Difference between revisions of "Help:Searching in the TypeCraft Wiki"

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The TypeCraft wiki has, like any mediawiki, a search box, which you find on the navigation bar. You can type search terms into the search box and then choose *SELECT* and a search results page will open.

If there is no result or the result is not useful, you still can use the Search page area called "Advanced" to specify the search domain. A mediawiki calls collections of wiki pagers namespaces. You could also go to your user preferences page in order to tell the TypeCraft wiki in which namespaces you would like to search when using the wiki search box.

Search results page

The intent of the search results page is to use the newly placed search box to refine a list of results. You do this by writing query commands into the search box. For example, if you want to see more terms highlighted use "OR", and if you want to see all pages with the terms "language" and "annotation, write "language AND annotation"

Other uses

To get Wikipedia search results while on any web page, you can temporarily set your browser's (web-based) search box to interface the Wikipedia search engine and land on Wikipedia's search results page; see Help:Searching from a web browser. This trick removes the need to first navigate to Wikipedia from a web page, and then do the search or navigation. It is a temporary change, and then you put it back to your preferred web-search engine.

Say while on some web page, you decide to research, at Wikipedia, material on that web page. You change your web-search box to "Wikipedia (en)", and enter the page name or the query while on that web page. The other example is that you decide to contribute information from the web to Wikipedia. Furthermore, you can reach all twelve sister projects the same way. For example, you can go straight to a Wiktionary entry by using the prefix wikt: from your web-search box.

User preferences

Main page: Help:User preferences

The search results page can open in a new tab. If your browser does not already have the manual ability to open any linked page in a new tab when you press and hold the Ctrl-key (PC) or Template:Cmd-key (Mac), this functionality can be enabled at Template:Myprefs in the Browsing section. There are also custom user-scripts to make all search results always open in a new tab. (See the scripts available in See also.)

If you create an account you can visit your Special:Preferences page (requires JavaScript) to set up:

to search Wikipedia with your own search engine to see its search results (Template:Myprefs under Appearance)
to widen the search box (Template:Myprefs under Appearance)
to disable the quasi-search results that drop down from the search box while you type (Template:Myprefs under Appearance)
to enable wildcard prefix searches, e.g., "Splark*" (Template:Myprefs under Advanced)

Syntax

Phrases in double quotes – A phrase can be found by enclosing it in double quotes, "like this". Double quotes can define a single search term that contains spaces. For example, "holly dolly" where the space is a character, differs much from holly dolly where the space is interpreted as a logical AND.

Boolean search – All major search engines support the "-" character for "logical not", the AND, the OR, and the grouping parenthesis. Logical OR can be specified by spelling it out (in capital letters); the AND operator is assumed for all terms (separated by spaces), but spelling out AND is equivalent. Parentheses are a necessary feature because (blue OR red) AND green differs from blue OR (red AND green).

Exclusion – Terms can be excluded by prefixing a hyphen or dash (-), which is "logical not". For example while -refining -unwanted search results. For example credit card -"credit card" finds all articles with credit and card except those with the phrase "credit card".

Wildcard search – A wildcard character *, standing for any length of character-string can prefix or suffix a word or string: *like will return "childlike" and "dream-like"; this*, returns results like "thistle". For example, the query *stan lists articles like Kazakhstan and Afghanistan.

