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One of the best things about working on a computer is that its ability to almost instantly access stored and archived information -- if you can find it. I estimate that I have over 10,000 columns and news articles of my own archived on my hard drive, as well as perhaps half that many research documents. Retrievability is the problem. The Mac OS purports to offer a solution to this dilemma with Sherlock 2's "Find By Content" feature. However, in my humble opinion, Sherlock 2's implementation of this potentially valuable ability, in a word, sucks, whether it be in OS 9 or OS X. Why? because Sherlock 2 demands that before you can search the contents of your files, your hard drive and/or other volumes you might want to access must be indexed -- a process that literally takes hours if you have a substantial number of files, and then this index must be continuously updated to stay current as new material is added to your archives. Once this lengthy task has been accomplished, Sherlock 2 indeed has some very powerful and fast search capabilities, using either simple, natural language criteria such as specific words or phrases, or the more powerful Boolean logic, with the qualifications or, and, not, adj, W/n, and "wild card" searches. But back on the downside, Sherlock 2 only indexes the first two thousand words in each individual file -- not especially helpful for people like me who frequently write articles or want to search resource documents containing 4,000 or 5,000 words or more. No thanks! I have never indexed my own hard drives for Sherlock, and don't intend to. There's gotta be a better way, and happily there is. In the legacy OS there are Patrick Maes' FindText and Matt J. Brunk's SpeedSearch -- both very useful shareware applications that search your files with no necessity of prior indexing. I would really find it difficult to get along without at least one of these programs, which I use many times a day. Happily, SpeedSearch is now available in an OS X version. I hope Patrick will eventually get around to writing an OS X version of FindText as well, because it has the useful capability of being able to searh the Resource Fork as well as the Data Fork. SpeedSearch (and Sherlock 2) only search the Data Fork. I downloaded SpeedSearch for OS X over the weekend, and was pleased to note that it works pretty much identically to the legacy OS version, only with an Aqua Interface. Cool. I love this program. 
Features
A Start Folder Favorites popup-menu is located to the right of the Start Folder field. You can set the start folder by selecting an item from this menu. Recently searched folders are placed at the top if this menu. The maximum number of recently searched folders is set in the preferences. Persistent folders are placed in the bottom of this menu. You can add the current start folder to this menu by selecting the first item, "Add Current Start Folder". You can edit this menu by selecting the last item, "Modify This Menu…". This displays a dialog that allows you to add, remove, and rearrange the order of items in the menu. Instead of specifying a single start folder, you can also search one or more entire volumes. To specify the volumes, select the "Select Start Volumes…" item in the Search menu. This will bring up a dialog that allows you to specify the volumes to be searched. You specify the string you want to search for in the field labeled "Search For:". By default, the text is searched for exactly as entered. However, you can have SpeedSearch treat the string as case-insensitive, as a whole word, or as a regular expression. The following criteria can be specified:
• Ignore Case
You can select and copy text from the results area to the clipboard. You can also copy text from the results area using drag and drop. You cannot paste or insert characters into the results area.
Other Items in the SpeedSearch Window include:
System requirements:
SpeedSearch is $10.00 shareware. Registered users of a previous version are entitled to a free upgrade.
For more information, visit:
Sluggish OS X / RAM From Chris Long Hey C: Took me nearly 3 hours (!) but I used software update on my iBook last night to d'load/install the newest OS X version of iTunes and the latest version of OS X itself -- what a PAIN! -- hope I don't have to do that again. I notice that things seem to run a bit smoother now -- response seems (?) faster ... not too bad, overall! Now my biggest gripe is my lack of MACROS, which I use ALL THE TIME in OS9. I've been to www.versiontracker.com, looking at THE PEOPLE's comments on new quickeys for OS X -- not too good! -- the latest MacWorld mag gives this util a decent review but concurs with the opinions of the masses; not half as good as the OS 9 version ... Do you (or your readers) know of any other OS X macro utilities? I've looked around & come up with next to nothing. TYPEIT4ME looks good, but only for text stuff -- most of what I use QuicKeys for (12 years now!) involves menu selections -- which apparently is a weak point in the new Q'keys. Keep up the good work at Applelinks! i LOVE the OS X 'Odyssey' series! Chris
Hi Chris;
QuickKeys and TypeIt4 Me are the big names in Mac macro utilities. I've never used QuickKeys, and as you say, TypeIt4Me, which I do use extensively, is for text macros only.
What about AppleScripts? I've mainly used them for text stuff in Tex Edit Plus, but I have one that quits all running applications with a double-click. I think you can get AppleScript to do many of the sorts of things that OS 9 Quickkeys macros do.
Charles From Chris Long C: Re: today's A'links mention of your sluggish response on your Pismo -- you might indeed benefit quite a bit by adding more RAM. I've never used ViaVoice, but I know that my iBook originally had only 128mb RAM and OS X on it was SLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOW ... since then I've replaced the 2nd 64MB RAM chip with a 256MB, giving me 320MB total, and I do in fact notice a difference in speed overall when using OS X. It's still a tad sluggish, esp when compared to running OS 9.1, but overall it's very usable. Good luck w the new 512mb DIMM! I'll be interested to hear how you fare.
later,
Hi again Chris;
I'm hoping that 640 MB (I shall have to remove a 128 MB DIMM, alas), will speed things up a bit. Tristan is very confident that it will.
Charles Note: Letters to Moore's Mailbag may or may not be published at the editor's discretion. Correspondents' email addresses will NOT be published unless the correspondent specifically requests publication. Letters may be edited for length and/or context. Opinions expressed in postings to Moore's MailBag are those of the respective correspondents and not necessarily shared or endorsed by the Editor and/or Applelinks management. If you would prefer that your message not appear in Moore's Mailbag, we would still like to hear from you. Just clearly mark your message "NOT FOR PUBLICATION," and it will not be published. CM
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