USAGE NOTES 2/24/94 Copyright 1994, Eugene Gorelik Your spell checker is likely to know only a subset of these words, so give it a quick education. Install them all in its main dictionary, rather than in a supplement where they will either exceed space limitations or else slow down the checker unacceptably. The main is likely to be compressed, so after entering them you will probably see it expand in size by an amount significantly less than the size of wordlist.sup. Wordlist.sup contains over 2,700 words, of which it's a good bet that your spell checker is presently unfamiliar with a great many of them. If you would like to print the word list for detailed inspection or editing I suggest employing multiple columns/page. I printed it with 10-pitch Courier, 4 text columns, a line length of 80 characters (margins 0 and 79 in Atari WordPerfect), 60 lines/page, 1 space between text columns. The whole took 12 pages. With smaller or more compact type (e.g., proportional) you can of course fit even more text columns on a page. If you have a large enough RAMdisk available, load both your main dictionary as well as wordlist.sup onto it and tell the merge utility to run everything from there, as that can speed up the process dramatically. In the case of a floppies-only system it can speed up it by more than an order of magnitude. Be sure to furnish the merge utility the correct pathnames for your main dictionary and wordlist.sup. If you run the merge utility off the same RAMdisk or otherwise from the same directory that holds the two dictionary files, you should not need to supply any paths. You may need to rename wordlist.sup if the merge utility requires it to use some particular name. You may have to cut it down into chunks if the merge utility cannot merge supplements above a certain size. Important: back up your main dictionary before merging. You should also keep a copy of your original main even after you begin using the enhanced version--and of course, always save your data before spell-checking. I cannot be held responsible for any untoward consequences resulting from use of this file. Some merging examples follow. ____________________________________________________________________________ ************* Example for WordPerfect 4.1 Atari ST ************* Using the Merge Textfile option: 1. Preferably copy lex.wp, wordlist.sup, speller.prg, and speller.rsc all to the same directory on a RAMdisk or hard disk. 2. Double-click speller.prg. 3. Press (for lex.wp). 4. Press (for lex.bak). 5. Press or click option 9 (Add Text File to Dictionary). 6. Type wordlist.sup. 7. Press or click OK. 8. Screen goes blank. Wait. Running everything off a large RAMdisk on a 520ST took approx. 6 minutes to merge on each of several initial trials. Using the exact same setup in every respect, it took just 1 min. 20 seconds on each of several subsequent trials. Despite my best efforts, I have not been able to come up with an explanation for this strange discrepancy. In any case, the screen remained completely blank the entire time on all trials. Added about 3.5K to the size of lex.wp. 9. If you ran the merge off a RAMdisk, copy the new lex.wp to floppy or hard before shutting down or resetting the computer. After you have completed the merge it's a good idea to check the result. Reenter WP and call up wordlist.sup as a textfile. Run a spell check using the new lex.wp and NO lex.sup (delete lex.sup from the spelling directory before beginning the spell-check, then reply yes to the query about creating a new one when you call the checker). Whereas the checker would have stopped on an unacceptable number of words using the unmerged dictionary (try it!), I found that, after merging, it stopped on just 23 out of more than 2,700 on all of the initial trials mentioned above. When I checked those 23 I found that nearly all had occurred directly following a soft page break in wordlist.sup, something that had thrown the merge utility a curve. If you get this result and wish to reclaim those few stragglers, use option 3 whenever the checker halts on a word during the spell check--to place them all in a new lex.sup--then merge that with lex.wp. I should mention that on several subsequent trials--the ones that took the merge utility just 80 seconds to complete--subsequent tests in the word processor disclosed that the problem of the leftover score or so of words that had not been merged had diminished to just 1 leftover word on one trial and on the others wasn't even present at all. Again, I have no explanation for this peculiar discrepancy. Do not use option 2 of the merge utility on wordlist.sup. WordPerfect ST has an undocumented file limit of 4K for dictionary supplements. Although you receive no indication of it during spell-checking, if a supplement reaches that size no new words actually get added to it. (The checker sometimes also become unacceptably sluggish if the supplement size approaches 4K.) Similarly, if you try to merge a supplement larger than 4K using option 2, the merge utility will go through all the motions of merging but merge nothing. ____________________________________________________________________________ ************* Example for 1st Word Plus 3.15 Atari ST ************* 1. Copy dicmerge.prg, dicmerge.rsc, spelling.dic, and wordlist.sup all to the same RAMdisk or hard disk directory. 2. Doubleclick dicmerge.prg. 3. Press or click on Merge. 4. Doubleclick spelling.dic in the first item selector (Input Dictionary). 