How to work efficiently with CorpusSearch under Windows (up to version 98)

This is simply a step-by-step outline of how I set up to run CorpusSearch on my PC. I'm no windows guru and I can't guarentee what works for me will work for you. But it probably will. If you have problems, email me (at9@york.ac.uk) and I'll try to help.

The biggest problem people have working with CorpusSearch under Windows is converting back and forth from a word processor format to dos/ascii. You can avoid this by using a MS-DOS editor to write your query files. With a small amount of effort in setting up your desktop before you start, CorpusSearch can be run extremely easily and efficiently under Windows.

1. Make a folder inside the PPCME2-CS folder with a short easily typed name (I use qq). This is where the query and output files will reside.

2. Open the PPCME2-CS folder so that the CorpusSearch program icon is visible in the window.

3. Open the qq folder in another window.

4. Open the MS-DOS window (under Start:Programs:)

5. In the MS-DOS window the prompt will probably look like this:

   C:\WINDOWS

   Change to your qq folder/directory

   cd ..\PROGRA~1\PPCME2-CS\qq

6. Use the MS-DOS utility "edit" to make query files in the qq directory

   edit filename.q

   A window will open in which you can type your query. It has the usual obvious pull-down menus for saving and exiting and so on. When you're finished writing your query, leave the MS-DOS window open.

7. Click on the CorpusSearch icon. At the prompt for a query file, type

   qq\filename.q

   For the source file just use the files in the psd directory (it's shorter to type than search-files and there's no need to move files unless you want to search a combination of files that you can't specify using * as a wild card).

   psd\*
   psd\cm*.m2.psd (for example)
   psd\*m2* (even shorter)
   

8. The output file will be created in the qq folder. Since you have this folder open it will be easily accessible. The first time you make an output file, double-click on it to open it. You should get a window which asks you which application you want to use to open it. Pick your favourite word processor and tick the box that says to always open this type of file with this application.

   For me, using Word Perfect, when I double-click the file it opens as a WP file, I hit RETURN to convert it from dos/ascii to WP so I can read it. When I'm finished I quit without saving and WP leaves the file in dos/ascii format (since I didn't save it). This means it's still searchable by CS. I don't use Word but I expect it will act much the same. Since the output file is in dos/ascii format, you can also read it using "edit" (just use "edit filename.out" as we did above). Often these utilities don't support very large files, however, so if you're doing large searches this might not work. If you're doing a lot of searching, before you open the first output file, set the default initial font on your word processor to a fixed-width font like courier new and the smallest font size you can read (I use 10). This avoids the skewing of the parses that occurs when the fixed-width font of the corpus is converted to a variable-width font like Times and gets as much of the parse on the screen as possible without wrapping.

9. And that's it. You have all the windows you need open at once and by using the MS-DOS editor "edit" to create the query files you don't have to be constantly changing back and forth between incompatible formats.

A note on Windows 2000