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src/INSTALL
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@ -2,40 +2,54 @@
A more complete version of this document can be found at http://www.recoll.org
* Home
* Screenshots
* Credits
* Downloads
* Installation
* User manual
Link: HOME
Link: PREVIOUS
Link: NEXT
Installing Recoll
Recoll user manual
Prev Next
Building from source
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Prerequisites
Chapter 4. Installation
Table of Contents
4.1. Building from source
4.2. Installing a prebuilt copy
4.3. Configuration overview
4.1. Building from source
4.1.1. Prerequisites
At the very least, you will need to download and install the xapian core
package (I am currently using xapian version 0.9.2), and the qt runtime
and development packages (I am currently using qt 3.3.3).
package (Recoll currently uses version 0.9.2), and the qt runtime and
development packages (Recoll currently uses version 3.3.3).
You will most probably be able to find a binary package for qt for your
system. You may have to compile Xapian, but this is not difficult.
system. You may have to compile Xapian, but this is not difficult (if you
are using FreeBSD, there is a port).
You also need libiconv. I am currently using version 1.9. The iconv
interface is part of libc on Linux systems, you shouldn't need to do
anything there.
You may also need libiconv. Recoll currently uses version 1.9 (this should
not be critical). On Linux systems, the iconv interface is part of libc
and you should not need to do anything special.
External file types: recoll uses external applications to index some file
External file types. Recoll uses external applications to index some file
types. You need to install them for the file types that you wish to have
indexed:
* MS Word documents: antiword.
* PDF files: pdftotext is part of the Xpdf package.
* Postscript files: pstotext.
* RTF files: the filter uses unrtf
* MS Word: antiword.
Building
* PDF: pdftotext is part of the Xpdf package.
* Postscript: pstotext.
* RTF: unrtf
4.1.2. Building
Recoll has been built on Linux (redhat7.3, mandriva 2005), FreeBSD and
Solaris 8. If you build on another system, I would very much welcome
@ -43,10 +57,11 @@ Installing Recoll
Normal procedure:
* cd recoll-xxx
* configure
* make
* (practise your usual hardship-repelling invocations).
cd recoll-xxx
configure
make
(practises usual hardship-repelling invocations)
There little autoconfiguration. The configure script will mainly link one
of the system-specific files in the mk directory to mk/sysconf. If your
@ -54,53 +69,14 @@ Installing Recoll
manually copy and modify one of the existing files (the new file name
should be the output of uname -s).
Using binary packages
The binary versions are just compressed tar files of a build tree, where
only the useful parts were kept (executables and sample configuration).
The executable binary files are built with a static link to libxapian and
libiconv, to make installation easier (no dependencies). However, this
also means that you can't change the versions of xapian and iconv which
are used.
After extracting the tar file, you can proceed with installation as if you
had built the package from source.
Installation
Commands and common files
4.1.3. Installation
Either type make install or execute recollinstall targetdir, in the root
of the source tree. This will copy the commands to $targetdir/bin and the
sample configuration files, scripts and other shared data to
$targetdir/share/recoll
$targetdir/share/recoll.
Personal configuration
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
The personal configuration files and the database are kept in the .recoll
directory in your home. If this directory does not exist when recoll or
recollindex are started, the directory will be created and the sample
configuration files will be copied. recoll will give you a chance to edit
the configuration file before starting indexation. recollindex will
proceed immediately.
Configuration
Recoll uses text configuration files. You will have to edit them by hand
for now (there is still some hope for a GUI configuration tool in the
future).
The main configuration file is named ~/.recoll/recoll.conf.
The default configuration will index your home directory. If this is not
appropriate, use recoll to copy the sample configuration, click Cancel,
and edit the configuration file before restarting the command. This will
start the initial indexation, which may take some time.
You are then ready to try a query, see the user manual for more detail.
Depending on what is installed on your system, you may also want to adjust
the external viewers defined in ~/.recoll/mimeconf (ie: html is either
previewed internally or displayed using firefox, but you may prefer
mozilla...). Look for the [view] section.
