This was more or less what I was thinking of in my hackfest suggestion
to embed Lucene in a Firefox extension; but I hadn't thought of using it
to access pre-distributed Lucene indexes. That might be very handy.
(Though a Firefox-only approach probably isn't what Eric has in mind).
Would it be stretching METS too far to encode the digital objects, the
Lucene index, and Firefox and the extension as the software needed to
access the stuff? (XULRunner would provide a non-browser-based way to
deploy the same functionality).

Peter

-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
Hickey,Thom
Sent: Monday, October 16, 2006 7:31 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] java application on a cd

Seems to me you need a JavaScript version of the Lucene search engine.
I've done search-only subsets of search engines, and they are a lot less
complex than the whole thing. People have done similar things (like
Google's JavaScript version of XSLT). It takes some work, but then all
you need to run is a JavaScript browser.

--Th

-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
Eric Lease Morgan
Sent: Friday, October 13, 2006 1:52 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [CODE4LIB] java application on a cd

Can someone here tell me about the feasibility of implementing a
particular Java application on a CD, described below.

For a good time I would like to distribute my Alex Catalogue of
Electronic Texts on an operating system independent CD. Here is how I
see it being implemented:

   1. Collect electronic texts
   2. Mark them up in TEI
   3. Transform them into HTML and/or PDF
   4. Create an author index in HTML
   5. Create a title index in HTML
   6. Use Lucene to index the texts
   7. Write a Java program to search
      the index and return hyperlinks
      to the texts
   8. Put the whole lot on a CD
   9. Give it away

With the exception of Step #7, I know the plan is implementable, but how
can I do Step #7?

This is what I want to do with Step #7. First I create an HTML form
looking something like this:

   <form action='search.java' method='get'>
     <input type='text' name='query' />
     <input type='submit' />
   </form>

When people click the submit button the contents of query get passed to
search.java and executed. The search results are formatted into HTML and
returned to the browser for display.

Is such a program implementable? Can a program like search.java get
input from a form like this without the need of an intermediate HTTP
server? Apparently Java applet technology will not work in this
environment because applets are not allowed to read from the local file
system.

--
Eric "Wishing I Was @ Access2006" Morgan University Libraries of Notre
Dame