On Wed, May 19, 2004 at 12:25:04PM -0700, Carl Gaither wrote:
> I can do whatever is required to format each quotation that will 
> simplify the search.  Hence, to have a field for author, quote, and 
> citation is nothing more than some formatting for me to do with the 
> quotations. 

My suggestion is to export them into some type of structured format --
perhaps XML or into a database.

<xml>
    <record>
        <id>1232</id>
        <title>Title of quot</title>
        <author>author name</author>
        <quote>Text of the quote
                goes here
        </quote>
        <date>Some standard data format, if there is a date</date>
        <reference>Some reference</reference>
        <whatever>  and so on </whatever>
    </record>
    <record>
        [...]
    </record>
</xml>

Once your data is in that format it becomes easy to apply a template or
style sheet to format as you like, and it's easy for swish-e to index.
The idea is you store the data one place and then transform it into the
desired output at output time.

With so many quotes you might think about a database.  That would
provide other ways to access the data.  (All quotes in the last 30 days
by a given person, say).  Some or most of that can be done in swish, but
it's a bit more work since it's not a real database.

You could, for example, list all quotes sorted by author that have a
date in the last 30 days:

   swish-e -w not dkdkdkdk -s author -L date > $now_less_30_days


BTW -- there's a lot of free content management systems available, but
likely overkill for this -- more work to setup than needed.



> 
> Speaking of fields, I am most desirous of having a field where I can 
> place the copyright information for the source.  However, it will not be 
> true that every quotation will have information in the copyright field.  
> Thus, if there is information there I would like for it to be returned 
> and printed with the citation.

No problem.


> Also, as indicated, I would like for the search word(s) to be 
> highlighted in the returned quotation.

Yes, swish-e includes some code to do that.  Take a look at the swish-e
discussion list search on swish-e.org site.


> 
> Next, I have a second source for the quotations.  Quotations in this 
> form appear as:
> 
> <!-- FreeFind Listing --><p><b>
> Baumel, Judith <small>HEAT</small></b><br>
> Think of the complexity
> <br>of temperature, quantification
> <br>of that elusive quality "heat."
> <br>Tonight, for instance,
> <br>your hands are colder than mine.
> <br>Someone could measure
> <br>more precisely than we
> <br>the nature of this relationship.
>     <p align=right><cite><small>The Weight of Numbers
> <br>    Fibonacci
> </small></cite></p><!-- FreeFind End Listing -->

Do you generate that from the Word doc?

> I am most willing to undertake any and all work for formatting the 
> quotations so that the indexing work will be simplified.  I am just 
> wanting a fine search result for the user as this is going to be the 
> only set of science quotations that is this large.  My initial interest 
> is to get the quotations established onto the WEB so that others can 
> access them in the form that I would like them to be displayed.  My 
> interest in working with the MS Word file is simply for my own interest 
> as it would then allow me to have access to the quotations when I travel 
> and do not have access to the internet.

How about a nice text file and use cvs to track changes over time?

-- 
Bill Moseley
moseley@hank.org