ISYS:web offers PDF search with options to view a PDF on the site or view text adjacent to the search keywords.Publishers of online magazines and newspapers have been finding that to replicate print-quality formatting and design, it's tough to beat PDFs.
After all, the format allows fonts to be preserved, images to be precisely placed, and reader experience to be consistent no matter what browser they're using.
The difficulty, however, is when readers want to search across the files for certain stories or by keyword, according to Nigel Pilcher, president of U.K.-based Nlightened Software.
Pilcher creates a monthly magazine that is put online in PDF format, and he says he appreciates that with Adobe Acrobat he can search across multiple documents in a folder for a keyword, and find all the files containing that string.
Click here to read about PDFzone's recent look at how batch-OCR scanning can be combined with PDF image search.
What he craves is for this capability to be extended to Web site visitors without the need for them to download each issue's PDF files to their computers, and try searching on the files from there.
If the PDF files were searchable from the site, he says, it would be far easier for readers to see multiple issues, and simply have a better reading experience.
Despite some research, Pilcher has come up empty. "I just cannot see a way of letting the user search across multiple PDF files while they are online rather than needing the PDF files to be local to their PCs," he says.
Search Capability
Pilcher's challenge is the reason that ISYS Search Software developers have been busy for the last few years. According to the company, PDFs have been a tricky format for its search software, but with the ISYS:web product, the company believes it has the problem solved.
The application is a search product for Web sites, intranets and portals. It supports more than 30 languages and 125 file types, including PDFs.
Once implemented on a site, the software creates an advanced search field that looks similar to other types of Web site search technology.
Once a keyword or term is input into the search field, what's returned is a list of results that includes not only PDFs, but any other document on the site as well, no matter the format.
So far, ISYS:web is distinctive, considering that a number of enterprise search applications have taken on the challenge of dipping into PDF content and returning information on what they contain.
But most of these applications simply list the PDF, and perhaps some surrounding content, and to get to the entire document, a user has to download it.
This can be frustrating for site visitors who might still be on dial-up or who don't want to have the documents on their machines.
Where ISYS really excels is in the next step. Rather than give users the option of downloading the PDF in order to read it, the application lets them choose among three options—they can download, view the PDF on the site, or see proximity search results that show the text around the keyword.
This allows site visitors to search across numerous PDFs without having to waste bandwidth with downloading. The proximity search lets them see if the document is even relevant, without having to click through and search on individual documents.
ISYS:web can operate as a stand-alone Web server or integrate into an existing environment, and can also be configured to automatically update indexes on whatever schedule the Webmaster chooses.
Although enterprise search engine options abound, the flexibility seen in ISYS:web may be just the ticket for Pilcher's readers.
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