Zettair can be compiled using two different build systems. The first
(most commonly used) is using GNU configure and make. The second is
via Visual C++. Instructions on configuration, compilation and
installation using GNU configure and make are below. See the section
on Visual C++ below for instructions on compiling Zettair on windows.
Note that in both cases, compilation of Zettair requires the presence
of the zlib compression library.
1. Configuration
================
From inside the top-level directory created when you unpacked the
Zettair distribution, run the 'configure' script:
$ ./configure
configure accepts a range of options. To get a list of available
options, run with the '--help' flag:
$ ./configure --help
The most useful option is the --prefix option, which specifies which
directory Zettair is going to be installed under. So, for instance,
to install Zettair in its own directory under '/usr/include', run
configure like so:
$ ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/zettair
The default Zettair installation directory is /usr/local. Make sure
to specify a directory into which you have, or can acquire, write
permission: for anything under /usr, this probably means you need to
be able to become the root user.
2. Compilation
==============
Once configure has finished running, the Zettair distribution is ready
to be compiled. Also from inside the top-level Zettair distribution
directory, run the 'make' program:
$ make
3. Installation
===============
After Zettair has been compiled, you can install it in the directory
you specified with the --prefix option to configure. To do this, run
make with the 'install' target:
$ make install
Assuming that you selected '/usr/local/zettair' as your installation
prefix, this will create the directories '/usr/local/zettair/bin' and
'/usr/local/zettair/share'. The main Zettair executable, zet, and a
number of utilities will be installed in the former; configuration
files will be installed in the latter.
While it is possible to run Zettair directly from the directory
you compiled it in without performing an explicit installation,
this is not recommended, as you have to explicitly specify the
location of the configuration files each time you build an index.
If you want to run from the compilation directory, we suggest you
run configure with the argument '--prefix=.', then run 'make
install'.
To save yourself having to type the full path to the zet executable
every time you want to run it (such as '/usr/local/zettair/bin/zet'),
you might want to add Zettair's bin directory to your PATH. How you
do this depends on which shell you use. For instance, with the bash
shell, edit the file ~/.bash_profile, and add a line something like:
PATH=/usr/local/zettair/bin:$PATH
This will probably not be necessary if you used the default prefix of
'/usr/local'.
4. Visual C++ configuration, compilation and installation
=========================================================
First, obtain the latest Zettair distribution and decompress it.
Obtain the latest zlib source distribution (do NOT download the precompiled DLL)
from http://www.zlib.net/ and decompress it into a seperate directory.
Follow the zlib directions to create a statically-linked zlib.lib using
Visual C++.
Locate zlib.lib within your zlib directory tree, and copy it to the
root zettair-X.X/ directory.
In addition, copy zlib.h and zconf.h into zettair-X.X/src/include.
Load zettair-X.X/win32/visualc6/zettair.dsw into Visual C++.
Using the Build/Set Active Configuration menu option, select the
executable that you wish to build.
Build the executable by selecting Build/Rebuild All. (Repeat for any
further executables that you wish to build). You may then copy the
created executables whereever you like, and use them.
4. Running
==========
Now you're ready to read the Zettair user manual, in the 'doc'
subdirectory of the Zettair distribution.
First, though, you might like to check that everything installed and
works ok (or perhaps you're just impatient to take your new purchase
for a spin). To help with this, we've included the text for Herman
Melville's "Moby Dick" as a sample collection for you to play around
with. This can be found in the subdirectory sampletext/mobydick.
Let's begin by indexing Moby Dick. To do this, change your current
directory to sampletext/mobydick. (You can index it from anywhere,
but this is simplest.) We'll assume that the 'zet' executable is in
your PATH; otherwise, substitute the full pathname to the executable
wherever you see 'zet' below. So, let's build this index:
$ zet -i -t TREC mobydick.trec
The '-i' argument tells zet that we're building a new index. '-t
TREC' tells zet that the input documents are in TREC format. If you
don't know what the TREC format is, don't worry: it's just a
convenient way for us to store multiple documents in the one file.
The default input format is to treat each input file as a separate
HTML document; since we want to treat each paragraph of Moby Dick as a
separate document, this would mean a lot of small files.
Now, the text of Moby Dick is less than 1.3 MBs in length, so this
won't take long to run--Zettair is more used to working with document
collections of 10 GB or more, but it won't complain. When it's
finished running, you should see two new files in the current
directory, one called 'index.v.0', the 'index.map'. These are
Zettair's index files.
If you're interested, the former is the index proper, containing
the list of terms and where each term occurs; the latter is the
document map, providing information about each document indexed.
Don't open these files, or you'll violate the EULA! No, just
kidding, but they're in binary format, and so won't make a lot of
sense in your text editor.
