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Member Garrett "E16" Lambert has provided us with an "automated" way to
search. Below are his comments. Further down in the post, you'll find
additional directions in case you don't want to store the archives on your PC.
To search the archives with Windows Explorer, first copy each archived
monthly index to a folder on your hard disk. It takes only 15 minutes or so
to do all of them. Then, click on Start, Program, Explorer, then click on
Tools, Find, Files or Folders, and type in the word(s) you're looking for.
Explorer scans through all the indexes for specific text. The files are
saved in html format, so when it finds what you want, a click on the
original posting brings the information up in whichever browser you use.
It's almost instantaneous when directed to the folder containing the saved
TWL files.
A far more powerful option is AltaVista Discovery which can be down-loaded
free from <discovery.altavista.com>. It lurks at the edge of your screen
and a single click looks for whatever you want wherever you want. It's
faster than Explorer and highlights the particular files in yellow so
they're easy to spot. With Discovery, you don't need to copy the archived
indexes to your hard disk, but can, if you prefer, set Discovery up to look
in the TWL archives on line.
Another method:
The TWList archives are located at <http://www.samurai.com/lists> . There
you will find both active and archived TWLists.
The ACTIVE section contains the most recent messages and can be sorted by
Subject, Thread, Author, and Date. The ARCHIVED section has the same format
but is divided into chronological segments dating from 1/15/98 to the
present.
Subject - Groups all identical subject headings together even if not part
of the same thread. A good way to read all posts on a single subject during
that time frame. It's an A to Z listing of topics, the cyberspace
equivalent of paging through an encyclopedia of trawlering. You'll find
everything from canning meatballs to zincs and tons of good information in
between. Because the archives are chronological, on-going subjects tend to
get repeated in multiple date segments.
Thread - Similar in nature to other news groups, this includes the original
post on a subject and all responses using the same subject heading.
However, they're in chronologic order so other posts may intervene. Even
slight changes in subject heading will cause new threads to originate.
Author - A little trickier, it may have the senders' real name, e-mail
address, or pseudonym. For example, Captn. Wil, a frequent poster, is
found as Wil Andrews not Captn. Wil. It does, however, keep all one
person's posts together.
Date - Renders a list of correspondence in chronological order.
Text String Searches (Netscape 4.5)- Select a time frame in the archives
and download it to your browser. Then select "Edit", "Find in page", from
the menu bar and enter the text string that you are interested in finding,
such as "diesel" (enter it without the "quotation marks"). This feature
allows you to search forward and backward through each page (which in this
instance is one entire date range of the archives). Note - this does not
search the contents of each post, it only searches the subject line and
author. You can use the same method to search for keywords within each
post after you have downloaded the post to your browser.
The more letters entered- the narrower the search criteria. Try some boat
brands or words like anchor, rode, pilothouse, bread, beer, or thruster and
see what happens. Even parts of senders' names, if unique - like Georgs or
Bryant, will be useful. This can be a handy way to jump through the list
quickly. Friends report that Microsoft Explorer 4.7 has a similar feature.
Occasionally, I go back and cruise through the archives in subject order
and find subjects that I wasn't interested in previously. This also helps
to prevent the message, "Go look in the archives!" being a response to a
sincerely asked question. However, most listees will go out of their way to
point you in the right direction more gently and give you subject headings
to check out.
Please contact me if you have any additional questions.
Joe Weinbrecht
m/v CLEWLESS '82 Mainship
TWList Help Team Member
