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Recoll looked interesting enough to warrant a post, as it is multi-platform (MacOS, Linux and Windows) and generally free -- alas, with the exception of Windows (see quotes n.2 & 3 below)...

Recoll has been requested at PA.com before (cf. https://portableapps.com/node/54129) as a possible alternative to DocFetcher (viewtopic.php?t=6202).

At first sight, It appears Recoll is Python based and browsing its FAQ page, I was able to foresee a quick way to turn it natively portable with the help of its '-c' CLI parameter (check the relevant Windows FAQ entry).

As I don't have Paypal anymore and I couldn't find any free version, I was unable to test this -- though it still looked worthwhile posting (see the first quote below) just in case someone else will be able to have a go.

Recoll is a desktop full-text search tool. Recoll finds documents based on their contents as well as their file names.[...] Recoll will index a MS-Word document stored as attachment to an e-mail message inside a Thunderbird folder archived in a ZIP file (and more...). It will also help you search for it with a friendly and powerful interface, and let you open a copy of a PDF at the right page with two clicks. There is little that will remain hidden on your disk.

The port of Recoll to Windows lacks a few goodies like like real-time indexing, or multi-thread execution. Be aware that I ask for a small contribution to download it.

I request a small fee for downloading and using the Windows binary version. I don’t use it myself, so it makes it worth my while (building the thing and its dependencies on Windows is no piece of cake).

According to the homepage, Recoll current version is v1.32.7, released 2022-08-07 (main changelog at https://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/pages/release-history.html).

Midas wrote: ↑Tue Aug 23, 2022 7:25 am Recoll looked interesting enough to warrant a post, as it is multi-platform (MacOS, Linux and Windows) and generally free -- alas, with the exception of Windows (see quotes n.2 & 3 below)...

I saw this a while back and of course I'm very interested. But it seemed like a headache to get the Windows version running (and of course not free). Has anyone actually got this running on Windows or elsewhere?

And you're right that it deserved a mention. DocFetcher has a Pro version now that's also payware so if you want a more powerful search option, this makes a lot of sense. Thanks for posting.

webfork wrote: ↑Wed Aug 24, 2022 6:38 am Has anyone actually got this running on Windows or elsewhere?

Yep ! Running Recoll on MXLinux here, works great.
Building the index can take a while though, particularly if you have thousands of books in your library.
Once this is done, results from any query are displayed almost instantaneously...



But, for windows users, the best software i've used so far is Archivarius 3000. It's shareware.

I've digged a little bit deeper into configuration options and found a web page for that.
Results list is customisable :



My index file is 5Gb for approximately 80.000 documents (this includes several encyclopedias).

Recoll v1.37 released 2024-02-02[?] (history at https://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/pages/release-history.html).