Prev Home Next
Search tips, shortcuts Installing a prebuilt copy

522
src/README
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@ -2,189 +2,252 @@
A more complete version of this document can be found at http://www.recoll.org
* Home
* Screenshots
* Credits
* Downloads
* Installation
* User manual
[IMG]
Recoll user manual
Recoll
Jean-Francois Dockes
Recoll is a personal full text search package for Linux, FreeBSD and other
Unix systems.
<jean-francois.dockes@wanadoo.fr>
Recoll is based on a very strong backend (Xapian), for which it provides
an easy to use, feature-rich, easy administration interface.
Copyright (c) 2005 Jean-Francois Dockes
Recoll is free and copyrighted under the GPL license, see COPYING inside
the distribution. A lot of the code is imported from other packages, see
the Credits.
The Recoll user manual introduces full text search notions and describes
the installation and use of the Recoll application.
Features:
[ Split HTML / Single HTML ]
* QT-based GUI.
* Supports the following document types (along with their compressed
versions):
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Natively
* text.
* html.
* OpenOffice files.
* maildir and mailbox (Mozilla and Thunderbird mail ok).
* gaim log files.
Table of Contents
With external helpers
* pdf (xpdf).
* postscript (ghostscript).
* msword (antiword).
* rtf text (unrtf).
1. Introduction
* Powerful query facilities, with boolean searches, phrases, filter on
file types and directory tree.
* Support for multiple charsets. Internal processing and storage uses
Unicode UTF-8.
* Stemming performed at query time (can switch stemming language after
indexing)
* Easy installation. No database daemon, web server or exotic language
necessary.
* An indexer which runs either as a thread inside the GUI or as an
external, cron'able program.
1.1. Giving it a try
Recoll has been compiled and tested on FreeBSD, Linux, Darwin and Solaris
(versions FreeBSD 5.3, Redhat 7.3, Solaris 8, but other not too distant
releases should be ok too). You can download the source code here.
1.2. Full text search
Future evolutions
1.3. Recoll overview
Things hopefully coming in the not too far future (especially with some
help):
2. Indexation
* Support for the more advanced Xapian concepts like relevance feedback.
* An interactive configuration tool.
* Rpms or other kinds of packages.
* A more polished user interface with online help and better
documentation.
* More translations for the user interface.
* A few more filters for less common file types.
* Integration with the KDE desktop.
2.1. Introduction
I very much welcome suggestions or (gasp) code.
2.2. The indexation configuration
In hope that this can be useful to somebody, it already is for me.
* Home
* Screenshots
* Credits
* Downloads
* Installation
* User manual
2.3. Starting indexation
Credits
3. Searching
Recoll borrows (steals?) heavily from the following projects. I tried to
include the relevant copyright attributions with the code. Any omission is
unintentional and will be fixed as soon as notified.
3.1. Simple search
* Xapian: The database module (core) is used unmodified, and quite a lot
of code has been borrowed from Omega, the web-based search application
(ie: the html parser, plus miscellaneous bits and ideas).
* Estraier: Miscellaneous pieces of code and ideas, especially for
charset handling, and code from external filters.
* Unac: for accent removal. This is a relatively small package, not that
easy to find, it has been integrated almost unmodified in the Recoll
package.
* Iconv, for character set conversion.
* Binc IMAP for MIME parsing code.
* I fear that bugs found elsewhere are mostly mine:
jean-francois.dockes@wanadoo.fr
* Home
* Screenshots
* Credits
* Downloads
* Installation
* User manual
3.2. Complex/advanced search
Introduction: full text search.
3.3. Document history
A full text search program will let you search for data by specifying the
terms that you think appear in the content you are looking for.
3.4. Search tips, shortcuts
4. Installation
4.1. Building from source
4.1.1. Prerequisites
4.1.2. Building
4.1.3. Installation
4.2. Installing a prebuilt copy
4.2.1. Installing through a package system
4.2.2. Installing a prebuilt Recoll
4.3. Configuration overview
4.3.1. Main configuration file
4.3.2. The mimemap file
4.3.3. The mimeconf file
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 1. Introduction
1.1. Giving it a try
If you do not like reading manuals and would like to give Recoll a try,
just perform installation and start the recoll user interface, which will
index your home directory and let you search it right after.
Do not do this if your home has a huge number of documents and you do not
want to wait or are very short on disk space. In this case, you may want
to edit the configuration file first to restrict the indexed area.
