Version: 0.83, wais-8-b3. Date: Fri Sep 13 1991 Author: Jonny Goldman This HELP contains information for both XWAIS, a shell for the X Windows WAIS system, and XWAISQ, the X Windows User Interface to the WAIS system. If you pressed HELP from the XWAIS Window, read the next section. If you pressed HELP from an X WAIS Question window, go to the section titled XWAISQ. One quick note: most of click/open gestures can be done with a double click on the item too. This is new to this version. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- XWAIS: This is the main window for xwais, the X interface to a Wide Area Information Server. Using xwais, you can quickly obtain information from the sources provided by your server. There are three parts to this X WAIStation window: Questions, Sources, and Status. "Questions" lists the files in which you have saved questions from previous sessions. If this is the first time you are using xwais, the Questions list is empty. "Sources" lists the sources available to you. "Status" displays messages from xwais. Asking a Question To ask a new question, click on the New button beneath the Questions list. A Question window appears; click on the Help button in this window to find out how to ask the question. To ask a question from your Questions list, click on its name to highlight it, then click on the Open button. A window appears showing the question. You might want to save a question and re-ask it if your sources are periodically updated, and you want to see if there is new information available. Editing and Adding Sources In general, you will not need to do much with sources. If you do wish to edit or create new sources, see the WAIStation Users's Guide to learn the meaning of the slots in the Source Edit window. To add a new source, click on the New button beneath the Sources list. A Source window appears. Fill in the Name field with the name of the source (ending in .src) that will become the name of the source for further questions. Fill in the rest of the information according to the description in the WAIStation User's Guide. To modify a source from your Source list, click on its name to highlight it, then click on the Open button. A window appears showing the source. Change the apropriate information according to the description in the WAIStation User's Guide. Leaving xwais To leave xwais, click twice on the Quit button beneath the Questions list. (This only closes the XWAIStation window. If you have question windows open, you must close them separately.) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- XWAISQ: Use this window to obtain information from one or more sources available in your WAIS system. If you have opened a questions that already exists, it appears in the "Tell me about:" box. To ask a new question, type search words in the "Tell me about:" box. These should be words that relate as closely as possible to the topic you are interested in. They don't have to form a grammatical sentence, and they don't have to be in any particular order. To choose the source or sources to be searched for the information, click on Add Source. A popup menu displays the list of available sources. Click on the source you want to highlight it, then click on the "Ok" button; this adds it to the "In Sources:" list. To delete a source, click on it in the "In Sources:" list so that it is highlighted, then click on the Delete Source button. When you have chosen the sources you want, click on the Search button to start the search. The documents that WAIS finds are listed in the "Resulting documents:" list. The number to the left of each document is its "score"; the higher the score, the closer the document matched your question. To view a document, click on its name in the list so that it is highlighted, and then click on the View button. The document appears in a window. Click on the Add Section button to add this file to the "Similar to:" list, which is described below. Click on Find Key to highlight the search words that this document matches. Click on Save to File to save the document to a file; a dialog box appears that prompts for a filename. Click on Done to delete the window. If you want to fine-tune your search, add documents to the "Similar to:" list. Adding a document to this list essentially tells WAIS to "get me more documents like this one." To add a document, click on it in the "Resulting documents:" list, then click on Add Document. To remove a document, click on it in the "Similar to:" list, then click on Delete Document. When you have the documents you want in the "Similar to:" list, click on Search to rerun the search. Click on the Done button when you are finished with your search. If this is a new question, a dialog box will appear, asking if you want to save the question to a file. If you do, it will subsequently appear in your Questions list in the main X WAIS window.