It is possible to customize some aspects of the search interface by using Query configuration entry in the Preferences menu.
There are two tabs in the dialog, dealing with the interface itself, and with the parameters used for searching and returning results.
User interface parameters:
Number of results in a result page:
Hide duplicate results: decides if result list entries are shown for identical documents found in different places.
Highlight color for query terms: Terms from the user query are highlighted in the result list samples and the preview window. The color can be chosen here. Any QT color string should work (ie red, #ff0000). The default is blue.
Result list font: There is quite a lot of information shown in the result list, and you may want to customize the font and/or font size. The rest of the fonts used by Recoll are determined by your generic QT config (try the qtconfig command).
Result paragraph format string: allows you to change the presentation of each result list entry. This is a qt-html string where the following printf-like % substitutions will be performed:
%A. Abstract
%D. Date
%I. Icon image name
%K. Keywords (if any)
%L. Preview and Edit links
%M. Mime type
%N. result Number
%R. Relevance percentage
%S. Size information
%T. Title
%U. Url
<img src="%I" align="left">%R %S %L <b>%T</b><br> %M %D <i>%U</i><br> %A %KYou may, for example, try the following for a more web-like experience:
<u><b><a href="P%N">%T</a></b></u><br> %A<font color=#008000>%U - %S</font> - %LOr the clean looking:
<img src="%I" align="left">%L <font color="#900000">%R</font> <b>%T</b><br>%S <font color="#808080"><i>%U</i></font> <table bgcolor="#e0e0e0"> <tr><td><div>%A</div></td></tr> </table>%KThe format of the Preview and Edit links is <a href="Pdocnum"> and <a href="Edocnum"> where docnum is what %N would print. This makes the title a preview link in the above format.
Please note that, due to the way the program handles right mouse clicks in the result list, if the custom formatting results in multiple paragraphs per result, right clicks will only work inside the first one.
HTML help browser: this will let you chose your preferred browser which will be started from the Help menu to read the user manual. You can enter a simple name if the command is in your PATH, or browse for a full pathname.
Auto-start simple search on white space entry: if this is checked, a search will be executed each time you enter a space in the simple search input field. This lets you look at the result list as you enter new terms. This is off by default, you may like it or not...
Start with advanced search dialog open and Start with sort dialog open: If you use these dialogs all the time, checking these entries will get them to open when recoll starts.
Use desktop preferences to choose document editor: if this is checked, the xdg-open utility will be used to open files when you click the Edit link in the result list, instead of the application defined in mimeview. xdg-open will in term use your desktop preferences to choose an appropriate application.
Search parameters:
Stemming language: stemming obviously depends on the document's language. This listbox will let you chose among the stemming databases which were built during indexing (this is set in the main configuration file), or later added with recollindex -s (See the recollindex manual). Stemming languages which are dynamically added will be deleted at the next indexing pass unless they are also added in the configuration file.
Dynamically build abstracts: this decides if Recoll tries to build document abstracts when displaying the result list. Abstracts are constructed by taking context from the document information, around the search terms. This can slow down result list display significantly for big documents, and you may want to turn it off.
Replace abstracts from documents: this decides if we should synthesize and display an abstract in place of an explicit abstract found within the document itself.
Synthetic abstract size: adjust to taste...
Synthetic abstract context words: how many words should be displayed around each term occurrence.
External indexes: This panel will let you browse for additional indexes that you may want to search. External indexes are designated by their database directory (ie: /home/someothergui/.recoll/xapiandb, /usr/local/recollglobal/xapiandb).
Once entered, the indexes will appear in the External indexes list, and you can chose which ones you want to use at any moment by checking or unchecking their entries.
Your main database (the one the current configuration indexes to), is always implicitly active. If this is not desirable, you can set up your configuration so that it indexes, for example, an empty directory. An alternative indexer may also need to implement a way of purging the index from stale data,