Also be aware that you will need to install the appropriate supporting
applications for document types that need them (for example antiword for
ms-word files), and that the default character set is iso8859-1, which may
not be appropriate for you.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
1.2. Full text search
Full text search applications allow you to find your data by content
rather than by external attributes (like a file name). More specifically,
they will let you specify words (terms) that should or should not appear
in the text you are looking for, and return a list of matching documents,
ordered so that the most relevant documents will appear first.
You do not need to remember in what file or email message you stored a
given piece of information. You just ask for related terms, and the tool
will return a list of documents where those terms are prominent.
In addition, the tool will automatically expand your search to terms
related to the ones you specified. Ie: a search for floor will also look
for floors, flooring etc. With Recoll you can disable this expansion when
entering the query.
This mode of operation has been made very familiar by www search engines.
Recoll, like most such search tools, works by remembering where terms
appear in your document files. The acquisition process is called
indexation. The resulting database can be big, in practise, roughly the
size of the original document set.
The notion of relevance is a difficult one, as only you, the user,
actually know which documents are relevant to your search, and the
application can only try a guess. The quality of this guess is probably
the most important element for a search application.
Recoll is not a document archive. It can only display data from files that
still exist where they lived when they were indexed.
In many cases, one is looking for all the forms of a word, not for a
specific form or spelling. These different forms may include plurals,
different tenses for a verb, or terms derived from the same root or stem
(exemple: floor, floors, floored, floorings...). Recoll will by default
expand queries to all such related terms (words that reduce to the same
stem). This expansion can be disabled at search time.
Using Recoll
Stemming, by itself, does not provide for misspellings or phonetic
searches. Recoll does not support these currently.
Indexation
----------------------------------------------------------------------
By default, Recoll will index your home directory. If you want to change
this, you need to edit the configuration file ($HOME/.recoll/recoll.conf
or $RECOLL_CONFDIR/recoll.conf if RECOLL_CONFDIR is set). Follow the
comments in the file to adjust the parameters.
1.3. Recoll overview
Indexation is performed either by starting the recollindex program, or the
indexing thread inside the recoll program (use the File menu).
Recoll uses the Xapian information retrieval library as its storage and
retrieval engine. Xapian is a very mature package using a sophisticated
probabilistic ranking model. Recoll provides the interface to get data
into (indexation) and out (searching) of the system.
In practice, Xapian works by remembering where terms appear in your
document files. The acquisition process is called indexation.
The resulting database can be big (roughly the size of the original
document set), but it is not a document archive. Recoll can only display
documents that still exist at the place from which they were indexed.
Recoll stores all internal data in Unicode UTF-8 format, and it can index
files with different character sets, encodings, and languages into the
same database. It has input filters for many document types.
Stemming depends on the document language. Recoll stores the unstemmed
versions of terms and uses auxiliary databases for term expansion. It can
switch stemming languages without reindexing. Storing documents in
different languages in the same database is possible, and useful in
practice, but does introduce possibilities of confusion. Recoll makes no
attempt at automatic language recognition.
Recoll has many parameters which define exactly what to index, and how to
classify and decode the source documents. These are kept in a
configuration file. A sample configuration is installed into the .recoll
subdirectory of your home directory when you first execute a Recoll
command. The initial configuration will index your home directory with
default parameters and should be sufficient for giving Recoll a try, but
you may want to adjust it later.
Indexation is started automatically the first time you execute the recoll
search graphical user interface, or by executing the recollindex.
Searches are performed inside the recoll program, which has many options
to help you find what you are looking for.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 2. Indexation
2.1. Introduction
Indexation is the process by which the set of documents is analyzed and
the data entered into the database. Recoll indexation is normally
incremental: documents will only be processed if they have been modified.
On the first execution, of course, all documents will need processing. A
full index build can be forced later on by specifying an option to the
indexation command.
Recoll indexation takes place at discrete times. There is no currently no
interface to real time file modification monitors. The typical usage is to
have a nightly indexation run programmed into your cron file.
Recoll knows about quite a few different document types. The parameters
for document types recognition and processing are set in configuration
files Most file types, like HTML or word processing files, only hold one
document. Some file types, like mail folder files can hold many
individually indexed documents.
