OCEAN--
a free Baha'i Research & Study Tool found at http://www.bahai-education.org/ocean/
( formerly at http://www.avatarsoft.com/ocean/
) One recommendation: "Don't leave home without it!"
This search engine is AMAZING and if you are serious about research
of the Writings via computer you simply must have it! I occasionally
had trouble finding the Avatar web site, but the new Ocean web site does
not seem to offer any trouble. The creator of Ocean, Chad Jones,
is definitely an "out of the box" thinker. The program is small.
You can import any documents as standard text. Its operation is FAST.
And now the web support has solved the previous drawback to the program
(no texts). Updates to both program and texts are available on-line,
and if you are using Ocean while you are on the web and a new update becomes
available it tells you instantly (assuming you have already requested an
update that day). You don't even need to worry about using a program for
downloading because the program is so small and because the text files
come in one at a time. If your modem disconnected while importing
updated or new files (texts) Ocean itself would just ask for it again when
you start the update again. Ocean is very "user friendly" and it
is still being improved!
You can search all the same major Baha'i texts as you can in MARS, Immerse and "Baha'i Library -- and more. Some of the other texts I have put into my database include "Baha'u'llah and the New Era" by Esslemont, "Heart of the Gospel" by George Townshend, Phillip Hitti's commentary on Islam, Beckwith's book on the Baha'i Faith, "Thief in the Night" by Sears, White's history of the "Warfare of Science and Theology," and Balyuzi's and Momen's works on Islam. In addition Chad has made the works of all the major philosophers available (170 texts). In the database you can now download along with the Ocean program there are over 600 books, including a general religious library of all faiths (and those Holy Books), along with some Baha'i pilgrim notes.
It is sometimes interesting to have the philosophers with your search of the Baha'i writings. For example, if you did a wide-sweep search on a subject like "death" (for life after death) or "prayer" you would get those philosophy texts in addition to the Baha'i writings if you wanted to and you would get Plato and Socrates. OR, you could also just limit your search to one category, such as only the writings of Baha'u'llah.
The data set and the program should be thought of as separate. The Ocean program itself is VERY small and can fit on one floppy disk. (398K - formerly 192kb - it actually occupies less than 40% of the storage space on a floppy.) Your data, however, could occupy many megabytes and will grow as you add to it. My text file is over 170 megabytes now, compared to 32 for Immerse and 18 for MARS. The Ocean program and all the files now available with it almost 60 megabytes. (Amazingly, although it does not build an index, it is still fast. MARS is the quickest of all because it comes with a built-in index, or pointer file, that I believe is as large as the text-base itself. But remember, Immerse and Ocean are also looking through more books and that should be worth a few extra seconds.) Ocean's basic library of Baha'i texts (the authoritative texts normally available in other Baha'i software packages) can be distributed in a super-compressed self-extracting executable which only requires 4 floppies when spanned. The beta versions are not available in that format... only downloadable from the web. (Takes about an hour on a 56K modem.)
Ocean is a very new search engine (less than a year old), still in its BETA stage of development. (Still undergoing revisions. I am presently using Vers. 154.) In fact, it is under a major re-write, but it is still usable in the test version. You can even participate in the testing phase if you do not wish to wait for the finished product. (I do not hesitate to recommend the test version to anyone. It works. Why wait? You must agree to becoming a test site however. Hey, that just means you get to help design the program by making suggestions! Chad has made test versions available so we would not have to wait to get it, and so he could use us for feedback. Click here to learn more.)
