Category Archives: Easy PDF Search

Speeding up your searches in Easy PDF Search

Searching your PDF files is already fast using Easy PDF Search.  You can make it even faster when there are no new files to scan and index.

Every time you run a search using the default option Index new files only, Easy PDF Search will first scan your libraries for new files before performing the search.

However, if you know that no new files have been added since your last search, you can skip the scanning process by selecting the Search index only (selected libraries) option.

Selecting this option can make a significant difference when your libraries contain a lot of files, as Easy PDF Search no longer needs to check if each and every file needs to be indexed or reindexed.

In Easy PDF Search 10.3, there is now a prompt to change to this option when Easy PDF Search detects that no new files were indexed in the last 5 searches.

Download a 14-day trial of Easy PDF Search now and make lightning fast searches in your PDF file collection.

Multi-user PDF search

So you have a collection of thousands of PDF files.  You use Easy PDF Search to create a full text database that you use to search your PDF collection.  Now you want to allow other users to do the same.  What are your options?

Easy PDF Search Basic Edition allows up to 2 other users to search your PDF database, while the Standard Edition allows as many users as your machine can support.

Configuration

On the machine where the Easy PDF Search full text database database was created, in the Connect to Database window, select the Local database item and also the Database will be shared via hotspot item.

 

Starting the hotspot – Basic Edition

Click on the Start hotspot button on the toolbar.

Enter the hotspot settings you want to apply.

When you click the Start button, the hotspot will be active.  On the toolbar, there is now a Stop hotspot button.

 

Starting the hotspot – Standard Edition

Similar to the Basic Edition, click on the Start hotspot button on the toolbar to open the hotspot settings window.

You can learn more about the various hotspot settings for the Standard Edition here.

In short, you can support more users on the Standard Edition, and each user can be assigned roles that limit their access to your PDF libraries.

Connecting to a hotspot

In the Connect to Database window, select the Easy PDF Search Server item, and enter the IP address and port of the machine where the hotspot is active.

If you are connecting to a hotspot running the Basic Edition, leave the Login value empty.  If you are connecting to a Standard Edition server, you need to enter the Login value.

Click on the Connect button to connect to the hotspot-enabled database.  You can now search the PDF files in that database.

Searching PDF files using word stemmers

Easy PDF Search by default searches for complete words/phrases in your PDF files.  For example, if we search for the word like, only files containing that exact word are returned and highlighted in the search results.

If we wanted to search for words starting with the word like, we can perform a prefix search using the * character e.g. like*

This returns all words with the prefix like.  Unrelated words (from a grammar perspective) like likelihood and likewise, will be returned, while a related noun like liking will not be returned.

Stemmed words

Stemming is the process of removing a part of a word, or reducing a word to its stem or root.  In the example above, the words like, likes, liking, liked, and likely all share the same root word i.e. like.

When we want Easy PDF Search to use stem words when searching e.g.

we need to first create a stem database, then search that stem database.

Creating a stem database

To create a stem database, click on the Options > Stemmer language > Settings item.

In the Stemmer Settings window, select up to 5 languages to create a stem database for.

You can create stem databases for the following 27 languages:

  • Armenian
  • Basque
  • Catalan
  • Danish
  • Dutch
  • English
  • Finnish
  • French
  • German
  • Greek
  • Hindi
  • Hungarian
  • Indonesian
  • Irish
  • Italian
  • Lithuanian
  • Nepali
  • Norwegian
  • Portuguese
  • Romanian
  • Russian
  • Serbian
  • Spanish
  • Swedish
  • Tamil
  • Turkish
  • Yiddish

When you want to search the stem database, select the stem language you want to search in from the Options menu.

Easy PDF Search then displays the stem language database that the search will be performed in.

In the search results, the stem database that was searched will also be displayed.

Testing the stemmers

To test which words stem to the same root word, you can use the test utility in the Stemmer Settings window.  Select the language you want to test, then click on the Test … stemmer tab.

Enter the search word, then a list of words you want to check if the root word matches the search word.

Next, click on the Test button.  Non-matches will be displayed in a strike-out manner.

Download a 14-day trial of Easy PDF Search now and experience how easy and fast it is to search your PDF files collection, now with the ability to perform stem word searches.

Filtering libraries in Easy PDF Search

In Easy PDF Search 7.4, you can now filter the list of displayed libraries.  Say we have the following category and library structure:

To display only the PostgreSQL related libraries, we enter postgresql in the Filter libraries area.

Partial searches are also possible e.g.

To filter on multiple values, enter each word separated by a space e.g.

In the above example, Easy PDF Search will display all libraries containing the words postgresql or arduino.

If you need to filter phrases, enclose the phrase in double quotes e.g.

In this case, only libraries containing the word postgresql admin or arduino are displayed.

Download a 14-day trial of Easy PDF Search now and start searching your PDF files fast and work with the search results easily.

ChatGPT integration

We recently added the option to ‘chat’ with ChatGPT in Easy DICOM Viewer and Easy PDF Search, as these 2 products are used in research settings and having the ability to obtain answers from ChatGPT within the product was a useful feature.

What advantage does our ChatGPT integration offer over simply opening a browser session and connecting to the ChatGPT server?

Chat session organization

You can start multiple chat sessions and organize them by categories.   You can define as many categories and start as many chat sessions as you require.

