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dtSearch Text Retrieval Engine Programmer's Reference
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.