Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room
Archivarius questions (help using)
Yatom:
Great news!!! Archivarius *can* do a true exact search after all, despite the fact that...
1) The Archivarius website under FAQ gives an explanation for why the developer chose "morphology search" for the program, giving the impression (as I posted previously) that a (true) exact search isn't an option.
2) Nothing is said anywhere on the website, nor in the Help section of the program itself, which explains that a true exact search can be done. Not one word anywhere to the effect of what I'm about to share.
3) The internet, including sites like this, says absolutely nothing (I've searched a dozen times). Oddly enough to me, no one else cared about this, apparently.
4) The developer never responded to my multiple emails from multiple addresses over the course of a month (sent to Support, Sales, Contact, etc.)
So, here's the good news, finally. The "problem" was in a deep setting located in the program (again, without any explanation). If you open Archivarius, select an index, and then select "Settings," there is an option titled "Morphology." The program is defaulted to create an index in "morphology" mode, which dictates in turn how the search will function. Hence, if you don't want the program "thinking" for you, and adding "s" "es" "ing" and all other data to your search, you must build the index without this morphological setting.
Thankfully, I remembered the mention of "morphology" from the FAQ on the website (again, though it gives the impression that *there isn't any other option*, and I decided to give this thing a whirl. And thank God (truly), it worked.
So thanks all of you for your helpful suggestions. If you are also suffering from the lack of a true exact search, simply change this setting, and then rebuild your index.
(Note, however, that the program will try to "trick" you yet again, because--oddly enough--when you go to rebuild the index *after* turning the setting off, the program still flips the setting back on once more(!). You have to keep your eye out as you are about to build the index, and turn the setting off a second time. Unbelievable.)
Also, after hours of testing and experimenting, another tip for any of you who, like me, are chaffed by the fact that the proximity / vicinity search is limited to only 10 words apart: you can try inserting "filler" terms between the two primary terms you are searching for, and if any of those "filler" terms exist, then it will allow you to extend the range beyond just 10 words apart.
For instance, if I search [president...issued] it will find the these words as long as they are within 10 words from each other. But that isn't a great enough range sometimes. So if you search [president...and...issued] or [president...if...issued], and if the middle term indeed exists between the other two terms, then the range is counted between all three terms, and it can potentially increase the range of the two primary terms to 18 words apart instead of only 10.
Note: this is hit and miss, and the worst apart about Archivarius (now that I figured the exact search thing) is that wildcards (*/?) can't be used in a proximity/vicinity search. (What!?!) Moreover, you can't nest an OR search within a proximity search either. If you could, then you would be smart to do something like [president...(did, and, if, so, to, that, but, a, the)...issued], and it would increase your chances of extending the search range beyond just 10 words apart.
Thankfully, despite the grievances above, the program *does* let you use OR terms *outside* of the proximity/vicinity search, so you are able to try something like this: [president...issued] OR [president...did...issue] OR [president...will...issue] OR [president...and...issued]
Finally, to any who, like me, may come to read this because they are searching for the best Desktop search program available (thanks to all of you who have discussed these things before, as they led me to Archivarius in the first place), I will give my experience as a Windows 7 user.
x1: Tried it 2 nights ago for the first time, out of exasperation because of the no-exact-search issue with Archivarius. X1 wouldn't install, and when it finally did, the program opened and immediately told me that my computer's system clock was wrong, and that I needed to go to some website to update my computer's clock. There was no way around this message, and as soon as I said "OK," the program closed. So I threw it in the trash. I've never in my life had a program that--upon first opening it--utterly refused to work because my *system clock was wrong*. So, to the trash you go.
Dtsearch: Installed easy. Index built fast. Searches run fast. BUT, files take f-o-r-e-v-e-r to open. I have a 1GB pdf with heavy OCR done in it, and it is one of my primary search results for everything I do. Archivarius opens it in 3 seconds flat (meaning, plain text viewer). Dtsearch took 60 seconds to open it. And this difference was similar across several documents I tested with. Moreover, once Dtsearch finally opened the files in the viewer, the "Find on Page" (Ctrl+F) locator froze. It literally took about a minute to type the word "the" into the Find on Page utility. So, no go. Also, I use Hebrew a lot. Dtsearch mangles it always, and they even admit to this on their website.
