Specify a maximum separation between words

when searching for more than one word

The maximum separation can be set via the menu entry "Filter" or via icons. It limits the number of words to the right of the first word which will be inspected for the second word. A value of "X" means that a maximum of this many words can stand between two words being searched for with a filter.

• Example 1
  You are looking for references to the poet "Friedrich Schiller", but initially also find entries such as "Friedrich Meier" or "Hans Schiller".
  This problem can be solved with a word separation of "0", in which case the two words sought must be right next to each other.
• Example 2
  Ah you might say, but was not Schiller ennobled and after that called "Friedrich von Schiller"? Then simply set the word separation to"1" to see all files containing either "Friedrich Schiller" or "Friedrich von Schiller".
• Example 3
  You're looking for references to "Johann Wolfgang von Goethe", but don't know how exactly it may be contained. Set the word separation to "2" and click on "Johann":

Above and below "Johann" are thousands of other words (the index contains 511.000 Words, of which 61.036 differ, as shown in the middle of the FindWord status bar), and 29 files (this number is displayed towards the left of the status bar) contain the word "Johannes".

As soon as the user clicks the AND-Operator {U}, the word list is emptied and only the first "Johann" remains, together with those words to its right up to a separation of "2", i.e. "Wolfgang", "von" and "Goethe", in alphabetical order. The sole hit is the file "Gelehrte1.rtf".

Isn't that fascinating? With just three clicks you can find all occurences of the poet "Johann Wolfgang von Goethe" however it was written - the search would be a success if the name was written as "Johann Goethe" or as "Johann von Goethe". Traditional search engines without selectable word separation can only solve this problem in a clumsy way, such as searching for "Johann Wolfgang von Goethe" OR "Johann von Goethe" OR "Johann Goethe" OR "Johann Wolfgang Goethe".