Saturday, October 11, 2003

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X1, Magellan, and My Longtime Interest The subject of text-indexing has been one of my favorites for years. I first remember reading about it in a PC Week column by James Martin in the late 80s, prasing full-text indexing over keyword searching. Well, I was ego-surfing a few hours after I wrote my post on X1, and wouldn't you know, I came across this post, making the similar points in praise of text-indexing. Shortly after reading that James Martin article, I got hold of a copy of Lotus Magellan. I loved that program, which did a number of other things besides text-indexing, but text-indexing was its key feature. Back when I used Magellan, before email had entered my life (I worked for Otis Elevator, not on the cutting edge of IT, at least at that time), indexing my hard drive, where all my memos were stored as .DOC files, was the equivalent of indexing email today. And Magellan did it splendidly. So that got me thinking about Magellan, and I did some surfing for that, and I learned to my surprise and delight, that the principal behind X1 was the chief designer of Magellan! 11:12:21 PM    comment []