Without further configuration, Recoll will index all appropriate files
from your home directory, with a reasonable set of defaults, if you live
in western Europe or the USA. If your normal character set is not
iso8859-1, you almost certainly need to adjust the configuration.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
2.2. The indexation configuration
The main configuration file is named $HOME/.recoll/recoll.conf by default
or $RECOLL_CONFDIR/recoll.conf if RECOLL_CONFDIR is set.
The most accurate documentation for editing the file is given by comments
inside the default file that will be created when you first start recoll.
If you want to adjust the configuration before indexation, just click
Cancel when the program asks if it should start initial indexation.
You can also have a look to the configuration overview inside the
installation chapter of this document.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
2.3. Starting indexation
Indexation is performed either by the recollindex program, or by the
indexation thread inside the recoll program (use the File menu).
If the recoll program finds no database when it starts, it will
automatically start indexation (except if cancelled).
It is best to avoid interrupting the indexation process, as this may
sometimes leave the database in a bad state. This is not a serious
problem, as you then just need to clear everything and restart the
indexation. The database files are normally stored in the
$HOME/.recoll/xapiandb directory, which you can just delete when needed.
$HOME/.recoll/xapiandb directory, which you can just delete if needed.
Alternatively, you can start recollindex -z, which will reset the database
before indexing.
before indexation.
Simple search
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 3. Searching
3.1. Simple search
Start the recoll program, then enter search term(s) in the text field at
the top left of the window. Clicking the Search button or hitting the
Enter key will start a search. By default, this will look for documents
with any of the terms (the ones with more terms will get better scores).
Use the Tools / Advanced search dialog for other kinds of searches
You can check the All terms checkbox to ensure that only documents with
all the terms will be returned. Use the Tools / Advanced search dialog for
more complex searches.
A list of results will be displayed in the main list window. Clicking on
an entry will open an internal preview window for the document.
Double-clicking will attempt to start an external viewer (have a look at
the ~/.recoll/mimeconf file to see how these are configured).
Documents that you actually view (with the internal preview or an external
tool) are entered into the document history, which is remembered. You can
display the history list by using the Tools / Doc History menu entry.
After starting a search, a list of results will instantly be displayed in
the main list window. Clicking on an entry will open an internal preview
window for the document. Double-clicking will attempt to start an external
viewer (have a look at the ~/.recoll/mimeconf file to see how these are
configured).
By default, the document list is presented in order of relevance (how well
the system estimates that the document matches the query). You can specify
a different ordering by using the Tools / Sort parameters dialog.
Search tips, shortcuts
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Entering a capitalized word in any search field will prevent stem
expansion (example: Recoll will not look for gardening if you enter Garden
instead of garden). This is the only case where character case will make a
difference for a Recoll search.
A phrase can be looked for by enclosing it in double quotes. Example:
"user manual" will look only for occurrences of user immediately followed
by manual.
Entering ^Q almost anywhere will close the application.
Entering ^W in a preview tab will close it (and, for the last tab, close
the preview window).
Complex/advanced search
3.2. Complex/advanced search
The advanced search dialog has fields that will allow a more refined
search, looking for documents with all given words, a given exact phrase,
@ -198,3 +261,196 @@ Using Recoll
area.
In other respects, it works like the simple search.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
3.3. Document history
Documents that you actually view (with the internal preview or an external
tool) are entered into the document history, which is remembered. You can
display the history list by using the Tools/Doc History menu entry.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
3.4. Search tips, shortcuts
Entering a capitalized word in any search field will prevent stem
expansion (no search for gardening if you enter Garden instead of garden).
This is the only case where character case will make a difference for a
Recoll search.
A phrase can be looked for by enclosing it in double quotes. Example:
"user manual" will look only for occurrences of user immediately followed
by manual. You can use the This exact phrase field of the advanced search
dialog to the same effect.
Entering ^Q almost anywhere will close the application.
Entering ^W in a preview tab will close it (and, for the last tab, close
the preview window).
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 4. Installation
4.1. Building from source
4.1.1. Prerequisites
At the very least, you will need to download and install the xapian core
package (Recoll currently uses version 0.9.2), and the qt runtime and
development packages (Recoll currently uses version 3.3.3).
