philip Moseley) writes:
>Trying to find out if anyone has a simple way to store word
>files in the BRS text retrieval system. The files should
>not be text only. We want to preserve the formatting, (bold
>undeline etc). 

To solve this problem with other word processing packages, we
wrote a set of C programs which scan through the Word files
and enclose special codes (such as underlining, font changes,
indents, etc.) in skipbegin and skipend strings.  This allows
BRS to ignore these codes for searching and display purposes,
whilst retaining them unchanged in the database.  

In addition, some BRS load labels (e.g. ..TXT:) must be
inserted at appropriate places within the text to group
your documents into paragraphs (e.g. hard CR's) and also to
split off any document summary information.

An alternative approach involves storing the MS-WORD document
as a "compound" document.  This means storing a pointer to
the original Word file(s) which are retained.  The pointer
will contain the full path including network node and
security levels.  Optionally, portions of the Word document
can be automatically loaded into BRS for searching purposes.

When the document is retrieved for editing, Word will be 
invoked, and passed the full path for the original document.
When saved, the text can again be reloaded into BRS automatically.

The suggestions described above have not yet been implemented
in a commercial system, although prototypes do exist.
Implementation must await customer request.


-- 
Paul Gillingwater, Computer Sciences of New Zealand Limited
Domain: paul@csnz.co.nz  Bang: uunet!vuwcomp!dsiramd!csnz!paul
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