Just trying out the options may make it more clear what they do. The user interface suffers from a common problem: software engineers wrote it and the resulting user interface is clear to other software engineers, but not necessarily to anyone else... > In the archives, there is a "Format" option box (short or long). What's > it for? Format of what? The format of the search results. The long format shows you excerts of the text that contained matches, the short format only lists the subject line of the matching posts. > Then there's the "Sort by" box and the options are: > Score [meaning what? Score of what? Or "score" meaning twenty, as in > "four score and twenty years ago?" I don't get it.] The search engine tries to score the matching posts based on how many times matching text was found in each post and how exact the match is. This is not an exact science, but it can cause the more relevant matches to appear with a higher score, so sorting them to the top might make it more convenient. > Title ["Title" of the message? We have Subject lines and "Threads". Is > that what this refers to?] Yes. > Then there's "Time." [of day? the date? or what?] Time and date of the post. > Then there's Reverse Score, Reverse Time, Reverse Title. What the heck > are these? Sorted in reverse order. > It's too arcane; there should be a glossary or an explanatory paragraph. The search software is freeware, written by someone else (a group of somebodies, actually, since it is open source). The search interface you're seeing is just what they provide by default. If you think an explanatory paragraph would help, please help us out by writing one and I will add it to the FAQ. (And, of course, this reply puts the information forever in the archives as well.) thanks! -andy
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