Search help

Type some words (separated by spaces) into the query box, and click `Search'. A list of messages containing the words will appear in the top right frame. If you click on a message number, the message will be displayed in the bottom frame.

Don't put punctuation characters in your query---many of them are regular expression meta-characters. (Accordingly, you can search for regular expressions; see glimpse documentation.) The quote ' can be used, but a word such as utulie'n is split into two words internally.

The meaning of the options is:

`All words' (the default): display messages which contain every word in the query.
`Any word': display messages containing any word in the query.
`Direct to glimpse': for users familiar with the search engine glimpse. The query will be passed unmodified to glimpse. Note that if you are searching for a regular expression, you should check the `Match as partial words' box to disable the -w option, which does not work with regexps.
`Case-sensitive matching': by default, the match ignores case (glimpse is given the -i option). Check this box for case-sensitive matching.
`Match as partial words': by default, the words in the query must match whole words in the data (glimpse is given the -w option), so that, e.g., the query pronoun will not find occurrences of `pronouns'. If this box is checked, query words will match against any part of words in the data. (Other ways to find both `pronoun' and `pronouns' are to use the misspelling option below, or to search directly for the glimpse expression pronoun{s,}, or of course to search for any of the two words.) This option is useful, but slows the search considerably.
`Search:' You may search any of the TolkLang, Elfling, or Lambengolmor lists. TolkLang message numbers appear as, e.g., 25.41, in the results; Elfling message numbers appear as, e.g. e00156; Lambengolmor as, e.g., L00156. Please read the notes about the Elfling and Lambengolmor mirrors if you search them.
`Allow n-letter mis-spellings': words will still match even if mis-spelt with n deletions, insertions or substitutions. (Glimpse is given the -n option.)
`All words in same line': by default, an `all words' search returns all messages containing all the words anywhere (glimpse is given the -W option). If this box is checked, all the words must occur together in one line.

Note that using case-sensitive matching, partial word matching or mis-spelling is likely to slow the search significantly.

Note also that glimpse is a rather buggy program, and it's not usually easy to detect when it has suffered an error. If you get `no results' from a search that you think should have found something, please mail me with the date and time of your search, and the exact query and options you used.