Version: 0.84, wais-8-b4.
Date: Mon Feb 17 1992
Author: Jonny Goldman <jonathan@Think.COM>

This HELP contains information for both XWAIS, a shell for the X Windows
WAIS system, and XWAISQ, the X Windows User Interface to the WAIS system.

If you pressed HELP from the XWAIS Window, read the next section.

If you pressed HELP from an X WAIS Question window, go to the section
titled XWAISQ.

One quick note:  most of click/open gestures can be done with a double
click on the item too.  This is new to this version.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
XWAIS:

This is the main window for xwais, the X interface to a Wide Area
Information Server.  Using xwais, you can quickly obtain information from
the sources provided by your server.

There are three parts to this X WAIStation window: Questions, Sources, and
Status.

"Questions" lists the files in which you have saved questions from previous
sessions.  If this is the first time you are using xwais, the Questions
list is empty.

"Sources" lists the sources available to you.

"Status" displays messages from xwais.

Asking a Question

To ask a new question, click on the New button beneath the Questions
list.  A Question window appears; click on the Help button in this window
to find out how to ask the question.

To ask a question from your Questions list, click on its name to highlight
it, then click on the Open button.  A window appears showing the question.
You might want to save a question and re-ask it if your sources are
periodically updated, and you want to see if there is new information
available.


Editing and Adding Sources

In general, you will not need to do much with sources.  If you do wish to
edit or create new sources, see the WAIStation Users's Guide to learn the
meaning of the slots in the Source Edit window.

To add a new source, click on the New button beneath the Sources list.  A
Source window appears.  Fill in the Name field with the name of the source
(ending in .src) that will become the name of the source for further
questions.  Fill in the rest of the information according to the
description in the WAIStation User's Guide.

To modify a source from your Source list, click on its name to highlight
it, then click on the Open button.  A window appears showing the source.
Change the apropriate information according to the description in the
WAIStation User's Guide.  


Leaving xwais

To leave xwais, click twice on the Quit button beneath the Questions list.
(This only closes the XWAIStation window.  If you have question windows
open, you must close them separately.)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
XWAISQ:

Use this window to obtain information from one or more sources available in
your WAIS system.

If you have opened a questions that already exists, it appears in the "Tell
me about:" box.

To ask a new question, type search words in the "Tell me about:" box. These
should be words that relate as closely as possible to the topic you are
interested in.  They don't have to form a grammatical sentence, and they
don't have to be in any particular order.

To choose the source or sources to be searched for the information, click
on Add Source.  A popup menu displays the list of available sources. Click
on the source you want to highlight it, then click on the "Ok" button; this
adds it to the "In Sources:" list.  To delete a source, click on it in the
"In Sources:" list so that it is highlighted, then click on the Delete
Source button.

When you have chosen the sources you want, click on the Search button to
start the search.  The documents that WAIS finds are listed in the
"Resulting documents:" list. The number to the left of each document is its
"score"; the higher the score, the closer the document matched your
question.

To view a document, click on its name in the list so that it is
highlighted, and then click on the View button.  The document appears in a
window.  Click on the Add Section button to add this file to the "Similar
to:" list, which is described below.  Click on Find Key to highlight the
search words that this document matches.  Click on Save to File to save the
document to a file; a dialog box appears that prompts for a filename.
Click on Done to delete the window.

If you want to fine-tune your search, add documents to the "Similar to:"
list.  Adding a document to this list essentially tells WAIS to "get me
more documents like this one."  To add a document, click on it in the
"Resulting documents:" list, then click on Add Document.  To remove a
document, click on it in the "Similar to:" list, then click on Delete
Document.  When you have the documents you want in the "Similar to:" list,
click on Search to rerun the search.

Click on the Done button when you are finished with your search. If this is
a new question, a dialog box will appear, asking if you want to save the
question to a file.  If you do, it will subsequently appear in your
Questions list in the main X WAIS window.