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 {{TcCopyEdit}}
-The TypeCraft wiki has like any mediawiki a search box, which you find on the navigation bar. You can type search terms into the search box and the choose *SELECT* and a search results page will appear.
+The TypeCraft wiki has, like any mediawiki, a search box, which you find on the navigation bar. You can type search terms into the search box and then choose *SELECT* and  a search results page will open.
-If there is no result or the result is not  useful, you still can go to the Search page area called "Advanced" for specifying the precise domain, called [[WP:namespace|namespace]] on the wiki. You might also want to go to your user preferences page in order to tell the TypeCraft wiki in which namespaces you would like to search when using the wiki search box.
+If there is no result or the result is not useful, you still can use the Search page area called "Advanced" to specify the search domain. A mediawiki calls collections of wiki pagers [[WP:namespace|namespaces]]. You could also go to your user preferences page in order to tell the TypeCraft wiki in which namespaces you would like to search when using the wiki search box.
 ==Search results page==
-You can get to the ''search results page'' by entering what is not a [[Help:page name|page name]] (or a [[Help:redirect|redirect]]), or by doing an empty search (clicking the magnifying glass, or pressing ''Go''). The ordering of the list of search results is by relevance or user settings.
-* Important terms are highlighted in bold lettering
-* It will advise '''There is a page named <span style="color:#0645AD">''pagename''</span> on Wikipedia''' when there was a direct match to a pagename, a [[Help:disambiguation|disambiguation]] page, or a redirect (and thus, even to a section of a page).
-* A message box may show up beside a listing, indicating that that page is linked to a [[WP:SISTER|sister page on another project]], such as a [[Wiktionary]] entry tied to that Wikipedia page, but this only happens for listed ''articles''.
-The use of the usual search box while on the search results page defeats the purpose of the page.
+The intent of the ''search results page'' is to use the newly placed search box to refine a list of results. You do this by writing query commands into the search box. For example, if you want to see more terms highlighted use "OR", and if you want to see all pages with the terms "language" and "annotation, write "language AND annotation"
-There are two search boxes because the usual search box is on ''every'' page, but the intent of the ''search results page'' is to use the newly placed search box to refine a list of results. There are several ways to accomplish this, either with the mouse or by query commands typed into the search box. For example, if you want to see more terms highlighted use "OR", and if you want to remove results use "-". (See ''Syntax'' below.)
-===Refining results===
-[[File:Search page.PNG|thumb|300px|alt=Wikipedia special search box|The refinement of search results offers a mouse-driven interface.]]
-[[File:Search page advanced July 2014.png|thumb|350px|alt=Some Wikipedia advanced search options|The ''Advanced'' filters of the search page.]]
-[[WP:article|Article]]s are in the main [[Help:Namespace|namespace]], or "article space", but ''[[Special:Statistics]]'' will show that there are many times more ''pages'' on Wikipedia than there are ''articles'' on Wikipedia. Other ''types'' of pages are in other ''namespaces'', and these can be searched by clicking on one of the filter-activation "links" in the grey frame just below the search box:
-*If ''Multimedia'' is selected, the '''File''' namespace reveals page names with matching images, videos and audios.  Your query matches titles (denoted "'''<span style="color:#0645AD">File:''pagename''</span>'''"), data filenames, and their descriptions.
-*If ''Help and Project pages'' is selected, resulting titles will start with "'''Help:'''" and "'''Wikipedia:'''", indicating the namespaces, which contain basic help, and also Wikipedia guideline, policy, maintenance and administration pages.
-*If ''Everything'' is selected, the entire database is searched, and there are about twenty-six namespaces, but only four others besides articles are commonly searched: Wikipedia, Help, Template, and Category.
-*If ''Advanced'' is selected, the gray frame expands to reveal all the namespaces, each with a check-box indicating the search status. An additional check-box arranges for the current choices to be remembered as the default for future searches.
-Talk pages are in their own, respective namespaces, and are not included in these selections.
-See ''[[#Search engine features|Search engine features]]'' below for using search box commands to refine results.