You will most probably be able to find a binary package for qt for your
system. You may have to compile Xapian, but this is not difficult (if you
are using FreeBSD, there is a port).
You may also need libiconv. Recoll currently uses version 1.9 (this should
not be critical). On Linux systems, the iconv interface is part of libc
and you should not need to do anything special.
External file types. Recoll uses external applications to index some file
types. You need to install them for the file types that you wish to have
indexed:
* MS Word: antiword.
* PDF: pdftotext is part of the Xpdf package.
* Postscript: pstotext.
* RTF: unrtf
----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.1.2. Building
Recoll has been built on Linux (redhat7.3, mandriva 2005), FreeBSD and
Solaris 8. If you build on another system, I would very much welcome
patches.
Normal procedure:
cd recoll-xxx
configure
make
(practises usual hardship-repelling invocations)
There little autoconfiguration. The configure script will mainly link one
of the system-specific files in the mk directory to mk/sysconf. If your
system is not known yet, it will tell you as much, and you may want to
manually copy and modify one of the existing files (the new file name
should be the output of uname -s).
----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.1.3. Installation
Either type make install or execute recollinstall targetdir, in the root
of the source tree. This will copy the commands to $targetdir/bin and the
sample configuration files, scripts and other shared data to
$targetdir/share/recoll.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.2. Installing a prebuilt copy
4.2.1. Installing through a package system
If you are lucky enough to be using a port system or a prebuilt package
(RPM or other), just follow the usual procedure, and have a look at the
configuration section.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.2.2. Installing a prebuilt Recoll
The unpackaged binary versions are just compressed tar files of a build
tree, where only the useful parts were kept (executables and sample
configuration).
The executable binary files are built with a static link to libxapian and
libiconv, to make installation easier (no dependencies). However, this
also means that you cannot change the versions which are used.
After extracting the tar file, you can proceed with installation as if you
had built the package from source.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.3. Configuration overview
The personal configuration files and the database are kept in the .recoll
directory in your home. If this directory does not exist when recoll or
recollindex are started, the directory will be created and the sample
configuration files will be copied. recoll will give you a chance to edit
the configuration file before starting indexation. recollindex will
proceed immediately.
Recoll uses text configuration files. You will have to edit them by hand
for now (there is still some hope for a GUI configuration tool in the
future). The most accurate documentation for the configuraton parameters
is given by comments inside the sample files, and we will just give a
general overview here.
Most of the parameters specific to the recoll GUI are set through the
Preferences menu and stored in the standard QT place ($HOME/.qt/recollrc).
You probably do not want to edit this by hand.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.3.1. Main configuration file
~/.recoll/recoll.conf is the main configuration file. It defines what to
index (top directories and things to ignore), and the default character
set to use (for document types which do not specify it internally). The
default character set can be specified separately for any directory
subtree.
The default configuration will index your home directory. If this is not
appropriate, use recoll to copy the sample configuration, click Cancel,
and edit the configuration file before restarting the command. This will
start the initial indexation, which may take some time.
There are also miscellaneous other parameters inside recoll.conf. Explore
and enjoy :)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.3.2. The mimemap file
~/.recoll/mimemap specifies the file name extension to mime type mappings.
For file names without an extension, or with an unknown one, the system's
file -i command will be executed to determine the mime type (this can be
switched off inside the main configuration file).
mimemap also has a list of extensions which should be ignored totally (to
avoid losing time by executing file for things that certainly should not
be indexed).
The mappings can be specified on a per-subtree basis, which may be useful
in some cases. Example: gaim logs have a .txt extension but should be
handled specially, which is possible because they are usually all located
in one place.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.3.3. The mimeconf file
~/.recoll/mimeconf specifies how the different mime types are handled for
indexation, and for display.
Changing the indexation parameters is probably not a good idea except if
you are a Recoll developper.
You may want to adjust the external viewers defined in (ie: html is either
previewed internally or displayed using firefox, but you may prefer
mozilla...). Look for the [view] section.
You can also change the icons which are displayed by recoll in the result
lists (the values are the basenames of the png images inside the iconsdir
directory (specified in recoll.conf).
----------------------------------------------------------------------