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User Manual for Motto Search, version 1.0
1. Introduction Thank you for purchasing Motto Search! Motto Search is designed to be intuitive and easy to use, but it does include a number of subtle features that you may find valuable. You can read about these features in this user manual. 2. Support If you have any questions, bug reports, feature requests, or any other feedback, please contact Motto Software via e-mail: contact@mottosearch.com 3. Entering Search Terms The edit field labeled Find: is where you enter your search term, or terms.
Motto Search searches a file's name and path as if it were part of the file's text. If you want results from a certain file or directory to appear first, you can enter the file name or directory name as a separate search term. If Motto Search's file name cache is filled, it will search files that match the terms first, to improve performance. Pressing Enter in the Find edit field will start or stop a search. If Motto Search is idle, or you've changed the search terms or search path, pressing Enter will start a new search. If you're already searching and didn't change the terms or path, pressing Enter will stop the search. This means you can start a search with Enter, and then stop it when you see the results you want by pressing Enter again. If focus is in the Find edit field, you can browse your search results by pressing the up and down arrow keys, or Page Up and Page Down. You can switch to the Path edit field by pressing tab. 4. Entering Search Directories The edit field labeled Path: is where you enter the directory, or directories, that you want to search. You can enter multiple directories by separating them with semicolons. Example: c:\foo;c:\bar If you change the path, it will clear Motto Search's file name cache and performance may temporarily degrade. For temporary path changes, try running a new instance of Motto Search by choosing File / New Window. If focus is in the Path edit field, the up/down arrow keys, Page Up/Down keys, and Tab key will work as they do in the Find edit field. 5. Results Pane The results pane shows you the results of your search. You can sort the results by rank, file name, or line text by clicking on the appropriate column header. If you click on a result or navigate to it via the keyboard, it will be displayed in the preview pane. You can use commands in the Search menu to adjust the ranking of your results (see Section 8, Menu Commands). For performance reasons, the number of results displayed is limited to the highest-ranked 10,000. 6. Preview Pane The preview pane shows you the file that contains the currently selected result. The file name is displayed in the read-only text field at the top of the pane. You can copy all or part of the file name by selecting it and pressing Control+C. If you double click on the text field, it will select the entire file name. The file is displayed with line numbers at the left. It will have C++ syntax highlighting depending on the file name's extension. To change which file types get syntax highlighting, choose Result / Syntax Highlighting... (see Section 8, Menu Commands). 7. Command Line Execution If you execute Motto Search from a command line with an argument (or multiple arguments), it will start a new instance of Motto Search with the search terms set to your arguments and the path set to your current working directory. If you use this feature often, you can rename the Motto Search executable to something that's easier to type (e.g., mose.exe) and put it in one of your PATH directories for convenience. 8. Menu Commands File / New Window This will start a new instance of Motto Search with the same settings as the current instance. You can use this feature if you want to do a new search without erasing the results of the current search, or if you want to temporarily change the search path without erasing the current instance's file name cache. File / Exit This will exit Motto Search. Search / Start, Search / Stop These commands will start and stop a search with the current search terms and search path. You can also start or stop a search by pressing Enter in the Find or Path edit fields (see Section 3, Entering Search Terms). Search / Recursive If this menu item is checked, Motto Search will search your path directories recursively. Search / Skip Binary Files If this menu item is checked, Motto Search will not search binary files. A binary file is defined to be a file that contains non-printing characters. Motto Search will mark a file as binary in its file name cache, so if a file switches from binary to text, it may be necessary to clear the file name cache for it to be searched again. You can clear the cache by changing the path (temporarily), starting a search, and changing the path back. Search / Exclude File Types... This will display a dialog box where you can specify file types to ignore when searching. Search / Search File Names If this menu item is checked, Motto Search will search a file's name and path as if they were part of the file's text. This allows you to specify a file or directory name as a search term and results from that file/directory will appear higher in the results list. If a file name inadvertently contains a search term, this feature can mess up the order of your results and you should disable it. Search / Case Sensitive Bonus If this menu items is checked, results that contain case-sensitive search term matches will be ordered ahead of other results. Search / Whole Word Bonus If this menu items is checked, results that contain "whole word" search term matches will be ordered ahead of other results. Whole word means that the match isn't preceded or followed by an alphanumeric character (unless it's part of another search term). Search / C++ Heuristics If this menu item is checked, special C++ heuristics will be used to determine the significance of each result. Function prototypes, function implementations, variable declarations, macro definitions, etc., are all considered significant and will be ordered ahead of the other results. Result / Open This will "open" the currently selected result's file. The Windows shell (Explorer) determines which program to use to open the file, given its file type. Running this command is the same as double-clicking on the file in Explorer. Result / Open with Notepad... This will open the currently selected result's file in Notepad. Result / Syntax Highlighting... This will display a dialog box where you can specify which file types receive C++ syntax highlighting when they're displayed in the preview pane. It's also used by Motto Search's C++ heuristics. If the heuristics are enabled, results from C++ files (as determined by this list of extensions) may be ordered higher than other results.
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