In Easy mode this is where you enter the words to search for. The Easy search will search for all the words entered here, so do not use "and" or "or" etc.
This is the Search Engine that will be used to start the Easy search. Take your pick. Sgt. Zondi will attempt to utilise the latest Sherlock search parameter files in your System folder, but some defaults are provided for systems that do not have Sherlock.
These are used to start and stop the search. On pressing Go! in an Easy search:
- The program looks in your internet search sites folder ( normally used by Sherlock ) to find the appropriate parameter/plugin file
- This file is analysed and the search engine query formatted
- The query is sent to the search engine
- The reply is analysed and links extracted
- These links provide the "seed" for the spider engine
- The spider starts and various items of progress info are displayed
- The spider gets the links in the link queue
- 1-8 channels may be opened at any time - adjusted by the spinner arrows next to the "Channel" block on the main screen
- The pages are analysed and matched against the query
- If a page matches the query, its links are added to the link queue in turn, else it is discarded
- Either the spider operation finishes by itself or is stopped by pressing the "STOP!" button
In Advanced mode there is no requirement to find the seed sites, so pressing Go! immediately starts the spider.
NOTE: Pressing the Stop! button causes no more pages to be searched, but pages currently being downloaded are allowed to finish.
It is thought by some that the worth of a site can be to an extent judged by the number of other sites that link to it. Sgt. Zondi keeps a record during a search of all the links found on good sites ( ie: ones that match your search ). At the end of a search you can press this button to see a summary of the links found, together with an indication of the number of times the links were found.
This merely clears any Advanced Query loaded previously into the search engine.
One of the biggest problems in searching is the sheer quantity of irrelevant links, especially to banner sites, counter sites etc. You may set up a Killfile to prevent the search engine wasting time on these.
Killfile entries do not need to be full URLs, but can be snippets of text. If the search engine finds a link URL containing any of the text in the Killfile, the link is ignored. A default Killfile is provided with Sgt. Zondi. The Killfile is universal to all queries - there is however a facility to exclude known sites in each advanced query ( see Section 4.3 ).
This shows the Query screen where you can set up an Advanced Query.
Once a search is completed you may save the list of URLs found in a text file.
Leave, stop, go to the beach.
Sgt. Zondi can run between 1 and 8 simultaneous search channels. You may adjust the number in use by clicking the arrow control next to the Channels box at any time.
NOTE: If you wish to do other things while the spider is active it is suggested that you set this to 1 or 2. Sgt. Zondi can really tie up your Mac if all 8 channels are running!
Sgt. Zondi shows various items of status information. At the bottom of the screen is a Commentary box giving textual feedback. When the spider is active the chasing arrows indicate this activity, and the channel lights show which channels are busy.
Last updated on 12-03-2000