If the older BETA version was fantastic, we can well imagine what Chad is going to wind up with in the new version! I never met Chad before discovering this program. Therefore I have no particular interest in promoting Ocean because it is his creation. Moreover, he gains no monetary benefit from its promotion. I simply like the program and appreciate his efforts to make this available to the Baha'i community. In my earlier review I said: "This program is well worth almost any effort you have to go through to get it going for you!" Now it has become a simple, easy -- with an automatic download and install process. Thank you Chad! I will leave my old "install directions" here at the end, but all you really need to do now is go to the web site and follow the instructions. There are still some quirks and limitations, so you may want to read this review before using the program. (I am still learning about it myself, as it is evolving everyday.) Here are the main features mentioned at the OCEAN web site:
The new version has many wonderful new features such as tools to create a compilation file, the ability to search HTML and MS-Word files, and the production of reports. A "Report" is simply a list of hit results with one sentence extracted for each item. (A "report" is a quick HTML compilation build by taking the hit sentence of every hit in the list.) Reports can be printed or saved to disk for later viewing. Before saving a report, you can pare down the hits list by deleting non-relevant items.Add your own documents Instantly update your library from the internet -- always have the latest library! Instantly update the Ocean program from the internet Very smart searching, just type in words, no "boolean grammar" knowledge required Simple "Google" style search syntax Exceedingly small in size
There are two ways to install the new program if you already have Ocean. One is to update what you have already got. Ocean checks to see if you have files in a library and sends only the ones you do not have. The other way is to set it up for the first time. I tried to make the web site think that I did not have a previous version, so I could see how long it would take to install from scratch. On a 56K modem the entire download took one hour. The program downloaded in a just a few minutes. The text took the remainder of the time. (After everything was complete the disk space occupied was approx. 56.4 megabytes.) Interesting that the new program "remembered" my previous 19 searches even though I kept it from seeing my text files. The new program found the old (six months) program but left my earlier version fully intact. I can still use it too! (That was my plan, and I am glad I kept it so I can compare the three mode search versus the new single mode search with delimiters.)
Once the program is installed (using "MinimalSetup.exe") almost all you need to know about how to operate it is contained in the "getting started" file you call up with F1 or from the help menu. (Or you could read the file directly from your hard disk C: .. /OCEAN/help/Getting Started with Ocean.htm
Despite the documentation that comes with Ocean, it should still be helpful for you to read my notes and comparisons here in this review.
If ever you forget the Ocean URL address or have trouble finding it, pull up www.google.com first... and paste "Baha'i Ocean." into the select criteria. You are asking Google to find all web sites that contain files that have both Baha'i and Ocean. Links for OCEAN comes right up as a result of your search. Click on it and you are in. If you have problems email: Chad@avatarsoft.com or "Chad Jones" <chad@bahai-education.org>
Some
Comparisons between Ocean, MARS and Immerse
This extremely powerful search tool's (OCEAN) greatest virtue is the
ability to drag and drop new texts or documents into its database. Other
systems like MARS and IMMERSE are closed systems. (Baha'i Library can also
import new texts.) With Ocean you could, for example, scan or download
a new message from the Universal House of Justice, the NSA, or a new compilation,
or letter from the Counselors or the RBIs and add it to your database so
the next time you did a search on child education, for example, these would
be searched too... along with all the authoritative Baha'i texts. There
is no limit (except your hard disk capacity) to what you can add. Baha'i
texts from the Internet can be downloaded and added. Imported text may
not be formatted as nicely OCEAN as it is in IMMERSE, depending on how
you do it. THE GREAT NEWS is that NOW you
can get all the texts AUTOMATICALLY by going online and asking the OCEAN
program to get all the latest documents and texts available. Simply
start OCEAN and then select the Main Menu item: "Check for Online
UPDATE".
Any new texts you want to ad must be imported in *.txt format. (Imported text that you might find elsewhere can be modified and cleaned up by you with a word-processor or text editor like WORDPAD before you drag it into Ocean if it is not formatted the way that you want it. There is a modified version of NOTEPAD that automatically removes unwanted characters such as extra carriage returns, etc., but you can manually use MS-Word or any word processor for that if necessary. Just be sure to re-save the document as ASCII text. The cleanest format is "Text Only with Line Breaks.") Based on an anticipated revision, it seems that Ocean will soon be about to scan HMTL and MS-Word texts as well.
In most cases, Ocean footnotes are imbedded right in the text, so you don't have to do an extra cut and paste. They are already there, although you may have to munch the document around a bit in your word-processor to get the cosmetics right. Ocean seems to be able to recognize various footnote formats that are within standard text and convert them to an +F1, +F2, etc... at the point where they appear in the text, and also listing what they actually are at the bottom of each page. In other words, the number +F1 is embedded in the text and it is repeated where the page break occurs with the reference notes that usually appears at the bottom of the page.
