7. THE FOUR SEARCH PANELS

The following illustration was presented earlier.

The ‘Elaboration bars’ have been described, followed by the two ‘Occurrences panels’ below them. 

Occupying much of the central part of the OVERVIEW layout are the four search panels:

1. NoH (tawny brown)
2. JSM (yellow)
3. ReS (light brown)
4. Aus (grey)

Below, or alongside, each is a small ‘searcher’ field, into which the user typed the word to be searched for.

Fig. 7.1. Analysis of the ‘Overview’ screen in the databases

SEARCHER NoH

Assume a search is to be undertaken for ‘gwiyung’:

Fig. 7.2 Results for the ‘gwiyung’ search.

The word ‘gwiyang’ has been entered into the appropriately coloured (tawny brown) and  previously blank ‘searcher’ field at the bottom right. This immediately brings up all instances of the word in stand-alone form in the database. That is, it does NOT bring up instances of the word appearing with other words, as in a sentence.

The second example has been clicked on, revealing the full word. All the others are truncated, there being too many columns in the panel to permit much to be shown in most of them. But there is enough on view, and any field can be clicked on to show its content.

The scroll bar on the far right is coloured grey. That indicated that there are more examples than on view, and they can be looked at by clicking on the down arrow at the bottom of the scroll bar.

While data can be displayed for every one of the columns, only a few are used in the case of ‘gwiyang’. The columns showing data are, from left to right:

—pink: the source

—two shades of green: page and line

—dark grey: the original Australian language record

—tawny brown: the NoH respelling of the record

—light grey: the original English translation

—yellow: the standardised English translation

—cream: various comments for three of the records

—pale blue: in the bottom record, the hint of some content. This is a utility field called ‘word-for-word’ often used as a temporary data dump location

—bright yellow: two entries in the ‘comment transcription’ field, showing that some comment has been made about the transcription of the record either in relation to the transcription of the original recorder or by the database operator.

—dark blue, gold print: the abbreviation for the language concerned. In this particular example B, S and D can be seen. If clicked on they would show BB (for ‘classical Sydney language’; Syd (Sydney language) and DG (Dharug).

SEARCHER JSM

Assume a search is to be undertaken for ‘wood’:

Fig. 7.3 Results for the ‘wood’ search.

The word ‘wood’ is entered into the red-bordered yellow-coloured searcher field for the JSM search panel to the lower-centre right portion of the OVERVIEW layout. Immediately various results appear, most of which are ‘wadi’, the word for ‘wood’, stick’ and ‘club’ and even ‘tree’ (as a similar search for ‘tree’ would at once reveal).

SEARCHER ReS

Two examples follow of the use of the ReS searcher, which is used for a full word, not available in the NoH column, where it has been stripped to its stem with suffixes in other columns. The light-brown (the standard colour for ReS) searcher field is red bordered to indicate its special ‘searcher’ function.

Fig. 7.4 ReS searcher results for ‘badabawu’ (‘eat will I’, i.e. ‘I shall eat’)

Fig. 7.5 ReS searcher results for ‘nabawinya’ (‘see will I thee’, i.e. ‘I shall see you’)

In the lower example, the ‘JS Adj’ column has been clicked, revealing to the two pronouns ‘I thee’ in the ‘see will I thee’ verb-sentence.

SEARCHER Aus

The last of the ‘Searcher’ panels enables the user to find any complete entry in the Australian field — but not part of an entry.

Fig. 7.6 Aus searcher results for ‘Bial’ with the English column clicked in the second row

This panel is so little used it might in the interests of space be dispensed with.

GENERAL COMMENTS ON THE SEARCHER PANELS

The specific advantages of the searcher panels is that searches can be undertaken without leaving the record concerned.

The very same searches can be undertaken in the ‘Records and analysis’ columns of the OVERVIEW layout, and can be done even more thoroughly there. But they cannot be done without leaving the particular record that might have inspired the search in question.

And for wider searching across the databases, for any particular record, the LINKS panel is only a button click away:

Fig. 7.7 The four standard buttons appearing on most layouts