TUTORIAL/HELP TUTORIAL/HELPThis document doubles as the tutorial and the help facility for the ESISBIB service. It is intended primarily for users running NCSA Mosaic for the X Window System. The first time you access this tutorial you should go through it sequentially (navigate by using the scroll bar or the <space> and <delete> keys). This will give you a good introduction on how to use this system efficiently. If you are only interested in specific topics, clicking on the elements of the Table of Contents will get you there.
TABLE OF CONTENTS HOW TO GET HELP
WHILE USING THE ESISBIB APPLICATIONThe entire HELP facility of the ESISBIB application is contained in this file. As you will discover, in addition to the link from the ESISBIB Page, links to different HELP topics are scattered throughout the ESISBIB application.
Use The Table Of Contents: The TOC above lists all the topics for which help is available.
Help From the Query Form: The link "HELP" in the bottom of your query form points to the beginning of this file. The labels "Retrieve", "Sort By", "Report", and "Issue Date" are linked to help regarding these specific issues.
Help From The Index Browse Form: The "Help" link from the Index Browse form brings you into this file at the topic "Index Browse".
Help After Errors: If you make an error, such as an invalid query , the error message will have a link into this file at the location of the specific topic of interest. If there is something wrong with the system, a link will bring you to a page where you can report the error to the system manager.
By Sending a Question to The System Administrator: There is a page available that allows you to send comments, questions, or suggestions to the people responsible for the maintenance of this system. A link to the page is available from the ESIS Home Page.
By Printing The Help File: If you prefer having the HELP facility available on paper you can get a printout of this file RIGHT NOW following these guidelines.
HOW DO I USE
NCSA MOSAIC EFFECTIVELY?If you are not (yet) an expert Mosaic user, chances are you will benefit from this short section on some particular functionalities that will make your work with ESISBIB more efficient. This section will teach you how to customize your Mosaic environment, how to navigate effectively, and how to open, mail, print, or save files using the inherent functionality of Mosaic.
By Changing The Font: The "Fonts" option in the "Options" menu at the top of your Mosaic Window allows you to select a font for the Mosaic Document Display window. The ESISBIB Interface is designed for the font "Times Small". (Now change your font to "Times Small").
By Changing The Window Size: Depending on the Window Manager you are using, there will be functionality available to resize your window. The recommended size for the window used for ESISBIB is one that allows you to see the full width of the ESISBIB Query Form , and full screen length.
By Changing The Look of Hyperlink Anchors: The "Anchor Underlines" option in the "Options" menu allows you to change the look of the Mosaic hyperlink. The ESISBIB is designed with the "No Underlines" option in mind because this makes the display of the hitlist less cluttered. However, you can choose the option that best fits your preferences. You can also temporarily change the look of visited anchors, by choosing the "Clear Global History" option from the "Options" menu. This will allow all your previously visited links to appear unvisited, and is useful to clean up the display, but only if you do not want or need to keep the information of what references you have actually seen.
By Following Hyperlinks: The main navigational abstraction of Mosaic is the hyperlink. The link, as you know, may be followed by single-clicking the left mouse button. However, the result of clicking on a link with the middle mouse button gives you the link destination in a new window. Now use the middle mouse button to pop up a window containing the ESISBIB Query Form. Keep this window open.
By Using The Back Button: Which is located in the bottom left corner in your Mosaic window. It brings you back to the frame last visited, and it is the main mechanism used in this system for navigating backwards. The reason for this is that hitting the back button gets you back to the last frame in the state you left it, which means that (as a useful example), you can get back to the Query Form from the Hitlist without losing the state of the form.
By Using The Forward Button: This, not surprisingly, is the opposite of the back button.
By Using The Hotlist Mechanism: The hotlist mechanism allows you to save the location of interesting or useful references in a list so you can easily retrieve them at a later time. It is available through the "Navigate" menu at the top of your Mosaic window. Now select "Hotlist" in the "Navigate" menu, and then "Add Current" in the window that pops up. The title of this tutorial will appear in the window. You can now always access this tutorial by opening the hotlist window, selecting the wanted item in the list, and then selecting the "Goto" button. (Suggestion: add also the ESISBIB Page to your hotlist.)
By
Using Keyboard Keys Or the Mouse Within Files: Many of the files
you are presented with in the ESISBIB (for example this one), are larger
than your window. You can navigate either by using the scroll bar at
the side of the window, or you can use certain keyboard keys. <space>
or <return> brings you one full page down in the
window, <delete> or <back space>
brings you one full page up.
By Searching For A Term Within a File: Choosing the "Find In Current" option in the "File" menu pops up a window that allows you to specify a word or sequence of words that Mosaic will go to and highlight in the text of the reference displayed on the screen. This is particularly useful in large documents where you are searching for a particular term. (To see an example of this functionality, try searching for the term 'search' in this document.)
By Interrupting Very Slow Responses: You have a spinning planet icon in your top right hand corner. When Mosaic is processing a navigation command such as a link, the icon is animated. Clicking on the icon will interrupt the connection, and give you your cursor back.