There were three search modes in OCEAN which have apparently been reduced to one. The "Exact Words" mode seem to have been replaced by simply putting your phrase or word in quotes. If you type in the word "heaven" in MARS or Immerse you get only sentences with the word "heaven" in your search results. Ocean (first edition) finds "heavenly," and "heaven-cradled" in the "Find Phrase" and "Similar Words" modes, but only "heaven" in the "Exact Words" search mode. In the new edition if you put "heaven" in quotes you only get heaven and without them you get everything, as above. In either edition you have to play with them to get the feel for the limiters. See OCEAN'S Simple Search Format below
These designations for the category of search criteria in the first version of Ocean were not entirely clear which may be why Chad has now gone to a single search mode (with delimiters). Sometimes you would have to try all three to get what you are looking for. If you have the earlier version the triangle icon or symbol next to the magnifying glass icon is a pull-down menu for the "Search Type." (The magnifying glass icon would begin the search, and the "Cancel Search X" icon at the bottom would interrupt it.) You now have to use the ESCape key to interrupt the search in the current version, but I think I have convinced Chad to put the STOP or CANCEL button back on the main page.
Before I discovered this simple exit (CANCEL SEARCH) procedure I did try using the X that widens the screen and takes you to the first document. But if you do that and then attempt to exit the document by resuming the search (by clicking on the magnifying glass again) you will get an error message -- that is, if you attempt this before the search completes. The error reads: "Cannot focus a disabled or invisible window." However, if you wait long enough before you press the magnifying glass again, you will find that Ocean has gone ahead and completed the search. No error message. The error message is not a problem, per se. If you press OK, Ocean continues and completes the search. There does not seem to be a way to stop it. I found myself using the "Cancel Search" X quite frequently in the first edition and missed it at first in the new version until I discovered that you can simply hit the ESCape key and it exits the search. In other words, Ocean now uses the standard Windows convention. Only problem: There is no documentation to this effect. You would have had to discover this intuitively. As mentioned above, there will soon be a cancel button on the main page once again.
The X next to the hour glass at the top in the current (new) version widens the screen into a full screen display, beautifully formatted. The wider display actually takes care of some of the wrap problems in the earlier version, but you may will still have to remove unwanted carriage returns from your extracted quote (using the enhanced NOTEPAD or WORD ) if the original text that was imported had them. Incidentally, the version 151 searching 762 documents or texts finds 7718 sentences with the word "heaven" in it (using no quotes) and exactly the same number if I put the word in quotes. So it seems that the delimiter is not working.
OCEAN'S
Simple Search Format
The "second word" search feature is not designated as such.
There is no menu to select from that says "second word" as in MARS.
In a sense the functionality of that feature is operative all the time,
automatically. If you put in two words, sentences with
both words will be found. Chad states: "I have intentionally scrapped
this method ["second word" search]. Because of the associative
nature of human memory, words which we are able to recall typically fall
within the same phrase or, at worst, within the same sentence (as the logical
container of a complete idea). Therefore, when Ocean searches, it
tries to locate sentences containing all words which you typed (in any
order). Since some sentences contain hundreds of words and others contain
only three, it is impossible to calculate how many words apart they might
be while still being meaningfully associated... Some older search
engines employ "word proximity" to narrow the list of hits (wherein each
word must be within a certain number of words from the others). Ocean
is much smarter. Ocean accepts a hit only if all the words appear within
the same sentence. In other words, Ocean uses sentence-based granularity
in searching."
By contrast, keep in mind that MARS will let you search for a second word that is in a different sentence (LEFT or RIGHT), with a maximum range of 30 words away -- which means that in some cases the "second word" could be in a different sentence. I think these differences are a design call, based on a philosophical difference in logic. If Chad attempted to mimic MARS he would lose some of the other features in his design logic.
Chad continues:
"Type the search sun wisdom and Ocean will
locate nearly a hundred sentences where both those words occur. Type the
search phrase wisdom sun knowledge and you
will find that there are less than half the number of sentences with all
three words. [So, the word knowledge has effectively
served as the second word criteria for the search.] There is no difference
between the search sun wisdom knowledge and
the search knowledge wisdom sun."
However, if you were looking for a section of text where the second word you wanted to use to find your text was in a subsequent sentence your phrase (text) would not be found. You must choose second and third words that are within the same sentence.
Ocean does not require complex boolean knowledge. Simply type the words you remember and hit the search button (or press the ENTER key) and Ocean will do the rest. Subtracting Hits: Sometimes it is useful to specify that searches should not contain a certain word. For example, say you want to search for references to Local Houses of Justice. Now these are often called just "House of Justice" but if you search for that, you'll be buried with references to the Universal House of Justice. So all you have to do is type "House of Justice -Universal". This subtracts all sentences which contain the word "Universal". If you want to search for "Martha" but not "Martha Root" simply type "Martha -Root". Simple!
