hughbetcha, I don't know the specific answer to your question
about the mechanism except that it's basically a full text search
engine. Here are some other Search items of note in RoboHelp 7.
1. Search highlighting is a new feature in RoboHelp 7 for
WebHelp and FlashHelp (and the server versions as well)
2. One cool thing that has been overlooked is that when the
end-user searches on a term, the highlighted first occurance of the
term comes up to the top of the topic window (instead of simply
taking you to the top of the topic)! So, this is a real improvement
especially for those necessarily long topics where the search term
may be way down in the text.
3. There is a new Synonym editor which allows authors to
create synonyms for nicknames and jargon words. So for example, if
someone searches on "picture", the topic results for "image" will
appear.
4. I found Boolean seaches work quite well (though not
wildcards) in regular WebHelp and FlashHelp.
Hey, Leon. I have not tried boolean searches in RH 7 merged
WebHelp yet. Have you? Maybe Peter will chime in.
These are great search improvements. Of course, being the
demanding authors we are, we always want more!
Fortunately Adobe is on track to continue improving seach as
a priority.
Thanx,
john
John Daigle
Adobe Certified RoboHelp and Captivate Instructor
Newport, Oregon