You Can Save Them: The "Save As..." button at the bottom of your Mosaic Window pops up a window that allows you to save the file you are currently viewing in several formats. Help on choosing a format is available below.
You Can View a Previously Saved File Through Mosaic: The "Open Local..." option in the "File" menu allows you to open a local file for Mosaic viewing . Simply navigate to the correct directory location, select the file, and open.
You Can Mail Them To Another User: The "Mail To" option in the "File" menu allows you to mail the file you are currently viewing to another user. Again you can choose what format you want to mail it as.
You Can Print It: You can print the file after saving it as a suitable format (i.e. PostScript), or directly using the "Print" option in the "File" menu of your Mosaic window.
In Lots of Places: Here are some useful links for more advanced information on NCSA Mosaic. You can have a look at the On Line Users Guide. The document Using Mosaic also has a lot of useful information. Note that much is available through the "Help" menu in the top right hand corner of your Mosaic window, and through the NCSA Mosaic Home Page.
FILLING THE
QUERY FORM AND PERFORMING A SEARCHIf you don't already have one open, use the middle mouse button to pop up a new window containing the ESISBIB Query Form. This section covers how to edit the Query Form, explains the valid query syntax, the settings of the form, and how to submit the query.
By Using Your Keyboard: As long as your cursor is
placed within a field, you should be able to use all the normal keys of
your keyboard in the ESISBIB query form, except the <Return>key.
If the <Delete>, the <Back Space>,
or the arrow keys do not work within the fields of the form, the problem
is a common one, and will be easily solved by your system administrator.
By Cutting And Pasting Text Using The Mouse: Placing your cursor on a piece of text and holding the left mouse button down while you drag the cursor over the text you wish to copy will select the text up to the point where you let go of the mouse button. Moving the cursor into a field and clicking the middle mouse button will copy the text to that field. Double clicking on a word (not a link) will also select it.
By Using The "Clear" Button: Located in the form itself. This clears all the values entered by you in the fields, and resets the toggle buttons. You can also clear a field by selecting the text in it and pressing the <Delete> or the <Back Space> keys on your keyboard.
There are Certain Defaults: The query syntax provided assumes logical AND between different fields, and logical AND between search terms separated by blanks within a field. The search is case-insensitive, meaning that a term will get the same hits if entered in uppercase or lowercase.
`AND', `OR', `NOT' are Logical Operators: You can build your query using the logical operators AND, OR, and NOT.
`*' and `?' are Wild Cards: A search for ab* will perform root expansion on the string ab, and match all terms beginning with these letters , for example both abacus and abstract. Single character wildcard searching is also available, and a search for ro?m would match both room and roam. Note that wild cards cannot be used to search for the first letter in a term (i.e. you cannot search for *oom). Also, a search for ab*ct will produce the same results as ab* (i.e. you cannot do multi- character wildcard searching in any other location than the end of a term).
The " " (double quotes) Phrase Search: A search for a string within double quotes, for example "Finance Committee Meeting" will match that exact string.
The [ ] Proximity Search: A search for the string [finance committee meeting], on the other hand, will match all entries where the words finance, meeting and committee occur within 256 characters of each other, in any order.
The ' ' (single quotes) Literal Search: A search for a term within single quotes, for example '1992MNRAS.254..413' will match literally indexed terms (for example, document references) that contain mixed letters, numbers and punctuation. To perform a wild card search for a literal string, you should place the wild card character inside the single quotes, for example: '1992MNRAS*'
Date Searches: When searching on a date field, such as Issue Date in ESISBIB, you can use the greater than/greater than or equal to (>/>=), less than/less than or equal to (</<=), and equal to (=) operators , to construct your query. Note that wild card operators are not allowed in a date field, so that if you want to search for anything issued after 1994, you should search for >19950101. If you want to search between dates use the AND operator to specify the date range. Example: To search for all publications in 1992 use the following syntax: >19911231 AND <19930101.
The ( ) are Hierarchical Operators: You can use parentheses to more exactly specify your query. For example, not (galactic and stellar) will retrieve all references that do not contain BOTH the word galactic and the word stellar, while a search on (not galactic) and stellar will retrieve all references that contain the word stellar but not the word galactic.
Stop Words: a search for a word that has been defined as a "stop word" will result in 0 hits, since it is assumed that these words will occur in virtually all references. Examples of stop words are and, the, le, la.
Maximum Query Size: The maximum number of characters you can enter in any one query field is 200.
You Can Control The Maximum Number of Hits Reported: In the bottom left hand corner of the ESISBIB query form you can fill in the maximum number of hits you want the system to retrieve on the search. If there are more hits available, a button will be available in the hitlist to retrieve them. The reason the system does not retrieve all the hits found is that queries with a large number of hits take a long time to retrieve. It is therefore strongly recommended not to set this number to high. (Try to keep it below 250.).
You Can Specify How the Search Result Will be Sorted: By choosing one of the toggle buttons in the "Sort By" line in the query form you can have the search result sorted by either , "Relevance", which ranks according to number of hits in a given reference, or "Issue Date". The "Issue Date" option will rank the most recent references highest. (Note that the Issue Date and Relevance options can be a little slow for large queries, and that references that do not have an Issue Date will not be found if the result is sorted by date). The default option "None" does not sort the search result.