Limiting Search to a Specific Book or Author:Furthermore, at times you want to search in just a single book or from a single author. This can be done by specifying the book or author in parenthesis. For example, to locate all references to "Ocean of Knowledge" in only the Kitáb-i-Íqán, simply type "ocean of knowledge (iqan)". You need only type a portion of the name of the book or folder in the parenthesis.
To search through an entire folder, simply type part of that folder name. This works well since most books contain the name of the author either as part of the document name or the document's folder. Examples: "(effendi) forces of light", "(taherzadeh) Dhabih", "Fear of God (bab)" And finally, you can combine multiple authors or books by simply separating them with commas like so: "unity oneness (bab, abd)", "fear (iqan, valleys)", or "Training Institutes (compilations, house)"
Searching for an exact phrase: Sometimes you want to locate an exact phrase such as "forces of light". Simply include part of your search phrase in quotes. "Martha Root" finds only hits with "Martha Root" and not "Martha James and Sam Root..."
After launching a search (by clicking the search button or pressing
ENTER), you will see all the hits listed in the window below the search.
Notice that each book or document is specified in the list by a closed
book icon (
). Clicking that item
opens up a list of all the matching sentences found within that book. Each
sentence is quoted in part and denoted as a sentence by an open book icon
(
).
Keyboard Navigation
The Ocean literature states that Ocean was especially designed with
portability in mind -- specifically laptops with no or poor mouse replacements.
For this reason, it states that you can easily do everything in Ocean without
reaching for the mouse. Refer to the Ocean web site for examples:
- Use the TAB key to move between the three areas: "Search Box", "Hits List" and "Text Display"
- Use the CTRL-S key to toggle the search panel
- Use CTRL and the ARROW KEYS to jump to the next or previous search hit
- F2 pops up the bookshelves menu
- F3 pops up the search-style menu
- F5 extracts selected text to current compilation
Let me give you some illustrations of some searches done under these "Search Types" in the earlier version, even though it is an outdated manual mode of operation. Maybe it will still help you see what is going on. The search mode is now entirely automatic. Here is what I wrote earlier. The information still seems useful, as a help to understand how to enter search criteria and the kinds of results you can expect, so I will still share it with you: (Simply keep in mind that the three modes no longer exist, partly because of the feedback we gave Chad about it. The "find" times will be somewhat faster than indicated below. I have yet to compare the same number of texts as I did in my earlier tests. You must take everything below with a grain of salt since the program is rapidly evolving and by the time your read this things might be different.)
In effect (except for "FIND PHRASE," in the older versions, which is an exact search) every search is a "second word" search or multiple word search since every word you type in is found... although the find strategy is different depending on the "Search Type" you select: "Find Phrase," "Similar Words" or "Exact Words." [These different types of searches are no longer in the latest version and apparently are no longer necessary. Other conventions such as quotation marks, for exact phrase, are used.]
Originally, in the early BETA version I typed in "Epistle Paul" in all three search modes, searching the "Authoritative Baha'i Writings" (a library I had set up using 409 texts). "FIND PHRASE" returned one hit... which was "Epistle of Paul" mentioned by Abdu'l-Baha on page 94 of SAQ. "Exact Words" returned six hits from 409 books, and "Similar Words" returned seven hits from the same 409 books, this one also including "Epistles of Saint Paul," whereas the "s" on Epistles and/or the "Saint" had eliminated this hit during the "Exact Words" search mode. "Exact words" as a designation is misleading, and actually "Find Phrase" is more exact because it is more limiting - thought it is still not "exact" as MARS would be. I like it better than MARS though, because you get more.
Sometimes MORE is LESS however, because you have to cull through more stuff. The six or seven hits found after search through 409 books took three seconds on my computer (650 MHZ Pentium III), so you need not get the impression that it is significantly slower than MARS. (However, MARS took less than two seconds and probably included more books -- though it doesn't tell you how many. Ocean is the only one that tells you what books were searched and how many.) The difference in speeds between MARS and search engines like Ocean that do not use indexes will become more significant if you have a slower computer.
