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Text File | 1993-01-12 | 13.4 KB | 339 lines

Mini Hound © copyright 1993, Ian Palmer —————————— version 1.00 Mini Hound is SHAREWARE ——————————————————————— See the file called '!Licence' (included in the application directory) for details of the user licence for Mini Hound. Mini Hound is a cut down, single disc, version of Word Hound. Mini Hound supplies the user with a cut down Roget’s thesaurus (taken from Roget’s 1911 thesaurus). Although it is a cut down version, it none the less contains over 30,000 key words which index into a thesaurus with almost 60,000 words. Adding the fact that Mini Hound performs a unique ‘fuzzy’ search every time the number of actual words it can find is much greater. The full Word Hound application, however, comes with a larger thesaurus, and also a full dictionary containing over 30,000 definitions. The larger thesaurus contains alternative phrases as well as alternative words, for example searching for ‘express’ you will get words like ‘convey’, ‘imply’ and ‘indicate’ (as well as many others) with both packages, but with Word Hound you will also get ‘bear a sense’, ‘speak of’ and ‘allude to’ (as well as others). With the full Word Hound you can also, of course, get a full definition of ‘express’ : ———————— Actual definition as given by Word Hound ———————- 1 ex.press \ik-‘spres\ adj 1: EXPLICIT; also : EXACT, PRECISE 2: SPECIFIC <his express purpose> 3: traveling at high speed and usu. with few stops <express train; also : adapted to high speed use <express roads> 4: being or relating to special transportation of goods at premium rates <express delivery> <express rates> — ex.press.ly adv 2 express n : an express system or vehicle 3 express vb 1: to make known : SHOW, STATE <express regret> <express himself through art :; also : SYMBOLIZE 2: to squeeze out : extract by pressing 3: to send by express —————————- End of definition from Word Hound ————————- Further details of the full Word Hound application are given in a separate file supplied with this application. Both Mini Hound and it’s big brother Word Hound will communicate directly with Computer Concepts’ Impression document processor (version 2.17), and will also communicate (although not directly) with almost any editor or word processor, etc. Of course they also work on their own, providing a fast and convenient way of locating that word that’s on the edge of your tongue. _____________________ ————————————————————— Mini Hound User Guide _____________________ ————————————————————— When you run Mini Hound it will install itself on the iconbar as normal. Clicking ‘Select’ on it’s icon brings up the ‘Enter’ window which is where you can enter words for Mini Hound to search. This window contains 5 icons : 1) A writable icon where you can type words 2) A menu icon marked ‘Search’ which will make Mini Hound search for the word currently in the writable icon. 3) A menu icon marked ‘Wild Card’ which makes Mini Hound perform a wild card search (see below). 4) A menu icon marked ‘Sounds Like’ which makes Mini Hound perform a sounds like search (see below). 5) An option icon marked ‘Close’ which sets the window close option of Mini Hound (see below). Normal Search ————————————— When Mini Hound is asked to perform a normal ‘Search’, it looks the given word up in it’s index file. It then brings up a ‘Selection’ window which will either contain a message stating that the word could not be found, or a list of thesaurus entries which contain that word. If a list is produced, the list gives the first word in each relevant entry. To view the complete entry for any in the list simply move the mouse pointer over that entry and press the ‘Select’ mouse button. At this point the ‘Display’ window will pop up giving the full entry. On this window moving the mouse pointer over a word and pressing mouse buttons perform the following functions : Select - Pass the word under the pointer to the application currently holding the caret. Menu - Bring up a save window to allow you to save the entry to a text file. Adjust - Perform a normal search on the word under the pointer. Shift-Adjust - Place the word under the pointer in the writable icon in the ‘Enter’ window. NOTES: When you bring up the ‘Enter’ window, Mini Hound first notes where the caret is, and will return it there when a search takes place. When a normal search is performed, in actual fact a ‘fuzzy’ search is performed. This search also looks for words that are very similar, or of the same stem as the word searched for. For example searching for ‘fastest’ will also search for ‘fast’, searching for ‘colour’ will also search for ‘color’ (to make up for the fact that the thesaurus is American), etc. The list produced in the ‘Selection’ window contains two columns. The first column indicates the word found in the index files, the second column gives the first word in the thesaurus entry. Due to the use of the fuzzy search words other than the one you typed in can appear in the selection list. For example, searching for 'card' will also produce an entry for 'car'. Irrelevant search entries should just be ignored by the user. Wild Card and Sounds Like searches —————————————————————————————————— The ‘Wild Card’ search allows you to search for words by giving wild cards. Both the * and # wild cards are fully supported, * meaning any number of letters and # meaning any single letter. The ‘Sounds Like’ search will look for all words that sound like the word given. For example, a sounds like search on ‘word’ produces the following : rowdy ward wart weird wiedo word wordy work This sounds like search is very useful if you can only roughly remember a word, or don’t know how it is spelt. With both these searches the resultant list is given in the ‘Display’ window (described above) and the mouse has the same function as with the display of thesaurus entries. Mini Hound with Impression™ ——————————————————————————- Mini Hound will hotlink with Impression allowing you to pass words between the two applications. For the hotlink to work Mini Hound’s ‘Enter’ window must be open (it can be iconised, under Risc-OS 3). To pass a word from Impression to Mini Hound simply select that word inside your Impression document and then press SHIFT-INSERT. Mini Hound will then perform a normal search on that word, bringing up the ‘Selection’ window as normal. If, instead of pressing SHIFT-INSERT you press CTRL-SHIFT-INSERT Mini Hound will simply enter the selected word into the writable icon in the ‘Enter’ window, allowing you to perform other searches on the word. When you have located the word you wish to replace the searched word for, simply press ‘Select’ over that word (in the ‘Display’ window‘) and it will be passed directly to Impression which will perform the substitution. Notes: This hotlink only works with Impression version 2.17 (and probably above, but no responsibility can be taken for Computer Concepts changing the hotlinking system in future releases of Impression). If more than one word is selected in the Impression document, the first word in the selection will be searched by Mini Hound. Impression takes over the handling of trying to match the case of the replacement word passed to it by Mini Hound, and thus this feature will not always be the same as handled when using Mini Hound with other applications (see below). Mini Hound with other applications —————————————————————————————————— With applications other than Impression a slightly more cumbersome method can be employed. To pass a word to Mini Hound you can drag a ‘Save Selection’ (or similar) to either Mini Hound’s iconbar icon, or it’s ‘Enter’ window, and it will perform a search on that word. Passing words from Mini Hound to the other application you must make sure that the caret is in the correct position in the other application’s window and then ‘Select’ the word you wish to pass in Mini Hound’s ‘Display’ window. When passing words to Mini Hound from other applications, Mini Hound makes a note of the case of the word passed. Mini Hound can identify 3 distinct cases, all lower case, all upper case and first letter upper the rest lower case. When you select a word to send back to the application Mini Hound will try to match the case of the new word to that of the word passed to it. Note, as stated above, when using the Impression hotlink this is handled by Impression itself, and so the results may be different in some cases. Mini Hound Close Window Option —————————————————————————————— When you select a word in Mini Hound’s ‘Display’ window you may wish Mini Hound to automatically close it’s windows (the selection and display windows), this can be done by setting the ‘Close’ option in the ‘Enter’ window. Mini Hound’s Window Colours ——————————————————————————- Mini Hound uses five user definable colours for it’s selection and display windows. These colours can be set by the user from the main menu. The five colours are identified by the following : Background - Background of the windows Foreground - Colour of main text in the display window Dictionary - Not really relevant to Mini Hound Word - Colour used for highlighting searched for word in display window. Select - Colour used for highlighting selected word in display window. Saving your options ——————————————————- You can save your window colour, and Close window, options by using the save status entry in the main menu. This status file is a text file which you can edit if you wish, although it is easier to get Mini Hound to create its own. When Mini Hound starts up it looks for a file pointed to by the system variable MiniHound$Init. By default this points to a file called ‘SetUp’ in the MiniHound application directory, this is the file that is created with the save status option in Mini Hound. The file is basically a list of options, each having two parts; an option name and a value. Option names available are (with meanings) : Hot-Search - Key code to initiate Impression hotlink ‘search’ Hot-Enter - Key code to initiate Impression hotlink ‘enter’ Background - Colour of window backgrounds Foreground - Colour of window foreground Dictionary - Colour of to display the word ‘Rogette’ in windows Word - Colour of highlighting searched word Select - Colour of highlighting selected word Auto-Close - Auto window close option The option is then followed by a ‘:’ and then a value. All options can take numerical values as their parameters, but there are some special cases. Auto-Close can also take any of : On Off True False Hot-Search and Hot-Enter can also take descriptions, eg. : Shift Insert Ctrl F1 Ctrl-T Shift Ctrl Copy and so on. When Mini Hound creates the file it uses the numerical form for all options except Auto-Close where it will use either True or False. Note: If you want to change the keys for the Impression hotlink (from their default SHIFT-INSERT and CTRL-SHIFT-INSERT) you must make sure that your replacements are key combinations not already understood by Impression. This does rather limit the range of choice, as Impression has used most key combinations already. Requirements ———————————- The Mini Hound application has been designed to fit onto a single 800k disc so as to work on any Risc-OS computer. It’s memory requirements vary during use. When idle Mini Hound requires 128k memory. However when it is displaying the results of a search it’s memory requirements will grow depending on what it is trying to display. Under typical use the memory requirements are unlikely to rise above 160k in total. Although Mini Hound will work from a floppy disc, it is faster from a hard disc. For example, searching for ‘waiting’ from floppy (on an A5000) takes approx. 3-4 seconds from floppy, whereas the search is instantaneous from a hard drive. As another example a sounds like search on ‘anxious’ takes about 9 seconds from floppy, but only about 1 second from a hard disc. Finally, searching for ‘*na’ from floppy takes almost half a minute - but on hard disc it’s just 2 seconds. Notes ————— The thesaurus used by this program is based on an American version of Roget's thesaurus, and thus contains some American specific words and spellings (eg. color). Although Mini Hound makes some compensations for this during it's normal search it should, however, be kept in mind. The thesaurus was created automatically from a much larger text, and contains a few rogue entries. These entries are usually confined to common words such as 'the' and 'with' which can appear in word lists where they do not belong. The Guided Tour ——————————————— Often with new applications it is helpful to follow an example run to get familiar with the porgram. A tutorial is supplied with this application for this very purpose. The tutorial is contained in a text file on this disc, called 'Tutorial'. Technical Details ————————————————— It is not advised to run this application from within archives or compressed filing systems (eg. ArcFS, CFS or SparkFS, etc.) as this will slow down the application dramatically. As the data files (over 80% of the application) are already compressed placing Mini Hound in an archive (or compressing it) has a reduced effect. Data files designed to work with Word Hound (Mini Hound's big brother) are not compatable with Mini Hound, and vice versa. Unlike Word Hound, the Mini Hound thesaurus can not be updated by the user.