Chat session persistence

All your chat sessions are automatically restored when you open the application.  This ensures you never lose any of your previous chat responses.

Customizable display

There are also various settings you can use to customize and display the chat session.

Per-chat settings

For each chat session, you can change settings like the maximum tokens, input language and response temperature.

This gives you better control over how ChatGPT responds to your queries.

Multi-language support

You can use different languages in our ChatGPT integration.  We use Google Translate to translate your questions and the responses.  For e.g. this is a sample chat session where the questions were entered in Japanese, and the responses translated to Japanese from English.

Of course, you can also choose to display the English translations.

If you want to give our ChatGPT integration a try, download a free 14-day trial of Easy PDF Search or Easy DICOM Viewer now.

See also:

 

Getting your ChatGPT API key

To use the ChatGPT UI in our products, you need to provide an API token.

You will need to first create an account with OpenAI, using this URL (https://chat.openai.com/auth/login).

Once your account has been created and validated, open this URL (https://platform.openai.com/) to create your API token.

Click on the account settings on the top right, then click on the View API keys item.

On the next page, click on the Create new secret key button to generate a new key.

Enter a description for the key, then click on the Create secret key button:

A new key is then created for you.

Copy and paste this value into the API token field in the Chat Settings window.

See also:

 

Advanced hotspot settings in Easy PDF Search

Easy PDF Search now lets you share your index database with even more users and control access at a finer level with the Standard Edition license.

So say you’ve indexed tens of thousands of your PDF files.  Instead of each user in your company indexing the same files and having the same database on their machine, you can now share your index database with as many users as your hardware can support.

The Basic Edition license allows you to share your database with up to 2 remote users and has basic hotspot functionality.

The Standard Edition license lets you set up roles which controls access to your libraries:

and users which allows you to define different logins and assign roles to each user.

You can also set up a self-signed certificate to encrypt your connections using SSL for improved security.

If you’re concerned that your users may overload your machine with their search requests, you can define a limit to the number of result rows returned.

If this limit is reached when your users perform a search, a message so that they are aware that the search results have been truncated.

So if you need to share your index database with more than 2 users or require better control over security and access to your libraries, the Standard Edition license will meet those requirements.

Download a 14-day trial of Easy PDF Search now and experience how easy it is to share your index database and help your users perform lightning-quick searches on your PDF collection.

Easy PDF Search ‘hotspot’

We added a ‘hotspot’ feature to Easy PDF Search to help you share your PDF index easily with other users.  We originally wanted to call it the ‘application server function’, but felt that ‘hotspot’ was a more user-friendly and recognisable name, and users would be familiar with the hotspot analogy on smartphones.

Setting up a hotspot

The hotspot function essentially shares your Easy PDF Search database with up to 2 other users.  When you set up a hotspot, you enter the port you want to open and the password.

Connecting to a hotspot

Once you have set up your hotspot, your users can connect to your hotspot using your computer name/IP address, port, and password.

Restrictions when searching a hotspot database

Your users can only search your existing index.  They will not be able to index any new files in your libraries.

This reduces the possibility of users indexing your PDF files unnecessarily.  For the user hosting the hotspot database, you can still index the new PDF files.

Let us know what you think of the hotspot feature, and any suggestions you may have.

The above feature area available in the Easy PDF Search Basic Edition.  For more advanced sharing options, you will require the Standard Edition.

You can download a 14-day trial of Easy PDF Search here, and experience for yourself how easy it is to search you PDF file collection, and share the index database with other users.

Scrolling to search words in Easy PDF Search

We had a user who contacted us recently with a navigation issue.  She had been using Easy PDF Search instead of Acrobat because Acrobat was too slow handling hundreds of pages.  However, because her PDF files are not in A4 format, it was cumbersome to scroll the pages using the scroll bars, to locate the search words.

We discovered that her PDF files were scans of historical publications, dating back to the mid-1850s, and were in the classic ‘broadsheet’ format.  This is a page at 50% magnification.

To read anything, you had to set the zoom to at least 200%.

To improve the usability for such files, we made the following changes in Easy PDF Search 7:

  • mouse panning
    Pressing the CONTROL key, together with the left mouse button, and moving the mouse allows you to pan the page left/right and up/down.  This removes the need to use the scroll bars.
  • scroll to next search word
    There is now a button you can click (or use the F3 key) to scroll the page to the next search word.


    You can limit the scope of this function by setting the 2 options to limit it to only the current word, and/or the current page.


    This removes the need to visually scan for the highlighted search words.

The user was amazed with these changes which helped her save even more time on a genealogical and historical research project.

You can download a 14-day trial of Easy PDF Search here, and experience for yourself how easy it is to search you PDF file collection.

Importing and exporting libraries in Easy PDF Search

in Easy PDF Search 6.5, we added the functionality  to export and import your category and library structure.  Some users wanted to share their library structures with other users, and there was no easy way to do that previously.

To export your library configuration settings, select the Export libraries configuration item from the Tools menu.

Then select a file to store the configuration in.  You can now share the file with another user.  To import the configuration, select the Import libraries configuration item from the Tools menu.

Then select the file you exported earlier.  Easy PDF Search will then import the category and library structure from the file.

Note that the existing library configuration will be replaced by this new configuration.