Incidentally (in the early version), it took 27 seconds to search 794 Baha'i texts for "Epistle Paul" on my computer, with 37 returns in the "Similar Words" mode (the widest net you could cast). I forgot to ask Chad, but the early version of Ocean seemed to remember previous searches, because the second time I ran the same search it took only seven seconds. (Times in the new version seem identical on the few tests I have had the chance to run.) Incidentally, Ocean does keep a "list" of your previous 19 searches criteria so you do not have to type the criteria in again. So, some kind temporary index may also be being created. Note: In the new version I ran the "Epistle Paul" on the 518 texts and it took 7 seconds to return 30 hits, compared to the 27 second on 794 books with the earlier version.
Again, in the "second word" mode, MARS found only six hits and Immerse found seven (compared to the 27 in Ocean), so you can begin to see the power of OCEAN. Some of those hits in Ocean included "Baha'u'llah and the New Era" by Esslemont, "Heart of the Gospel" by George Townshend, Phillip Hitti's commentary on Islam, Beckwith's book on the Baha'i Faith, "Thief in the Night" by Sears, White's history of the "Warfare of Science and Theology," and Balyuzi's book on Islam. (Keep in mind that the number of hits depends on the number of texts you have actually imported into OCEAN. If only the books contained in MARS were imported into OCEAN it would get exactly the same number of hits, returns, or "finds.")
[Book title and page number citations during "cut and paste" routines have already been discussed at a technical note above.]
Sources
of Baha'i Texts for Ocean, you can download from the World Wide Web
A tremendous number of texts are available to download from Chad's
OCEAN web site. Other texts can be found on the web
sites listed above, under "on-line" resources. You no longer
have to build the basic Ocean database yourself, but you can add texts
to the data base. Chad has 500+ books that are from a general religious
library of all faiths there, along with some Baha'i pilgrim notes, in addition
to the major Baha'i texts. As I mentioned earlier, a philosophy library
of about 170 books from the major philosophers is also included on the
Ocean web site. In all, my fresh install on 11/28/01 brought 518
texts across into the database and another 200 the next day. (The
entire download and install, using a 56K modern took one hour.) Getting
the texts is no longer going to be your biggest problem. How you
organize them might be, although they will come to you already in categories
(folders) called libraries. If, for
the present time, you do not intend to be concerned with importing more
text than comes standard with Ocean you should skip the next several sections
here and go directly to the section on how to set
up your LIBRARIES.
SECONDARY
sources of data (Baha'i texts) for your OCEAN search engine.
The OCEAN web site is now your best source to begin building your database
for this search engine, and it is virtually all automatic. You download
the texts with the program. Chad initially did not distribute the
Baha'i writings from its web site, partly because OCEAN has been a BETA
program -- still in the testing phase, and for other reasons. Copyright
issues may apply for some of the texts that are available and being sent
around. See "limits of the copyright" on Baha'i texts, posted at ftp://ftp.bwc.org/bahai/README.COPYRIGHT
General rule of thumb is that any texts that the Universal House of
Justice has released to the web you can use.
Initially I used to tell folks that they could find a few CDs with databases of the Writings, but this is no longer necessary since texts are now on-line at the Ocean web site. However, you may still find a few files that are not posted to the site on certain CDs, or they are available informally through members of the Baha'i community. Use some wisdom and know your source. Some provisional translations of certain Tablets are not done by Baha'is and if you intend to use them you should find out their authority and authenticity, or cite them with disclaimers or statements of source. The safest course is simply to stay with one supplier and know their criteria for making texts available.
One CD with texts that are wholly authenticated is called ARCHIVE, and it includes an elementary search engine with it as well. You could just buy the disk for the texts ($25) and import them into OCEAN -- and forget the search engine. (Available from www.mcsi.net/sandkd/contents.html or Stephen Dighton swp@schoolmarmwood.org) I give a more complete description of ARCHIVE below. (Click here to see what's below.) You can also go to http://www.schoolmarmwood.org and click on ARCHIVE in the directory on the left for more information.
Yahov Phillips also has a disk you can buy (described below). A general discussion of SOURCES for texts is also included below. (Sorry for the scattered nature of this information. It is partly my laziness in taking advantage of the nature of HTML.)
