[Previous]
[Next]
[Up]
[Title]
5.7. Background to the indexing software
The indexing software used for Project DIAL has been developed from software
used for Internet indexing on the AustLII system. From mid-1995, AustLII's
Index to Australian Law on the Net was a conventional hypertext index based
around a source/author index approach. It was maintained periodically until the
maintenance of `hand-tooled' web pages, lack of search capacity, and lack of a
subject index became problems which had to be addressed. The first version of
AustLII's Internet indexing software (Chain) was written to address these
problems and released in October 1996. It provided facilities for editing and
maintenance of index entries, and a new user interface with hierarchical
browsing, simultaneous source and subject indexing, full searching of index
entries using the SINO search engine. `Australian Links' was then awarded
runner-up in the Australian Society of Indexers inaugural web indexing awards
in 1996. Growth of the index, and new demands (including those of Project DIAL)
necessitated another version of the indexing software. The new software
(`Feathers') and interface was released in July 1997. It includes major
changes: the links are maintained as an MSQL database; the editing facilities
are far more flexible and provide better support from multiple contributors;
customisation of the appearance of particular sets index pages (eg the Project
DIAL pages) is possible, so that they can appear in a consistent style with
text collections and other resources, but of a different appearance from the
rest of the index; and facilities to target a web spider were added.
[Previous]
[Next]
[Up]
[Title]