So now we're ready to run some queries. To do this, we run zet again,
this time without any options:
$ zet
Zettair will load up the index (very quickly, in this case), and then
prompt you for input. Let's test the rumour that Moby Dick has
something to say about whales:
> whale
1. Chapter32,Paragraph21 (score 2.506133, docid 688)
2. Chapter32,Paragraph19 (score 2.411723, docid 686)
3. Chapter32,Paragraph23 (score 2.375970, docid 690)
4. Chapter32,Paragraph46 (score 2.344365, docid 713)
5. Chapter91,Paragraph17 (score 2.256999, docid 1807)
6. Chapter91,Paragraph18 (score 2.247493, docid 1808)
7. Chapter75,Paragraph10 (score 2.245327, docid 1552)
8. Chapter0,Paragraph74 (score 2.150178, docid 74)
9. Chapter0,Paragraph69 (score 2.145605, docid 69)
10. Chapter0,Paragraph40 (score 2.122386, docid 40)
11. Chapter32,Paragraph24 (score 2.119576, docid 691)
12. Chapter0,Paragraph92 (score 2.118144, docid 92)
13. Chapter36,Paragraph25 (score 2.080975, docid 773)
14. Chapter32,Paragraph8 (score 2.059031, docid 675)
15. Chapter0,Paragraph51 (score 2.054273, docid 51)
16. Chapter0,Paragraph63 (score 2.050327, docid 63)
17. Chapter79,Paragraph6 (score 2.048261, docid 1590)
18. Chapter64,Paragraph60 (score 2.046396, docid 1387)
19. Chapter49,Paragraph7 (score 2.042479, docid 1059)
20. Chapter55,Paragraph10 (score 2.039895, docid 1226)
20 results of 576 shown (took 0.001639 seconds)
This tells us that the word "whale" occurs in 576 documents in the
collection (which is to say, paragraphs in Moby Dick). Zettair thinks
the most pertinent paragraph is paragraph 21 of chapter 32. We can
ask Zettair to print out this document using the 'cache' directive and
specifying the document's docid:
> [cache:688]
Chapter 32, Paragraph 21
FOLIOS. Among these I here include the following chapters:--I. The
SPERM WHALE; II. the RIGHT WHALE; III. the FIN-BACK WHALE; IV. the
HUMP-BACKED WHALE; V. the RAZOR-BACK WHALE; VI. the SULPHUR-BOTTOM
WHALE.
Don't worry about the and tags: that's just part of the
TREC format we've used to mark up Moby Dick for indexing. You'll
notice that the word 'whale' occurs seven times in little more than
three lines, which is why Zettair thinks this is probably the
paragraph you're looking for.
You can, of course, query for more than one word at a time. Say we
were looking for a particular kind of whale:
> white whale
1. Chapter36,Paragraph25 (score 6.672417, docid 773)
[...]
20. Chapter100,Paragraph31 (score 5.192795, docid 1963)
20 results of 652 shown (took 0.000801 seconds)
Hmm, 652 paragraphs--but "whale" only occurs in 576! Well, what
Zettair is reporting here is all the documents with either "white"
_or_ "whale" in them. We can tell specify that we only want documents
that _both_ occur in:
> white AND whale
1. Chapter128,Paragraph4 (score 4.778444, docid 2413)
[...]
20. Chapter100,Paragraph11 (score 3.977057, docid 1943)
20 results of 110 shown (took 0.001045 seconds)
or, probably more to the point, only documents that the exact phrase
"white whale" occurs in:
> "white whale"
1. Chapter36,Paragraph25 (score 5.618426, docid 773)
[...]
20. Chapter59,Paragraph4 (score 4.402413, docid 1269)
20 results of 80 shown (took 0.000999 seconds)
This is great so far (or at least, we hope you think so), but it gets
tiresome having to individually request each document to see if it
what we're looking for, especially if the documents are longer than a
single paragraph. What we really want is for the list of results to
include a summary of each document. And we can ask Zettair to provide
just this to us.
To do so, we'll have to restart Zettair. Hit "CONTROL-D" or whatever
key combination indicates end of input on your system to end your
current session. This time, we'll run the zet executable with the
'-q' option to indicate that we'd like to see document summaries, and
what form we want these summaries to be in. We'll also restrict
output to just the top 2 results:
$ zet -q capitalise -n 2
Zettair can highlight your search terms within the document summaries
in a number of different ways, 'capitalise' being one of them. So,
let's try out some summaries:
> ship sea storm
1. Chapter48,Paragraph51 (score 9.602944, docid 1051)
Wet, drenched through, and shivering cold, despairing of SHIP or
boat, we lifted up our eyes as the dawn came on. The mist still
spread over the SEA, the empty lantern lay crushed in the bottom of
the boat. ...We all heard a faint creaking, as of ropes and yards
hitherto muffled by the STORM. ...Affrighted, we all sprang into the
SEA as the SHIP at last loomed into view, bearing right down upon us
within a distance of not much more than its length.
2. Chapter0,Paragraph92 (score 9.216548, docid 92)
"Oh, the rare old Whale, mid STORM and gale In his ocean home will
be A giant in might, where might is right, And King of the boundless
SEA." --WHALE SONG.
2 results of 526 shown (took 0.012296 seconds)
> "dark blue ocean"
1. Chapter35,Paragraph11 (score 10.445776, docid 745)
"Roll on, thou deep and DARK BLUE OCEAN, roll! Ten thousand
blubber-hunters sweep over thee in vain."
1 results of 1 shown (took 0.002945 seconds)
And that concludes our tour.