Integration into Microsoft Windows

Extend the Search Capabilities of the Windows Explorer

Document - ID	Specification Owner	Last Change	Status
	Tino Rachui	05th Aug. 2004	final
Conforms to	
Applies to	Windows Desktop Integration
Task ID(s)	#i21108, #i21109, #i21110, #i21111
Category	Feature

Abstract

The Windows Shell provides several search facilities allowing a user to locate files on the computer or a network. Beside just looking for external file attributes like file name, modification dates, etc. Windows is also able to look into files and to index their content for more advanced search capabilities. This way the user is able to locate files based on their content. Windows NT/2000/XP relies on the Indexing Service to accomplish this. The Indexing Service is a base service of Microsoft® Windows NT®/Windows® 2000 that extracts content from files and constructs an indexed catalog to facilitate efficient and rapid searching. The Indexing Service is extensible to support new file formats. A custom filter enables the Indexing Service to index OpenOffice.org files as well. Users can search for OpenOffice.org files based on their content now. Because the Indexing Service is not available for Windows 98/ME this is a feature for Windows NT/2000/XP only.

i-Team Members (The specification Owner is part of the i-Team)

	Name	E-mail Address
User Experience	Frank Loehmann	fl@openoffice.org
Development	Tino Rachui (TRA)	tra@openoffice.org
Development	Gorden Lin (deuce)	deuce@openoffice.org
Quality Assurance	Thorsten Martens (TM)	tm@openoffice.org

Approved for Implementation

	Approved by	Date
User Experience	Frank Loehmann	Fl@openoffice.org
Development	Tino Rachui	Tra@openoffice.org
Development	Gorden Lin (deuce)	Deuce@openoffice.org
Quality Assurance	Thorsten Martens (TM)	Tm@openoffice.org
Documentation	n.a.	
String Review	n.a.	

Document Change History

Rev. Level	Change	Initials	Date
1.0			06.11.03
	Minor corrections regarding the style of the document	TRA	15.12.03
	Rework after meeting with FL on Dec. 12Th 2003	TRA	16.12.03
	OpenOffice.org will provide a custom filter for the Windows Indexing Service enabling it to index OpenOffice.org files as well. This solution is restricted to Windows NT/2000/XP.	TRA	20.07.04

Contents

Glossary	1

1	Motivation	1

2	User Scenarios	1

3	Goals	3

4	Requirements and Dependencies	4

4.1	Technical Dependencies	4

5	Competitive Analyses	4

6	Detailed Specification	5

6.1	String list	5

7	Future Tasks	5

8	Notes	5

9	References	5

Glossary

Term	Description
COM	Component Object Model, Microsoft's model for software components

Motivation

The Windows Shell provides several search facilities allowing a user to locate files on the computer or a network. Beside just looking for external file attributes like file name, modification dates, etc. Windows is also able to look into files and to index their content for more advanced search capabilities. This way the user is able to locate files based on their content. Windows NT/2000/XP relies on the Indexing Service to accomplish this. The Indexing Service is extensible. A custom filter enables the Indexing Service to index OpenOffice.org files as well. Users can search for OpenOffice.org files based on their content now. Because the Indexing Service is not available for Windows 98/ME this is a feature for Windows NT/2000/XP only.

User Scenarios

There are several ways to start a search for OpenOffice.org files from within the Windows desktop:

From the Search menu item of the Windows Start menu (see illustration 1).

Illustration 1Begin a Search from the Start Menu

When the user right clicks a directory in the Windows Explorer a context menu appears with a menu item “Search...” (see illustration 2).

Illustration 2Launch OpenOffice.org Search Handler via Context Menu

Windows launches the Windows Explorer search pane when selecting either method (see illustration 3).

Illustration 3Windows Explorer Search Pane

Goals

Support the Windows standard search facilities in order to allow the user to search for OpenOffice.org files based on their content.

Requirements and Dependencies

Technical Dependencies

This feature relies on the availability of the Indexing Service and thus is limited to Windows NT/2000/XP. Furthermore the Indexing Service must be enabled on the respective computer in order to allow the user to search for OpenOffice.org files based on their content.

Indexing services can be enabled either by selecting „Change preferences“ from within the Windows Explorer search pane (see ...) or via the Management Console (MMC).

Illustration 4Enabling Indexing Service from the Windows Explorer Search Pane

Competitive Analyses

Microsoft supplies several standard filters with Indexing Service among them a filter for Microsoft Office files. For Windows there are several alternatives to search for Microsoft Office files:

From within the Microsoft Office FileOpen dialog

From the Microsoft Office “File->Search...” menu (this menu item is new with Microsoft Office XP)

From the Windows Start menu “Search” using the standard Windows search facility.

Detailed Specification

A custom filter for the Indexing Service is a COM library which will be registered during the installation of OpenOffice.org and will be de-registered during the deinstallation. In order to remove the filter library during the deinstallation of OpenOffice.org a reboot of the system is required otherwise the library cannot be deleted as the Indexing Service keeps the library loaded until it will be restarted.

Encrypted Files

Content indexing will not work with encrypted files understandably.

String list

n.a.

Future Tasks

Support indexing of embedded OLE objects. A OpenOffice.org document may contain embedded OLE object. At least indexing of OpenOffice.org's own OLE objects should be possible. That means even the content of such embedded objects will be provided to the Indexing Service for indexing purposes.

Notes

n.a.

References

Microsoft Developers Network - Indexing Service Programming Reference

Required - Give references to related documentation, such as engineering designs, technical specs, and other sources for related units. Also include links to documents that other sections in this spec need to refer to, such as user opinions usability test reports.

Integration into Microsoft Windows - Search Handler for the Windows Explorer

Page 5

http://specs.openoffice.org/appwide/desktop_integration/ooo_file_search.sxw

Tino Rachui

2003-11-06T11:23:46