Tech Pubs Tips Series Kickoff: Search for Single Character Words

[Team Specman welcomes the Technical Publications Team to our blog]

Effectively documenting feature rich, constantly evolving products like Specman, Incisive Enterprise Simulator XL (IES-XL), and Enterprise Manager is a challenge to say the least.  This gives rise to a corresponding challenge for end users: finding the info they need as quickly and easily as possible.  To help address both these issues, we on the "Tech Pubs" team will be blogging on FAQs about the mechanics of using Cadence Help to get the most out of the Specman and IES product documentation itself.

To kickoff this series, we'll start with a classic FAQ: "How do I search for one character words?"

Answer: when searching for phrases that have one-character words, such as the language names “e” and “C”, use quotes, or turn off wildcard word completion.

For example, if you search on the phrase “export C” (without quotes), you get an error message saying “the search query had too few characters preceding the asterisk (*).”  This is because Cadence Help is set up by default to use wildcard completion, and thus the system adds asterisks to every search term.  However, adding an asterisk to one letter results in too many search hits for the search engine to handle.

Consequently, to search on one-character words like "e", you need to do one of the following:

* Put the one-character word in quotes. For example instead of searching for:

export C

Search on:

export “C”

OR

* On the form that comes up from the Edit–Settings command, go to the Search tab and un-check the box for “Use Wildcard Word Completion.”

Happy searching!

The Tech Pubs Team