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Basic
Help
OMFSearch
can help you find information about installing, using, and
developing open source software. The search engine offers
access to Metalab's collection of OMF (OpenSource Metadata
Framework) records. The OpenSource Metadata Framework was
developed by the OpenSource Research Team at UNC, Chapel Hill.
The idea of the framework is very similar to a library's card
catalog. Each record describes a piece of open source documentation:
a HOWTO, a guide, etc. The record for a document will tell
you useful information about the piece, such as its authors,
revision history, scope, etc. It will also tell you where
you can retrieve the document. By separating descriptive metadata
from the records themselves, we hope that OMF will allow us
to build a comprehensive, centralized database of open source
documentation that may be distributed around the Internet.
The
OMF is based on the Dublin Core
element specification. It has 16 fields, a full description
of which is available here. Of these, 13 are available for
structuring searches:
Creator:
[who originally wrote the documentation]
Maintainer: [who is currently maintaining it]
Contributor: [anyone who has worked on the resource]
Title: [the name of the document]
Date: [when the document was made available in its current
form]
Version: [date, number, and description for a specific version
of the document]
Keyword: [a word or phrase that describes the content of the
document]
Description: [a prose description of the document]
Type: [i.e. HOWTO, mini-HOWTO, guide, etc.]
Format: [describes the mime-type of the resource, and DTD
info]
Language: [the main language of the resource]
Coverage: [info on the intellectual scope of the resource]
Rights: [copying/distribution policy information]
Because
each of these fields is optional and repeatable, not all OMF
records will show all of them.
Your
search will retrieve any OMF records in our database that
have the terms you have requested. They will be ranked, with
the records most likely to be relevant at the top of the return
list. After your search, you can retrieve the actual documentation
by pointing your web browser to the URL specified in the Identifier
field of the records.
Search
Strategy
Querying
the database can be as simple or elaborate as you make it.
From the Simple Search page selecting the Full Text option
will return documents that show your search term in any OMF
field. You may also limit your search to specific fields of
the OMF record. For instance, you might search only within
the Creator field. You may also define relationships between
search terms using Boolean operators (AND, OR, and ANDNOT).
After
selecting which OMF fields to search, enter a search term.
This may be either a single word or a phrase. For instance,
linus is a term; so is linus torvalds. Capitalization doesn't
matter here. So Linus and linus get parsed the same.
If
you want to query on more than three fields, or if you want
to specify precise relationships between search terms, you
should use the Advanced search. This interface allows you
to query on as many fields as you want, and to specify Boolean
relations between terms. The syntax for these queries goes
as follows:
field/term
boolean_operator field/term etc.
The
field declarations shown here are optional, but you probably
should use them. Otherwise, the Simple Search is likely to
be your best bet. By placing parentheses around terms or sets
of terms in the advanced query, you can control things even
more:
(keyword/mail
and rights/gnu) andnot coverage/X11
This
will return all OMF records that contain both the keyword
mail and the copying policy GNU (GPL) and do not show X11
as a supported platform.
If
this document has not answered your questions regarding the
MetaLab Linux Archive, please send email to the Linux
Archivist.
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