Introduction

The User Guide is a section of the Wiki that contains information regarding the various features available on PalWeb.

Contents

• Features
• Search Genie
• Academy
• Texts
• Dictionary
• Conventions
• Transcription
• Orthography
• Indexing
• Workbench
• Deck Builder
• Card Viewer
• Record Wizard
• Contributing

Search Genie

The Search Genie is your all-in-one search solution on PalWeb. It is accessible anywhere that you see a button prompt on the top-right corner of the page (you should see it on this page), or in the navigation menu on mobile devices.

Click the button prompt or use the shortcut Cmd/Ctrl+K to open the Search Genie. You will see three tabs representing the three types of models you can search for: Terms, Sentences & Decks. Select the model type you'd like to search for & start typing to see results in real time.

Query Anatomy

The Search Genie works by matching the search query with different properties on the model type you've selected.

• the Search Genie will return any Term that:
• the search query matches any of its Spellings in Arabic.
• the search query matches the English transcription of any of its Pronunciations.
• the search query matches the Arabic spelling or English transcription of any of its Inflections.
• the search query matches any of its Glosses (i.e. definitions) in English.
• the Search Genie will return any Sentence that:
• contains a Term matching any of the above criteria.
• the search query matches the form of a Term in the Sentence, in Arabic or English.
• the Search Genie will return any Decks that:
• contains a Term matching any of the above criteria.
• the search query matches the Deck's name.

Let's assume you're searching for the Term كثير (ktīr "many"). You can find it by searching for any the following:

• by Spelling (Arabic): كثير or كتير
• by Pronunciation (English): ktīr or kŧīr
• by Inflection (Arabic, English): كثار or ktār
• by Gloss (English): "many" or "very", etc.

You may also apply filters in the Terms tab of the Search Genie to narrow down your results in real time. You may apply any combination of these five filters:

• the Category is the part of speech a Term belongs to (e.g. Noun).
• the Attribute is the grammatical feature a Term may have (e.g. Masculine).
• the Form is the verbal form of a Term or from which it is derived (e.g. Form 2).
• the Singular Pattern is the word pattern of a Term in its default or singular form (e.g. CvCC).
• the Plural Pattern is the word pattern of a Term in its plural form (e.g. CCūC).

Selecting the Sentences or Decks tab will then display all of the corresponding models that contain matching Terms. Any filters you've applied for Terms will persist while searching for Sentence & Decks, so you can search for Decks with a specific Term in it, or get all Sentences with a pseudo-verb.

Contextual Behavior

The Search Genie is context-aware, meaning that the action taken on selecting one of the results will differ depending on the site context. (The Search Genie informs of you the action it will take by way of a tooltip.)

By default, selecting a result will take you to its page in the Dictionary, Phrasebook or Deck Library. In the Deck Builder, the Search Genie is used to add Terms to a Deck. In the Card Viewer, it is used to pin new Decks for studying. In the Record Wizard, it is used to add all Terms in a given Deck to the Queue of items to record.

Use the Search Genie wherever you see the button prompt to see what you can do with it!

Limitations

Unfortunately, there are some limitations to the functionality of the Search Genie that are inherent to how the database is structured & the conventions established on PalWeb, namely:

• Searching by English transcription only returns exact matches (i.e. ktir will not match ktīr), so you would have to be precise — perhaps unreasonably so. See Conventions for the site's transcription standard.
• Inflections are stored with only one canonical spelling & transcription, so a search for كتار or kŧār will fail.
• Searching for the conjugated forms of verbs will not work because verbal conjugations are not stored as Inflections; they must be queried by their lemma form (i.e. the third-person masculine past).

Ironically, because every attestation of a Term in a Sentence is stored with an indication of its form within the Sentence, it is actually possible to find Sentences that contain a verb in a specific conjugated form.