From: ijp@oak3.doc.ic.ac.uk (Ian Palmer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Word Hound
Date: 22 Jul 92 10:12:12 GMT
Organization: Department of Computing, Imperial College, University of London, UK.
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL3

I have just uploaded 'Word Hound' to Manchester (uts.mcc.ac.uk) where
it is currently in the 'incoming/riscos' directory, but I assume it
will at some stage move to the 'pub/riscos' directory. As it's now
avaiable (I assume to the whole world) here's full info on the program
so you don't spend weeks getting it only to find you (a) don't want it
or (b) can't use it.

First let me say, it's big. You'll need 4Meg hard disc space to be
able to have the full version, and you'll ideally need 6Meg during
installation.

Although you need big dics space to hold the full application, you
don't need a massive memory to run it. It takes a 128k wimpslot.

It comes in 6 files :

   wordhound.install - text          - how to install
   wordhound1        - spark archive - application plus index files
   wordhound2        - binary data   - thesaurus data
   wordhound3        - binary data   - dictionary data part 1
   wordhound4        - binary data   - dictionary data part 2
   wordhound5        - binary data   - dictionary data part 3

All these files are under 800k long, and all but wordhound2 are under
720k long.

If you don't have the hard disc space, you could just copy
'wordhound1' and 'wordhound2' (plus the install text) and just have a
thesaurus - the program will cope with this. This would only require
about 1.6 Meg hard disc space, and should fit on a high density
floppy.

It contains a 30,000 entry dictionary and Roget's 1901 thesaurus with
an index file containing over 30,000 keywords. Both data files are,
and remain, compressed (hense the reason they are not archived when
you receive them, as the archives would actually be bigger :-)

It runs under RiscOS and has the ability to import 'selected' text
from other packages (eg. Impression) and search for the word passed to
it. It can then pass the word (or phrase) you wish to replace it with
back to the application (or whereever currently holds the caret).

Searching is fast, typically well under a second (Arm3) and there are
three different types of search. Normal (search for the given word),
'Start' (search for all words starting with ...) and 'sounds like'
(search for words that might (given a vivid imagination) sound a bit
like ....) (useful if you can't spell :-)

There is only one problem with it that I know about, and that is that
both data files are American (ie. color and the like, yuch!, but there
is no way I'm going through getting on for 5Meg of uncompressed text
changing all American spellings to English spellings (well not this
week).

I would be apreciative of bug reports, suggestions, (but not flames)
will be gratefully received.

Oh and you're free to distribute it where ever you like, and private
individuals are free to use it for FREE (organizations, companies,
and the like must register to USE it (this is laid down in the licence
that accompanies it) and this will probably cost some nominal fee for
a site licence).

You may NOT, however, alter it in any way (except perhapse altering
the !Run file if you must). The program is copyrighted to me, NOT
Public Domain (but there are few restrictions).

Ian

P.S. Because of the way I have chosen to distribute it, any updates
will probably not require you to get all the data, just an update of
the application (wordhound1). Good Eh?

--
                            E-mail : ijp@doc.ic.ac.uk
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