You Can Enable The Report Mechanism: The functionality handling how to generate a Hitlist Report is described below.
Click The "Submit" button: After you have filled in
the form, you submit the query by clicking on the "Submit" button.
(Hitting the <Return> key in a field will not work.)
BROWSING
THE ESISBIB INDEX Functionality allowing you to browse the indexed terms for given fields is available through the IX Browse link in the Query Form. This section will teach you how to perform Index Browse in the ESISBIB System.
The Syntax of the Index Browse Form: You browse the index for given fields by following the "Index Browse" link, which brings you to a form . You can fill in the fields with the root of terms, and submit. The result will be the list of terms indexed for the given fields, all having as root the string you specified, and the number of references that are referenced for each term. If you enter only the * (asterisk) in a field, you will get the whole index for the given field. (Example to be included.)
Use Multiple Windows and Cut and Paste: If you click on the "Index Browse" Link in the Query Form with the middle mouse button, you will get up a new window with the Index Browse form in it. You can now cut and paste terms from the Index Browse result into the fields of the Query Form.
Points to Note: To clear up a few seeming peculiarities about the index browse feature: - just entering * in a field will result in displaying all terms indexed in that field. Note that this will turn up a number of terms surrounded in quotes. They are indexed this way so as to be treated as a single term. In addition, stopwords, such as the word the will be displayed by index browse, but cannot be searched on.
THE ESISBIB
SEARCH RESULT: Hitlist and Index CardThe main elements of the ESISBIB search result are the Hitlist, which is what you are presented with after performing a search, the Index Card, which is available from the hitlist, and the Report, which can be generated from the hitlist. This section briefly explains all of them.
A List Of Reference Entries: The Hitlist contains one entry for each reference matching your query , and lists the issue date and the title of the reference. Clicking on a reference title brings you to the index card for that particular reference.
Possibly A "Get Next.." Button: If the actual number of references matching your query is larger than the number of references you specified in the query form, a "Get Next .." button will appear at the top and the bottom of the Hitlist. Clicking on this button will retrieve the next batch of hits. The size of this batch is equal to the number of hits you asked for in the query form. In the case that your query has more hits than is reported, there is unfortunately no mechanism for reporting how many hits you actually got. What you can do, however, is ask for a larger number of hits, and refine your query.
Possibly A "Get Report" Button: The functionality allowing you to generate a hitlist report is described below.
The Bibliographic Profile of an Artcile: All the bibliographic Profile information available for a given reference is summarized in the Index Card.
WHAT CAN I
DO WITH THE ELEMENTS OF A SEARCH RESULT?A number of useful actions are possible on the elements of the search result, comprising the Hitlist and Index Card. For either of these elements, WHILE YOU ARE VIEWING IT ON THE SCREEN, you can save it in your own file system, mail it to another user, or print it directly, using the NCSA Mosaic functionality available in the interface. You can also create a hitlist report.
Choose A "Report" Setting in the Query Form: The "Report" setting in the ESISBIB query form allows you to specify that you want to generate a hitlist report from the search result of the query you are about to submit. The "On, Selected" option gives you all the entries in the resulting hitlist preselected for report generation. (This is most useful when you want to select all or a significant subset of the hitlist for inclusion in the report.) On the other hand, using the "On, Unselected" option you can go through the hitlist and select the entries you want. (This is most useful when you want to select a few entries in the hitlist for a report.)
Perform The Search: After you have set the wanted "Report" option, you perform the search, as usual by clicking the "Submit" button.
Select The Wanted Entries In the Hitlist and Submit: If you specified the "On, Unselected" option, select the entries you want included in the hitlist report by clicking the toggle buttons corresponding to those entries. If you specified the "On, Selected" option, unselect the entries you do not want included in the hitlist report by clicking the toggle buttons corresponding to those entries. Submit the report request by clicking on the "Get Report" button at the top or bottom of the page. (The result is a list containing the bibliographic profiles of all the entries in the selection.)
Do Something Useful With The Result: You can now save, print, or mail the report.
Click the "Save As" Button in the Mosaic Window: The "Save As" button in the bottom of the Mosaic Window pops up a window that allows you to save any file you are currently viewing, in a number of formats. Specify the format and the filename and execute.
Choose A Format For the Saved File: The format chosen for the saved file should depend on the intended use of the file. If the file will be used for viewing through Mosaic, choose HTML. If the file is intended for printing, choose PostScript. If the file is intended for viewing or editing through a Text Editor, choose ASCII or Rich Text.
Choose The "Mailto" Option In The "File" Menu: This allows you to mail the file you are currently viewing , again in a variety of formats. The format should be chosen as specified above. Then simply specify the users email address, and submit.
Choose The "Print" Option In the "File" Menu. This allows you to print the file you are currently viewing. Just fill in the command you normally use to print files on your system, choose the format, and submit. You should always choose "PostScript" as the format for printing a file.