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Book:   The Perl CD Bookshelf, Version 2.0
Subject:   The Perl CD Bookshelf, Version 2.0 Review
Date:   2001-08-29 02:41:32
From:   Joel Smith
Rating:  StarStarStarStarStar

I am happy with the content - having the books in electronic format is useful. However, the search engine doesn't appear to work on anything other than Windows. The problem is that the web page has the source


<blockquote>


<APPLET


CODE = "com.jobjects.quest.FieldedSearchApplet.class"


ARCHIVE = "qagent.zip"


NAME = "SearchApplet"


WIDTH = 600


HEIGHT = 360


>


<PARAM NAME="CABBASE" VALUE="qagent.cab">


<PARAM NAME="ParamFile" VALUE="qagent.prm">


</blockquote>


but the archive file qagent.zip doesn't exist on the CD (DOH!) even though the expanded directory is there. The engine works on Windows because the file qagent.cab DOES exist on the CD, and the Windows machines pick that up instead.


I feel that there are definite problems with quality control here. Thankfully the Master Index web page works, so you can search the traditional way by looking it up in the index.


That said, you can always pull the CD onto hard disk, and then index it locally using htdig, Sherlock or your index engine of choice. The Java cross platform engine is a nice idea, but the implementation is lacking. Hopefully they will produce a 2.1 version soon.


Finally, there is an amusing page which states that the search engine has been tested with Explorer 4.5 and Netscape 4.1 on Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, Solaris, Linux, and Macintosh 8.5 operating systems. Sadly this CD obviously hasn't.
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