Archivarius: Now that I know it can actually do a true exact search, I'm on Cloud-9 with this thing. Yes, it has bugs, and bugs for which the developer / support / sales apparently no longer exist, because I've been trying to get in touch with them for a whole month. Not one peep back. But for $36, the program absolutely rocks. Having tasted some of the other programs, I'm thoroughly impressed by Archivarius. It has revolutionized by process of searching. I have an index of about 8,000 files--almost 1GB--and Archivarius handles it great.
IainB:
Great news!!! Archivarius *can* do a true exact search after all, despite the fact that...
-Yatom (March 28, 2020, 09:37 PM)
--- End quote ---
Thank goodness for that.
Dormouse:
Great news!!! -Yatom (March 28, 2020, 09:37 PM)
--- End quote ---
Thanks for the persistence, description and precision.
Helps me remember why I chose Archivarius in the first place, but also reminds me why I drifted out of using it. A very fine program for the time, but, as it wasn't at the core of what I was doing, the time consumed always felt disproportionate. And, in the absence of self-contained expertise, the complexity required active support and preferably an equally active forum of users. I think most of my tasks just hit a "there must be a better way" moment and got broken down differently into smaller chunks. I now use the much simpler docfetcher; good enough for what I use it for now and apparently actively maintained. And less indexing, which I think is the core of my issue.
tomos:
So, here's the good news, finally. The "problem" was in a deep setting located in the program ... If you open Archivarius, select an index, and then select "Settings," there is an option titled "Morphology." The program is defaulted to create an index in "morphology" mode, which dictates in turn how the search will function. ... you must build the index without this morphological setting.
... I decided to give this thing a whirl. And thank God (truly), it worked.
... so simply change this setting, and then rebuild your index.
-Yatom (March 28, 2020, 09:37 PM)
--- End quote ---
I'm curious:
once you've indexed thus, is Archivarius able to do a 'fuzzy' search of same text?
Yatom:
I think most of my tasks just hit a "there must be a better way" moment
--- End quote ---
Yes, I've had *many* frustrating moments with Archivarius, but in the absence of help, I've made extensive "notes" as I learn what it can and (ugh!) can't do, so I've essentially built my own Help Documentation for the program. The good side is that, because my notes are in .jpg images, the program can index and display those, so it's like I've built the Help Documentation into the program. And again, I'm still bummed by some of the "peculiarities" of the program, but now that I know--f-i-n-a-l-l-y--that it can do a true literal search (except for case sensitive though; I haven't figure out how to get that to work), I'm tremendously relieved.
once you've indexed thus, is Archivarius able to do a 'fuzzy' search of same text?
--- End quote ---
Let me answer this way (and I should've mentioned before that I'm using Archivarius 4.79/x32 (32-bit version): it may depend on what you mean by "fuzzy." But consider the following test to begin with, now that I have turned off "morphology" and rebuilt the index without it. Searching from the primary search field, without any other settings taken into consideration...
Nazarene - only finds "Nazarene" in the singular (263 hits in my doc)
"Nazarene" - same exact thing as above
Nazarene? - finds "Nazarenes" but no longer finds just "Nazarene" (300 hits in my doc)
"Nazarene?" - same exact things as #1 and #2
Nazarene* - finds "Nazarene" or "Nazarenes" (575 hits in my doc)
"Nazarene*" - doesn't work, or find anything in my doc (false hits appear in other files?)
(*Nazarene*) - 580 hits in my doc (This search is the same as "Enter query" -> "with PART of the words")
So, depending on what you mean by "fuzzy searching" hopefully this helps. If you mean "fuzzy" in terms of complex algorithms, I'd say no. Besides the primary search field, just ran my eyes through all the settings, options, and various search fields in the program. The word "fuzzy" doesn't appear anywhere. So in conclusion, the program no longer seems to be "thinking" for me at all, but it does allow the use of wildcards (at least, to some extent, though not in proximity/vicinity search, nor in *exact phrase* searching, where you put "" marks around a phrase).
Let me know if this doesn't answer the question.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version