Advanced Search Explanation

	Advanced Search Explanation

The advanced functions may be used to further refine a search. All of the functions available in the simple search (as described on the Using the NMAC Search Engine page) are also available in the advanced search.

Click on a letter to see the explanation of that advanced search function.

Search Box Example


A.	Match Case
	By default, the search engine is not case sensitive. All letters are seen as lower case. For example, "RECEIPTS" will bring the same results as "receipts" and "ReCeIpTs." To make the search engine case sensitive, check the box next to Match case. With the box checked, the search engine will retrieve only those rules that have the search term capitalized exactly as it is in the Search string box. For example, the term "Bus" will retrieve rules containing the words "Bus," "Buses," "Business," etc., where the B is capitalized.

B.	Find Only Whole Words
	The search engine, by default, does not always retrieve the exact word in the search string. For example, the term "bus" will retrieve rules containing "bus," "buses," "business," "combustion," etc. To restrict the search engine to the exact word, check the box next to Find only whole words. With the box checked, the search engine will retrieve only those rules that have exact word in the Search string box. For example, the term "bus" will retrieve only those rules containing the word "bus."

C.	Search Specific Portions of the HTML Documents
	The html documents used on the NMAC website contain information that is not seen in the text of the rules. The four boxes under Search the following parts of the web pages allow searching the information that may not be in the rule text. The default setting is to search the html document title and the full text. It is advisable to keep only those two boxes checked as most of the html documents do not have description, keywords or images. A more detailed description of each box is found below.
		*Title - The html document title is seen in the blue bar at the top of the browser window. The html document titles for the rule text on the NMAC website have the citation of the rule to the part level, such as "1.24.10 NMAC." By default, this box is checked.
		*Description and Keywords - Documents written in html may contain descriptions and keywords that are part of the code of the document but are not seen in the actual text. Most of the rule documents on the NMAC website do not have descriptions or keywords embedded in the code so checking this box will not be helpful when conducting a search.
		*Full Text - The full text is the actual text of the rules. It is what is seen on the computer screen. By default, this box is checked and should remain checked for the search to be performed properly.
		*Alternate texts of the images - Graphic images that are embedded into an html document may carry an alternate text that describes the image. Most of the rule documents in the NMAC website do not have embedded images so checking this box will not be helpful when conducting a search.

D.	Search Non-HTML Documents
	Other documents not written in html may be searched; however, pdf documents do not display properly. It is best not to check this box and concentrate the search on the html documents.

E.	Number of Results
	By default, 10 results are shown on each results page. That number can be increased to 25 or 50 by clicking the drop-down arrow and selecting a number. Increasing the number of results will increase the time necessary to coduct the search.

F.	Sorting Order
	By default, the results are sorted by the number of matches in each document going from the document with the most to that with the fewest. The results also can be sorted by the time of last update, going from the most recent update on the NMAC website to the oldest.