Acorn User 1/AU_CD1.iso/demos/s_to_z/supergram/Docs/Manual

Text File | 1993-11-22 | 9KB | 238 lines

MANUAL

This contains a brief description of how to use the evaluation version
of SUPERGRAM II.

1. QUICK START

To try the program out without having to wade through the rest of this
file try the following:

(1) Run !Supergram and click once on the iconbar icon. Enter your
full name as the 'Anagram text'. Click on Male if you are male and
Female otherwise and then click on the big 'Weed' button on the top
right of the window.

(2) When the run is over you will see a list of found anagrams in a big
window. Find ones which could make sense (perhaps after some rearranging
of the words) and double click on them. Select the correct word order,
add punctuation and then click on OK.

(3) When you have selected all the good anagrams press menu anywhere on
the window and Save the Report out to a filer window, editor or printer
driver!

Now for some more detail....

2. RUNNING THE PROGRAM

Run the program in the normal way by double clicking on the !Supergram
application. It installs on the iconbar and opens a copyright window
which closes automatically a few seconds later.

To do an anagram run click with the left button of the mouse on the
iconbar icon. Supergram is multi-windowed. This means that if you
continue to click on the iconbar icon more windows open and several
anagram runs can be done simultaneously sharing resources. For this
reason the program refuses to let itself be run more than once at
the same time as there is no need to do this.

When the window is first open it is in the Input stage.

3. THE STAGES

There are four stages during an anagram run.

The first stage is the Input stage where the input text is entered
and described and options are set to do with the lexicon scan and
anagram search.

The second stage is the Scan stage where the lexicon of words within
the program is consulted to get a list of 'Sub-words'. These are words
composed only of the letters which make up the input text. All multi-word
anagrams are composed only of such words. In addition Supergram
individually scores each sub-word according to its utility for forming
meaningful and relevant anagrams. If you stop at this stage you can
manually override the score given by the program for any given word.

The third stage is the Search stage where the anagrams are generated.

The fourth stage is the Weed stage where the list of found anagrams
is manually searched through. Good anagrams are picked out from the
bad ones, word-orders are selected and punctuation is added.

The four stages are controlled by the big buttons on top of the main
window for each run. When you click on one of those big buttons the
program will do just enough work to get to the end of that particular
stage.

4. THE INPUT STAGE

The input window is divided up into three sections: Description,
Dictionary and Search.


4.1 Description
The Description section allows you to give the program a little
information about the anagram text to help it in producing relevant
anagrams.

Click on Male and Female for people and Inanimate otherwise. The
Satire switch is to tell Supergram to try and produce Satirical
anagrams, Flattery is for flattering anagrams and Normal is to
indicate no particular bias (other than that which already exists
in the English language).

Political is to indicate that the text has something to do with
Politics such as a politician, political party etc.

Business is to indicate that the text is a company or businessman or
similar.

Computer is to indicate that the text is computer related.

4.2 Dictionary
This section controls the scan of the lexicon.

Dropped 'H' words turns on or off use of words such as "'orrible",
"'ello" etc.

Interjections penalises Interjections such as "Wow!" much harder
than usual when switched off. Interjections are useful for anagrams
as their presence does not affect the grammatical context of anything
that follows them.

Shuffle bonus penalises words that are not a good mix of the initial
text stopping trivial anagrams from being considered good.

Vulgar words allows or censors coarse or offensive language. When
combined with the Satire flag these words are considered highly
desirable! The licenced editions of this software come with a utility
which can permanently remove this option from the window making the
program more suitable for children. For more information see the file
VERSIONS.

4.3 Search

This section controls how the search is done.

Maximum ... minutes sets a time limit on the anagram search and a
sophisticated scheduling algorithm adjusts the search to make it
finish within that time. However, if the search is too tight some
good anagrams may get missed.

Score ... or better sets a minimum standard of anagram which should
be generated. All the raw anagrams are assigned a percentage score.
This score is based on the programs understanding of how likely they are
to make sense and how relevant they are to the initial text. Relevance
is determined by what you have told the program about the initial text.
The higher this lower limit is, the faster the run will go.

Maximum ... anagrams sets a limit on the number of raw anagrams that
will be kept. It is a bad idea to set this off unless a high score
limit has also been set as many thousands of anagrams may be generated
and your machine may run out of memory.

Maximum ... words is a specialist options that allows you to set a
limit on the number of words in the raw anagrams. For most applications
leave this flag off.


5. THE SCAN STAGE

During this stage the found sub-words are automatically scored into
one of six categories: Ideal, Excellent, Good, Average, Poor
and Terrible. In addition there is one extra category Superb that
can only be assigned to a word by hand.

To override a scoring given by the program (for example if you see
an especially relevant word which has been given a bad score) you
can change it by double clicking on it and then selecting a new
category. If you want to do a good run then this is well worthwhile.

6. THE SEARCH STAGE

During the anagram search the found anagrams are displayed in the
top window and various statistics are continuously displayed in the
botton window.

The statistics are:

Best, Worst and Average are the percentage scores of the best, worst
and mean anagrams currently stored by the program.

Time is the amount of computer time used so far. When other programs
or anagram runs are multitasking with it this will be slower than
real time.

End is a rolling estimate of the total amount of computer time needed
to finish the search. It can be highly inaccurate but is better than
nothing.

Schedule shows whether the program is currently behind or ahead of
the schedule set in the Input stage. If an asterisk is displayed
it means that it has currently lost some anagrams in its attempts
to make up time. Sometimes it catches up again and the asterisk
disappears.

Stored is the number of anagrams currently retained by the program.

Done is the percentage of the search currently completed.

Found is the total number of anagrams that have ever been retained
by the program including those which were stored at one point and
then replaced when new better anagrams were found later.

The bottom bar shows a series of snapshots of the search as it
progressses.

7. THE WEED STAGE

This stage enables you to scan through the anagrams found by the
program and select the best ones for preserving.

The raw anagrams are displayed in the word-order that the program
thinks is most likely to make sense but it is often wrong. Only
one permutation of the words is shown.

When you see a good anagram double click with the left button of
the mouse and a window will open allowing you to select a word-order.
When you have done this you can add punctuation and even exchange
a few letters (a check to see that you have not made any errors
is made when you press OK so do not worry about making mistakes).

A quicker way is to double click with the right button of the mouse.
That preserves the anagram exactly as it appears.

The weeded anagrams appear in the smaller top window. When you save out
the report it is these that are included in the final output.

8. THE MENU OPTIONS

Save allows you to save out three things.

The most important is the Report. This includes all the weeded anagrams
and the longest subwords found during the dictionary scan.

You can also save out the raw anagrams and (provided the list is not
too long) the subwords.

Licence give you a brief reminder about the licence conditions for
the evaluation version.

Pause and Continue allow you to hold an anagram search temporarily whilst
something else is done giving full control of the CPU back to the
other programs/anagrams runs with which it is multitasking.

After some errors (such as running out of memory) the search is
automatically paused. It is then up to you to solve the program (e.g.
by freeing up some memory) before proceeding with the run.

9. FURTHER DOCUMENTATION

Fuller professionally-printed documentation including a 'Tips' section
telling you how to get the most out of the program is included with
both non-evaluation editions. See the file VERSIONS for more information.