RE: desktop search recommendations

["Gordon McLean" <Gordon -dot- McLean -at- GrahamTechnology -dot- com>]

Well, gee, I just kinda presumed...

OK, I'll fess up. I don't use a desktop search tool (although this thread
has prompted me to do some more investigating). 

And yes, my current content audit head, in which lies vast fields of
metadata that sort of, maybe, might just, one day, make sense. Hence why I
just kinda presumed that these tools would be able to use metadata to find
files. If I'm searching for a photo, wouldn't it be better to look for them
by place taken, or date or somesuch, as opposed to the filename??

I'll let someone else who actual HAS the tools in question to chip in.

Presumption is gonna be the death of me, but hey, it's Friday which means
PIZZA! Yay.

Gordon 

-----Original Message-----
Gordon McLean wrote:
> AhAH!!!
> 
> You failed to mention "text content" in your previous email, hence my 
> confusion...

Oh no.  I'm stunned by the idea that a desktop indexer would do anything
more than index text. Is it true?  Your comment throws open the
floodgates--I'm now picturing desktop indexers that gather a relatively
dazzling array of deep information about disk files, URLs, and so on.

Thinking back to Jim Pinkham's description of WDS, it now dawns on me that
if the desktop indexer uses 'filter' modules to add awareness of file types,
then it has a library of file types about which it has knowledge, and the
point of having an indexer that can use intimate knowledge about file types
is, of course, to collect intimate knowledge about files. It could collect
metadata. It could probe the file's object model. For example, an indexer
that is aware of Word documents could collect a sea of detailed information,
per document: date created, author, template, version, and last saved by
info, available styles (with detailed descriptions), styles in use, fonts
used, macros, formulas, inserted objects, headings, captions, tables, ...
Whew, it could capture a pretty thorough run down of any type of document it
has a filter for.

So, is this where desktop indexers like WDS are going?  Can you actually
root around in extensive information (not just the contained text) about the
documents and files you've run the indexer on?

With bated breath,

Ned Bedinger
doc -at- edwordsmith -dot- com


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