XyWrite+Roget

1/9/97; added Xy3+|NB-DOS search engine 1/31/97; added M$Word search macro 6/22/02

Downloads

Roget International Thesaurus (1911) (560Kb)

Notes:
Thesaurus spellings are American only, regrettably. "Realise" won't flag anything; it needs to be "Realize".

These programs/macros all search first for the word you have indicated in its original form. If that word is not found in the thesaurus, the programs commence to strip your word of its suffixes and prefixes (if any). The first found match becomes the new sought word. To alter or replace this match, you must manually change the sought word, either on the CoMmand line or via the appropriate Find dialog box.

A search engine for XyWrite III+ and NotaBene v3.x+ (called ROGETV3.PM) is available separately.

A fairly sophisticated search macro for Microsoft Word (called ROGET.BAS) is also available as an alternative to Word's built-in (Shift-F7) thesaurus. The Roget macro overcomes many of Word's vanilla search limitations, e.g.: found $trings that always appear on the top screen line (thereby robbing them of context), big stupid "Find and Replace" dialogs that cover underlying found text, multiple keystrokes required simply to repeat|rerun a search. Instructions:

Thesaurus Installation: Locate ROGET.TXT in the same drive:\directory as WINWORD.EXE (Word's editor).
Macro Installation: Start Word, and launch the Visual Basic Editor (Alt-F11); then File ==> Import File ==> Open ROGET.BAS ==> Save it among the "Normal" Modules; close the VB Editor.
Keyboard Assignment: In M$ Word, Tools ==> Customize ==> Keyboard ==> Categories ==> Macros ==> highlight the "Roget" macro, then "Press new shortcut key" (an "unassigned" keystroke which will henceforth launch the macro) ==> "Assign" it.
Operation: Put your cursor on any word in a text, or highlight (any part of) a word. Launch the Roget macro with its assigned keystroke. Repeatedly hit the assigned keystroke while displaying Roget, to see additional instances of the sought word (if no more instances are found, the macro noiselessly restarts from Top_Of_File). Close ROGET.TXT manually when done (Alt-F4) -- or keep it open all the time!

Neither of the above programs work in Xy4 or XyWin, and the discussion of U2 programming, below, does not apply.

For NotaBene v3|v4.x Users Only:
NB users have several installation options. I own NB v3.0, so I have fashioned a primitive program which works in early v3.0 (ca. 1988), but also in XyWrite III+ v3.57 (which is apparently more advanced than NB v4.5). Like its Xy4|XyWin parent, ROGETV3.PM has two basic usages, but availability of each usage depends upon the type of installation — in order of preference (the first three install options permit both usages):

In Help: SAve the program in Help, then configure a .KBD key as:
nn=HF,{248} (Ascii-248, usually represented as a degree sign)
LDPM the program to any ordinary Save/Get A-Z|0-9 except X (which is used in the program itself)
RUN the program from the CMline, e.g.:
In the .KBD file, "nn=NIBC,r,u,n, ,d,:,\,p,a,t,h,\,r,o,g,e,t,v,3,.,p,m,GTXC" will lookup word in text, but not on the CMline
In the .KBD file, "nn=NIBC,r,u,n, ,d,:,\,p,a,t,h,\,r,o,g,e,t,v,3,.,p,m,XC" will lookup word on the CMline, but not in text

Note that before use you must set (hard code) one Save/Get in the program. Usage is the same as in Xy4|XyWin.

For Xy4-DOS|XyWin|NBWin Users:

To enable Roget to find the thesaurus, you must first configure U2 frame {{5roget}}, by entering the fully-qualified d:\dir\ROGET.TXT location in Save/Get 01.

Dedicate a KeyBoarD file key to Roget:

nn=NOJM,2,.,P,r,s,K,b,d,A,r,g,Q2,r,o,g,e,t,NO

Usage:

Put your cursor on (or immediately after) the lookup word (if the lookup word doesn't exist in Text, type it on the CoMmand line). Then hit your dedicated key.

ROGET.TXT is a copy of the text distributed under the Project Gutenberg trademark, except that some space characters and semi-colons have been added|subtracted to make the entire text uniformly searchable by XyWrite. Due to these minor but undeniable changes, the "small print" statement of Project Gutenberg, concerning legalities of distribution of the Etext, is therefore deleted from the file, as required by PG. However, if you compare my edit of ROGET.TXT with an unaltered original of the PG Etext, you can see that they are the same.

BTW, Project Gutenberg, which produced this wonderful Etext and a thousand others, is endangered. A moving description of their current dire predicament suggests ways that we can help them survive. For an idea of what PG has accomplished during the last decade, on a sharply accelerating schedule, see their list of Etexts.

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Robert Holmgren
holmgren@acedsl.com