 ===Other uses===
@@ Line 47: / Line 28: @@
 * to enable wildcard prefix searches, e.g., "Splark*" ({{myprefs|Gadgets}} under ''Advanced'')
-===Redirects===
-If your query matches in the title of a [[Help:redirect|redirect]] pagename, that redirect will show ''in the parenthetical'' beside the listed page name: "(Redirected from '''''<span style="color:#0645AD">Redirect pagename</span>''''')".  Multiple redirects to the same page are de-cluttered from both the drop-down list and the search results list, so that only one such redirect match will show. (For lists of redirects, see ''[[:Category:Wikipedia redirects]]''. For redirects to a page, see ''[[Special:WhatLinksHere]]''.)
-.
 ===Syntax===
-The following features can be used to refine searches.  Many of these links are a {{tl|search link}}.  (''Search link'' is not guaranteed to exactly emulate the search box.)
-* '''Phrases in double quotes''' – A [[phrase]] can be found by enclosing it in double quotes, <kbd>"like this"</kbd>.  Double quotes can define a single search term that contains spaces. For example, ''{{Search link|"holly dolly"}}'' where the space is a character, differs much from ''{{Search link|holly dolly}}'' where the space is interpreted as a logical AND.
+'''Phrases in double quotes''' – A phrase can be found by enclosing it in double quotes, "like this". Double quotes can define a single search term that contains spaces. For example, "holly dolly" where the space is a character, differs much from holly dolly where the space is interpreted as a logical AND.
-* '''Boolean search''' – All major search engines support the "<kbd>-</kbd>" character for "logical not", the AND, the <kbd>OR</kbd>, and the grouping parenthesis. Logical OR can be specified by spelling it out (in capital letters); the AND operator is assumed for all terms (separated by spaces), but spelling out <kbd>AND</kbd> is equivalent. Parentheses are a necessary feature because {{nowrap|<kbd>(blue OR red) AND green</kbd>}} differs from {{nowrap|<kbd>blue OR (red AND green)</kbd>}}.
-* '''Exclusion'''{{anchor|exclusion}} – Terms can be excluded by prefixing a hyphen or dash (<kbd>-</kbd>), which ''is'' "logical not".  For example <kbd>while -refining -unwanted search results</kbd>. For example ''{{Search link|credit card -"credit card"}}'' finds all articles with ''credit'' and ''card'' except those with the phrase "''credit card''".
+Boolean search – All major search engines support the "-" character for "logical not", the AND, the OR, and the grouping parenthesis. Logical OR can be specified by spelling it out (in capital letters); the AND operator is assumed for all terms (separated by spaces), but spelling out AND is equivalent. Parentheses are a necessary feature because (blue OR red) AND green differs from blue OR (red AND green).
-* '''Wildcard search'''{{anchor|wildcard}} – A wildcard character <kbd>*</kbd>, standing for any length of character-string can prefix or suffix a word or string: <kbd>*like</kbd> will return "childlike" and "dream-like"; <kbd>this*</kbd>, returns results like "thistle". For example, the query ''{{search link|*stan}}'' lists articles like ''Kazakhstan'' and ''Afghanistan''.
-* '''Search fuzzily'''{{anchor|respell}} – [[Approximate string matching|Spelling relaxation]] is requested by suffixing a tilde (<kbd>~</kbd>) like <kbd>this~</kbd>, with results like "thus" and "thins".  This search technique is sometimes called a "sounds-like" search. For example, searching for ''{{search link|charlie~ parker~}}'' returns ''Charlie Parker'', ''Charles Palmer'',  ''Charley Parks'', etc.; the incorrect ''{{search link|intropi~}}'' finds ''entropy''.  A mnemonic: <search>-ish.
+Exclusion – Terms can be excluded by prefixing a hyphen or dash (-), which is "logical not". For example while -refining -unwanted search results. For example credit card -"credit card" finds all articles with credit and card except those with the phrase "credit card".
-* '''Search results!''' – Prefixing a tilde <kbd>~like this query</kbd> always gives search results, never jumping to a single title.  It functions as the keyboard shortcut to clicking on the "containing" option. For example, ''{{search link|~similiar}}'' finds pages with the misspelling, instead of being [[WP:redirect|redirect]]ed to ''Similarity''. Making ''tilde'' the first character disables a redirect. There will be no disambiguation page, no article, no single page as a result.  A mnemonic: "wave of <search results>"
+Wildcard search – A wildcard character *, standing for any length of character-string can prefix or suffix a word or string: *like will return "childlike" and "dream-like"; this*, returns results like "thistle". For example, the query *stan lists articles like Kazakhstan and Afghanistan.