Primary
sources for Downloading ASCII text
For downloading texts, take a look at: http://www.bahaindex.com/writings_f.html
(Thanks to Casper Voogt) This location has links to all downloadable texts
from the World Center's ftp site, and also to html versions ("htm" and
"html" files are unusable in that format because with Ocean [previously]
and Archive you must convert them to "txt" files or find the same files
in "txt" format.). Or you can go directly to the World Centre anonymous
ftp site at: ftp.bwc.org (These should
all be straight text files and you can download them from there.)
Alternatively, one of the best sites for finding the Writings that
you can download off the web in the format you will need is www.bahai-library.org
It has nearly everything that comes out from the World Center, and very
soon after it is available. (Also, see instructions on FTP
below - at the end.)
Less
suitable methods for downloading text --- but they still work in a pinch.
If you were really in a pinch you could copy them off the web from
Metalab (formerly Sunsite). These are now combined at: http://metalab.unc.edu/Bahai/TrueSeeker/
(Thanks to Mark Towfigh.) You would use a cut and paste method there.
That would be much more time consuming than any other method. Downloading
takes time, granted, but manual "cut and paste" is so labor intensive as
to be almost prohibitive except for that occasional file.
Another new site for downloading is http://www.jkl.com/eBahai/
and one for "cutting" (copying text) is http://www.bahai-library.org/etc/catalogue.author.html
(The second one here contains all html files)
It would be easier to cut and paste the Texts from Immerse or MARS
than from Metalab. Data (texts) are already on your computer (assuming
you already have them). Downloading is still practical, however,
even if you do not have a cable modem or a DSL phone line. I would
prefer to download the texts from bwc.org and let the computer do all the
work than to cut and paste from MARS, especially if I have a good high-speed
Internet connection. And again, if you have a slow
modem and face long download times let Getright do the work and reduce
the risk of having to start over. Exception: Ocean downloads in relatively
small pieces (each text is a file) and therefore starting over at any given
time is negligible.
(By the way, it is a good idea to disable call-waiting on your phone
while on the internet, particularly during downloads, or you will get bumped
off if someone calls you.. *70, as a prefix to the dial-up number is standard.)
The text you put into Ocean must [previously] be ASCII, txt or DOS
text. (Since both MARS and Immerse are text files they would be no problem.)
The easiest way to get the texts is to try and find a CD with these files
already on it... otherwise it can be very time consuming. (Some individuals
have created such CD disks, but I know of no plan to make such disks available
for distribution other than Archive and the other
one listed below.) Be careful not to copy any texts you do not already
own book copies of, or are not already published on
the web, or you may be in violation of the copyright. You can check with
ftp.bwc.org
or www.bahai-library.org or
ftp://oneworld.wa.com/pub/bwc
to see what has been released to public domain.
Setting
up Search Categories ("Libraries") in OCEAN
Ocean comes with four "Library" categories already set up. Opps!
Chad, the author of Ocean, is no longer calling these "libraries."
He thought that this was confusing. Now Ocean has a single "Library"
folder under
which there is a single "English" folder. Inside this folder are all
the root search folders or shortcuts to folders. These root folders and
shortcuts he is calling "Bookshelves". He would have preferred
to do away with the "English" folder except this is needed for supporting
multiple languages. If the user has additional language folders here then
a "Language Library" menu-item appears automatically allowing switching
between languages -- otherwise this is hidden to retain simplicity.
Essentially the Windows Explorer shortcuts have taken the place of library
bookshelves in the earlier versions. Stay with me here for a minute
and I hope all this will become clear. I am caught between a rock
and a hard place because I am writing a mixture of reviewing two versions.
This is necessary, I feel, because some folks are still using the old version
or are in the process of making the transition.
Rather than custom folder-lists (which had the drawback of not being flexible if someone added a new folder or moved their folders) Ocean is now using just a standard windows shortcut as a bookshelf. The advantage in this is that Windows tracks its shortcuts so they can survive moving of the folder location. Besides this, you can have multiple shortcuts to different folders, even sub-folders of another bookshelf.. Therefore, you can have and "Authoritative Baha'i" bookshelf but also a "Baha'u'llah" and a "Compilations" bookshelf if you like. It is not easy to figure out how to do this however, and there is no documentation.
