The Word Wheel is a Java applet. To use it, you need a browser that supports Java and JavaScript, such as version 3.0 or later of Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer.
The Word Wheel dialog appears when you click a Word Wheel button on a search screen. The dialog shows indexed information that you can search for. For example, if you click the Word Wheel button next to a box labeled "File date", you see a list of dates. The Word Wheel uses index-streaming technology to download only the part of the index you are browsing, to minimize load on the server. By pasting an item such as "1997-Jan-15" into a box, you can search for it. This eliminates trial-and-error searching, to produce more accurate searches.
Each part of the dialog is explained below.
Type a word or phrase then click the Go to button to move to that item (or to the closest matching item) in the Choices List.
The Choices List shows actual information stored in the textbase. The Keys list shows indexed words or terms. The Hits list indicates the number of records that contain that item in the field being viewed. Because the item may appear more than once in each record, Hits does not reflect the total number of occurrences in the textbase.
Information is indexed as words, terms, or both. A term is a complete entry, such as the title of a document. If a field has both types of indexes, you can switch between them. For example, the Terms List for a Title field shows the complete title of each document ("Exciting Marketing Survey"), while the Words List shows each word individually. This enables you to search for either a single word (just "marketing") or a complete term.
The Field list shows which field's index you are viewing. This is useful when a box searches more than one field. For example, a box labeled "Any word or phrase" could search two fields called Keywords and Excerpt. Select a different field from the list to see information stored in that field. You can paste criteria from any field listed, to search for the pasted item(s).
Click Paste to paste the selected item from the Choices List to a box on the search screen. You can paste more than one item (one at a time). A Boolean "OR" symbol is added between items that you paste. For example, if you paste "sales" and "marketing" the search screen will contain the item sales / marketing. When you submit the query, you will find documents that contain either the word sales OR the word marketing (or both). Before submitting the query, you can change the Boolean symbol to & (which represents AND) or ! (which represents NOT).