2 The Main SARA window

All use of SARA is done within the main SARA window. There is a menu bar across the top of this window, which can be used to select the various SARA commands available to you, and a tool bar which can be used to select particular commands rapidly. See section7.1 for a summary of the commands accessible from the tool bar. At the bottom of the screen, there is an iconified representation of the corpus which you are currently searching (in the current release, this is always the whole of the BNC).

The SARA client can operate in either of two modes. In query mode (the default, and usual mode of operation) the client accepts queries, acts on them, and displays their results in one or more query windows. In browse mode, the client opens a browser window showing the whole of a particular text, which you can then read. In browse mode, the Query menu is replaced by a Browser menu.

To use SARA you give various commands, selected from the menu bar or the tool bar. Some commands affect the behaviour of the client or the server, for example by setting limits for the amount of text to be downloaded in response to a query, or to change the format of text being displayed by the client. Other commands create new queries and open new windows to display their results in.

The commands available are logically grouped together according to Microsoft interface guidelines. The order in which they are discussed below follows their order on the menu bar.

To select an item from the menu bar, click on the appropriate word with the mouse, or type the appropriate keyboard shortcut. A menu will open up, from which further options can be selected with the mouse, possibly with further sub-menus in some cases.

The following options are available from the top level menu structure:

• File menu Most choices on this menu manipulate SARAquery files. Select it to create, re-use, or save a query, as well as to print the results of a query, or to exit from the program, as further described in section 3 .
• Edit menu Choices on this menu manipulate the current SARA query. Use it to copy selected solutions to the Windows clipboard, or to attach named bookmarks to particular solutions, for later recovery, as further described in section4 .
• Browser menu This menu option appears instead of the Query menu option if no query is currently open, or when SARA is in browser mode; choices on this menu control how texts are displayed when you are browsing through them. Use it to turn on or off the display of low level SGML tags in browser mode, as further described in section 5 .
• Query menu This menu option appears only when you have sent a query to the server to be processed, when it replaces the Browser menu option. Most choices on this menu modify the results of the current SARA query. Use it to re-submit a modified version of the current query, to thin, save, or sort the results of the current query, or change the way they are displayed. It can also be used to calculate collocations and to view the source of a particular result, as further described in section 6 .
• View menu Choices on this menu determine how results are displayed by SARA. Use it to limit the length of downloaded solutions, and their number, to choose a default format for displaying them, to set the colours and format of the display, and to configure various options for this and subsequent SARA sessions, as further described in section 7 .
• Window menu Choices on this menu allow you to manipulate the windows on the screen. Use it to open a new main SARA window, to tidy the way that existing windows are displayed, etc., as further described in section 8 .
• Help menu Choices on this menu allow you to read the built-in SARA help file. Use it to browse the online SARA documentation, as further described in section 9 .

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