5. Doubleclick wordlist.sup in the second item selector (Supplementary Dictionary). 6. Type wordlist.dic on the Selection line of the third item selector (Output Dictionary). 7. Press and wait. Time consumed merging on a large RAMdisk, 7 minutes. Increase in size of initial spelling dictionary, approx. 7K. 8. Press to exit after the merge utility has halted. 9. If you ran the merge off a RAMdisk, copy wordlist.dic to floppy or hard before powering down or resetting the computer. To test the results, run wordplus.prg, open wordlist.sup as an ordinary textfile and load in spelling.dic as the spell-checker. Do not load any supplementary dictionary. Hold down the key and note how many words the cursor beeps on. Now end the spell check, load in wordlist.dic, and try holding down again. I found the merge utility had missed only 15-20 words. If desired, these can be added on a second merge. Wordlist.dic can, of course, always be renamed to spelling.dic, supplanting the former. ____________________________________________________________________________ ************* Example for WordPerfect/DOS 5.1 IBM ************* 1. Run WordPerfect and open wordlist.sup as an ordinary textfile, using option 1 in a file listing, then save it back to disk with f10 to place a WordPerfect 5.1 header on it. If you wish to get a sense of how many words your current checker recognizes from wordlist.sup, run a spell check on it before exiting the word processor. Press 2 whenever the checker halts on a word. Use f1 to end the check at any point. (Should you later wish to remove the WordPerfect file header from wordlist.sup you can do so by calling it back into the word processor and saving it with f5, 1, 1, rather than f10.) 2. Next copy the files wp{wp}us.lex, speller.exe, and wordlist.sup all to the same RAMdisk or hard disk directory. If you originally performed a standard installation of WordPerfect, the first two files will already be found in c:\wp51. I recommend renaming your original copy of wp{wp}us.lex in the c:\wp51 (or other default) directory to wp{wp}us.old, and storing it there so long as you can afford the space. If you would like to run the merge off a RAMdisk you can create one in extended (fast) memory by temporarily installing the line device=ramdrive.sys 1024/e (or device=vdisk.sys 1024/e, depending on your chronological or machine-specific version of DOS, etc.; to place one in expanded (slower) memory (e.g., for an XT), use the /a switch in place of the /e switch) in config.sys and rebooting the computer. That will create a RAMdisk of size 1 MB and using the next available drive letter. Of course, you must have at least 1 MB of nonconventional memory available to support this. If either of the above WordPerfect files aren't already on your hard disk you can obtain them by inserting the Install/Learn/ Utilities master diskette #1 in drive a: or b:, changing to that drive, then typing install . When install.exe starts up, choose option 2 (Custom Install), then 3 (Install Disks). Answer y to Install Utilities. Install.exe and several other utilities will then get installed automatically (necessarily overwriting any identical files already present on the hard disk). You'll get prompted next to install the learn, help, keyboard, style, spelling, printer test, WP program, graphics drivers, and other utilities in succession. Answer n to all except the spelling files. 3. Change to the directory containing the above-mentioned files and begin the merge by typing spell . 4. Choose option 2 - Add Words to Dictionary. 5. Choose option 4 - Add to main word list (from a file). 6. Type wordlist.sup and press . The screen responds for a few seconds with "please wait". 7. As soon as "please wait" goes away, press f7. The merge will not begin until you do. You will see a report on the merging process onscreen as it gets carried out. 8. When the merge ends, press f7 to exit the merge utility. 9. After generating a new wp{wp}us.lex, copy it to floppy or hard before powering down or rebooting, since all data on a RAMdisk gets lost otherwise. And of course, make sure to place a copy of it in your spelling directory (where the old wp{wp}us.lex was located), so the checker will be able to find it. Running the merge off a RAMdisk of 1 MB in extended memory and using a 486-33 took just a few seconds. When I ran it off a medium-speed hard drive connected to a local bus controller it took 50 seconds. Slower machines and slower hard drives can expect proportionally longer times. Running it off floppies is possible, but would conceivably consume from 10 to 30 minutes. The main lexicon increased in size approx. 6K following the merge. After you have completed the merge it's a good idea to check the result. Reenter WordPerfect and call up wordlist.sup as a textfile. Run a spell check using the new wp{wp}us.lex and NO wp{wp}us.sup; rename the latter in your spelling directory to wp{wp}us.bak before beginning the spell-check; after the test, you can rename it back to wp{wp}us.sup. Whereas the checker would have stopped on an unacceptable number of words using the unmerged dictionary (try it!), you should find that, after merging, the checker proceeds through the entire file without stopping on a single word. The dictionary supplement was prepared by me and is provided as freeware. Please include these usage notes when uploading to a BBS. Eugene Gorelik GEnie addr: E.GORELIK Internet addr: E.GORELIK@GENIE.GEIS.COM