The four main folders that come with Ocean right now are "Authoritative Baha'i Texts," Baha'i Studies," "Christianity," and "Islam"... but you can make your own "bookshelf" categories, such as "Writings of Baha'u'llah," "All Authoritative Texts," "Compilations," "Central Figures," "Writings of Philosophers," Pilgrim's notes," "Provisional translations," "Previously untranslated tablets," "Everything except Philosophers," "Everything, including Philosophers," etc. etc.
Here's how:
On the old version just move the cursor over the various icons on the
menu portion of the top of the screen and little menu labels pop up. Respectively,
they are Delete library, Show books (within a library), and New (create
new library). The menu is simplified on the new version, but you are now
required to click on the icons to see what they bring up. (Perhaps Chad
will reintroduce the pop-up labels again.) Now let's review how to
do each of these tasks in the new version.
Most of you should easily be able to learn how to delete a file -- such as Ocean shortcut files, especially because Ocean even opens the folder where they are stored. This makes deleting a file even easier than it is when using Microsoft Word, which takes the approach that the user should NOT expect to be able to delete folders or files from within the program. (It is simply not an option in the MS-Word menu.) The user is expected to go out to Explorer. By contrast, Ocean call up Explorer for you. WORD apparently assumes that deleting files in Windows is easy and trivial (you just drag them to the trash can or select them and hit delete). This was Chad's reasoning for removing file-management features from Ocean. I am not yet convinced that this was a good idea. In the revision he thought it was better NOT to add features and then try to explain them because people typically simply do not read instructions. Granted, you have to know what you are doing, but I think it is too easy for the novice to delete a real Windows folder (instead of a shortcut) when reorganizing your "bookshelves" and that would mean having to download the texts (in that folder) again. Deleting an actual Windows folder was harder to do in the older version, because you were not out there messing with folders at the system level. Well, you could have been potentially, but not as often or as easily. This was because you deleted bookshelves from within Ocean and that only deleted the shortcut to the folder... not the folder itself. Without file-management being handled by Ocean the only way I can think of avoiding the deletion of a bookshelf without deleting the folder, in the new version(s), is to create folders with only shortcuts in them BEFORE you drag the folder into Ocean. This would seem to defeat the purpose of using folders in the first place -- i.e., to make it easier for the non-expert Windows user. (NOTE: I have talked with Chad since I wrote this paragraph and he intends to put the file management back in.).
Creating a "Library" USING AN OLDER VERSION:
If you are using an older version an icon that looks like a folder
with a * in it enables you to create a new "library" by clicking on it.
Once you have the new library created, the blank gray area underneath it
is called a bookshelf. This is like the open desktop where you would drag
your folders from Explorer. You cannot mess up here. You will know when
to let go of the left mouse button when you see the + sign under your arrow.
You are not in the right area if you see the international sign for DON'T
(circle with a line through it).
These libraries are search categories, not directories or folders. They are "virtual" folders, but are not "actual" folders. The program uses pointer files to make these libraries, so you can make as many libraries as you want without using much extra disk space. For example, let's say that you want to do searches on "Baha'u'llah's writings only," then you would make a library that corresponded to the real folder on your hard disk that contained only Baha'u'llah's texts. That is, you would drag that folder from Explorer into the bookshelf area of Ocean. (It does not move it... only "copies" it. Well it doesn't actually copy it. It points to it.)
On the other hand you might want to create a search category (a "library") for all the authoritative texts, meaning the Bab, Baha'u'llah, Abdu'l-Baha, Shoghi Effendi, and the Universal House of Justice. (Or you could create a category just for the Central Figures.) What you would do is make a library, and then drag all the folders into it that you want. Thus, Baha'u'llah's writings would be listed in three different libraries, but exist only once on your hard disk. The three libraries, in this instance would be: (1) Baha'u'llah's writings only, (2) Central Figures, (3) Authoritative texts. There should be separate physical folders in your hard disk directory (seen with Windows Explorer) for each of the Central Figures, for example, but when you drag them all into the same "library" this does not alter their location on the hard disk and they are not being duplicated on your computer.
You used to have to manually open Windows Explorer in the earlier Ocean version, but the new version of the program opens Explorer for you in a kind of seamless interface. You find the folder and drag the files (folders) into your library categories that you create. Actually you don't even have to create the libraries manually in Ocean anymore. Just open the Explorer interface and find the folder you want and drag it to the "bookshelf." (If you don't know how to use Windows Explorer you are going to have to learn the basic features. Get out your Windows documentation or use the HELP feature.) Ocean will ask you if you want to create a library under the same name as the folder. Say yes and it is done. I have not figured out how to remove a bookshelf without doing it in Explorer and that seems to be a drawback. There used to be a trash can icon on the bookshelf desktop in the earlier version.
