5 The Browser menu
The Browser menu is available only when SARA is in browse mode. In this mode, you are able to browse through the whole text of any part of the corpus in a special purpose window.
When SARA starts, it is initially in browse mode. As soon as you open a query, or create a new one, SARA switches out of browse mode, and the Browser menu is replaced by the Query menu, discussed in section 6 . To open the browser window, click on the BNC icon at the bottom left of the SARA main screen, or click on the Browse button which appears on the bottom right of the Source window described below in section 6.7 .
In browse mode, you can move from one text in the corpus to the next, simply by using the arrow keys on the button bar, or their equivalent keyboard shortcuts. The texts appear in alphabetical order, according to their three character identifiers.
Each text sample of the BNC has a similar SGML structure. Each text is represented by a <bncDoc> element, which is composed of a <header> element and either a<text> or an <stext> element. These elements are all further subdivided into elements of other named kinds. <header> elements have a rather complex substructure, following international standards for bibliographic description. Both <text> and <stext> elements are composed fundamentally of <s> (sentence) elements, which contain a mixture of <w> (word) elements and <c> (punctuation) elements. In written texts, these are grouped into elements such as<p> (paragraph) or <head> (heading); in spoken texts, they are grouped into <u> (utterance) elements. (For a more detailed description, see theBNC Users' Reference Guide .)
In browse mode, this structure is presented visually in the form of a list of container elements, each of which can be selectively expanded. When a text is first displayed, only the outermost<bncDoc> element containing it is visible. It appears in a special browse window, with a plus sign to the left of the SGML start-tag, which indicates that this element is not yet fully expanded. Click on the plus sign to see the SGML elements of which it is composed. At the next level down, a<bncDoc> element has two subcomponents, a<header> element, and a <text> or<stext> element.
When an element is expanded, the plus sign in front of its start-tag turns into a minus sign, indicating that that element has been expanded. You can continue in this way, expanding elements down to the lowest level <w> elements for any text. If you click on a minus sign, the expansion of the element will be removed.
If you entered browse mode by clicking on the Browse button during display of the results of a SARA query, a red horizontal line will also appear in the Browser window. This line marks the place in the text where the current hit occurs; you can move directly to this point by clicking on the box at the left end of the line. Since this requires that the whole of the text must be downloaded from the server to the client, there may be some delay between your clicking on the box, and the display of the element containing the hit. Once the text is available, the display will automatically scroll to it.
You can now inspect the content of any elements before or after the hit by clicking on the plus signs, as before.
You use the Tags command on the Browser menu to determine which of the SGML tags around parts of the text are to be displayed. By default, all tags are displayed in the Browse window (the Tags command on the Browser menu is checked); click on this command to switch off display of the low-level tags for words, punctuation, and s-units.
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