Options Files

Description of configuration files used by the dtSearch Engine

Some dtSearch configuration data is stored in text files that the dtSearch Engine reads as needed. The dtSearch Engine will function without any of these files, but if the files are present they are used to provide enhanced or customized capabilities.

If no path is provided for one of these filenames, the dtSearch Engine will look for the file first in the Private directory and then in the Home directory.

If a file is not present, the dtSearch Engine will disable the associated feature. For example, if there is no stemming.dat file, then stemming will have no effect in searches. If there is no noise word list, all words are indexed.

The Options > Preferences dialog box in dtSearch Desktop can be used to create or modify these files.

The files are:

Option setting	Default filename	Purpose
AlphabetFile	default.abc	Controls which characters are treated as searchable, word breaking, ignored, etc. If not present, a default set of rules applies.
FileTypeTableFile	filetype.xml	Rules for recognizing file formats such as older WordStar versions that cannot be detected automatically.
NoiseWordFile	noise.dat	List of words that are too common to be useful in searching and which are excluded from indexing.
SegmentationRulesFile	fileseg.xml	Rules for breaking long text files into logical subdocuments when indexing.
StemmingRulesFile	stemming.dat	Stemming rules for stemming searches.
TextFieldsFile	fields.xml	Name of the file containing rules for extraction of field data from text files based on markers in the next.
UserThesaurusFile	thesaur.xml	User-defined synonym sets.