Getting
your ASCII text into Ocean (based on earlier
version -- not yet updated. Still, much of it is relevant for more
advanced users importing new text, not available in the initial download
with Ocean.)
If you have a document (text) you wish to import into Ocean you simply
put it in a folder and drag that folder over into the area called "bookshelves."
The document MUST be in a folder before it will drag, and the text itself
must be in "*.txt"
format. Individual files or documents cannot be imported unless you first
put them into a folder and then drag them. So, if you have a document
in MS-WORD or other non-compatible format just save an additional copy
of it in DOS or TEXT format, put it in a folder, and drag it over. It is
a little tricky so I will explain in greater detail.
The easiest way to do it is to open both WINDOWS EXPLORER and Ocean at the same time -- as separate windows, thus splitting your screen between them. Windows Explorer is accessed with the little magnifying glass icon (not Internet Explorer). You can find it under Programs from the Windows start menu (at the lower left hand side of your screen). Once it is open and you find the Ocean folders, just hold down the left mouse button as you drag the folder from Explorer into the "bookshelf." (just the wide open area, not the typing field). This is the left-most side of your Ocean display screen. Don't be afraid, you cannot mess up here if you are just dragging stuff with the left arrow. (You are only creating shortcuts.) You will know when to let go of the left mouse button when you see the + sign under your arrow. As I said moment ago, with the old version be sure to have both the OCEAN program and the Explorer in a separate window so you can have them both on the screen at the same time. (The new version does this all automatically for you.)
In both the old and the new version, in order to reduce Ocean to a window you will find the three buttons Windows standard buttons at the top right of the screen -- the minus, the box and the X. The one in the middle is the Maximize and Restore toggle button (it looks like a box or two boxes). You must be in the non-maximize or "window" toggled position in order to be able to drag from the window of one program to another. Once the window is minimized, you can make it any size you want. A small triangular tab in the lower right hand corner of the window will allow you to re-size the screen (a double arrow will appear when you place the cursor over it). Just hold down your left mouse button as you drag your mouse and the window will re-size. You can move a screen around on the desktop by placing the mouse over the blue menu bar at the top and drag the mouse while holding down the left button. You move the files the same way. Just place the cursor over the file you want to move, hold down the left mouse button and drag the file with the mouse to the new location (i.e., the "bookshelf" area of OCEAN). You can easily tell where the bookshelf area is because a + sign will appear underneath your cursor indicating that you are over the place where you can "drop" the folder (i.e., create the shortcut).
In the new version, Ocean will always come up in a non-maximized window, even if you left it completely maximized when you exited previously. Presumably this is to facilitate the dragging of folders from Explorer when it opens. Some users have complained that Ocean does not stay open as you left it the time before, but I agree with Chad that the non-maximized window is best as the default. Assuming you do not need to drag folder and create bookshelves, then you are only one click away to maximizing your window.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
For more information read the two pages from the Ocean web site: http://www.bahai-education.org/ocean/
) Suggestions or comments about this BETA program are welcomed by the author
at Chad@avatarsoft.com
Or better: "Chad
Jones" <chad@bahai-education.org> You can also join the listserv
in order to follow the evolution of the product.
If
you want to join the BETA test group
and receive an advanced copy of the new version go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocean-library/join
but first visit http://www.bahai-education.org/ocean/
If you do
join this listserv group and find that you do not want to read the constant
email conversations, you can choose one of the following options by modifying
your profile under "EDIT MY MEMBERSHIP":
Message Deliver Options:
Option #1 'Announcement
Only'. If you do this, you will receive only important announcements
Option #2 'Daily Digest'. This dumps all messages each day into a single email with a nice table of contents at the top so you can take just one quick look each day to determine if there is anything you are interested in.
Option #3 'No Email'. This leaves you as a member of the group, you can still read messages online and still post to the forum but messages are not sent to you by email.
Rather than leaving the list completely when you receive too many emails, it's better if you set yourself to 'Announcement Only' so that Chad can still reach you with important announcements when necessary.