This document introduces full text search notions and + describes the installation and use of the Recoll application. This version + describes Recoll 1.22.
+ +Recoll was for a long + time dedicated to Unix-like systems. It was only lately + (2015) ported to MS-Windows. + Many references in this manual, especially file locations, + are specific to Unix, and not valid on Windows. Some described features are + also not available on Windows.
+ +The manual will be progressively updated for Windows. Until this happens, most
+ references to files can be translated by looking under the
+ Recoll installation directory (esp. the Share subdirectory). The user configuration
+ is stored by default under AppData/Local/Recoll inside the user
+ directory, along with the index itself.
Recoll is a full text - search application. Full text search finds your data by - content rather than by external attributes (like a file + search application, which means that it finds your data by + content rather than by external attributes (like the file name). You specify words (terms) which should or should not appear in the text you are looking for, and receive in return a list of matching documents, ordered so that the @@ -679,28 +702,25 @@ alink="#0000FF"> it is much less cumbersome than separating your documents according to what language they are written in.
-Before version 1.18, Recoll stripped most accents and
- diacritics from terms, and converted them to lower case
- before either storing them in the index or searching for
- them. As a consequence, it was impossible to search for a
- particular capitalization of a term (US / us), or
- to discriminate two terms based on diacritics (sake / saké, By default, Recoll
+ strips most accents and diacritics from terms, and converts
+ them to lower case before either storing them in the index
+ or searching for them. As a consequence, it is impossible
+ to search for a particular capitalization of a term
+ (US / us), or to discriminate two terms based on
+ diacritics (sake /
+ saké, mate / maté).
As of version 1.18, Recoll can optionally store the raw - terms, without accent stripping or case conversion. In this - configuration, it is still possible (and most common) for a - query to be insensitive to case and/or diacritics. - Appropriate term expansions are performed before actually - accessing the main index. This is described in more detail - in the Recoll versions 1.18 + and newer can optionally store the raw terms, without + accent stripping or case conversion. In this configuration, + default searches will behave as before, but it is possible + to perform searches sensitive to case and diacritics. This + is described in more detail in the section about index case and diacritics sensitivity.
@@ -711,20 +731,19 @@ alink="#0000FF"> "2.3. Index configuration">configuration files. A default configuration is copied into a standard location (usually something like/usr/[local/]share/recoll/examples)
- during installation. The default values set by the
- configuration files in this directory may be overridden by
- values that you set inside your personal configuration,
- found by default in the .recoll sub-directory of your home
- directory. The default 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, which can be done
- either by editing the text files or by using configuration
- menus in the recoll GUI. Some other
- parameters affecting only the /usr/share/recoll/examples) during
+ installation. The default values set by the configuration
+ files in this directory may be overridden by values set
+ inside your personal configuration, found by default in the
+ .recoll sub-directory of your
+ home directory. The default 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, which can be done either by editing the
+ text files or by using configuration menus in the
+ recoll GUI.
+ Some other parameters affecting only the recoll GUI are stored in
the standard location defined by Qt.
@@ -943,8 +962,8 @@ alink="#0000FF">
@@ -1037,8 +1056,8 @@ indexedmimetypes = application/pdf
More generally, the path translation facility may be - useful whenever the documents paths seen by the indexer are - not the same as the ones which should be used at query - time.
-Recoll has a facility for rewriting access paths when extracting the data from the index. The translations can be defined for the main index and for any additional query index.
+The path translation facility will be useful whenever + the documents paths seen by the indexer are not the same as + the ones which should be used at query time.
+In the above NFS example, Recoll could be instructed to rewrite
any file:///home/me URL from
@@ -4608,7 +4626,11 @@ bye goodbye "see you" \
"5.4.7. The ptrans file">ptrans configuration file, which can
be edited by hand or from the GUI external indexes
- configuration dialog.
There used to exist another form of binary install, as pre-compiled source trees, but these are just less @@ -6999,6 +7026,18 @@ except:
The Windows + installation of Recoll + is self-contained, and only needs Python 2.7 to be + externally installed. Windows users can skip this + section.
+Recoll uses external applications to index some file types. You need to install them for the file types that you wish to have indexed @@ -7638,9 +7677,9 @@ except:
For each index, there are at least two sets of
configuration files. System-wide configuration files are
kept in a directory named like /usr/[local/]share/recoll/examples, and
- define default values, shared by all indexes. For each
- index, a parallel set of files defines the customized
+ "filename">/usr/share/recoll/examples, and define
+ default values, shared by all indexes. For each index, a
+ parallel set of files defines the customized
parameters.
The default location of the customized configuration is
@@ -9549,7 +9588,7 @@ application/x-blobapp = exec rclblob
displayed for the files inside the result lists.
Icons are normally 64x64 pixels PNG files which
live in /usr/[local/]share/recoll/images.
rclblob handler should
be an executable program or script which exists inside
/usr/[local/]share/recoll/filters. It
- will be given a file name as argument and should output
- the text or html contents on the standard output.
+ "filename">/usr/share/recoll/filters. It will be
+ given a file name as argument and should output the
+ text or html contents on the standard output.
The