
              Palmetto Bay Wordmaster
   Copyright (C) 1997 by Palmetto Bay Publishing
             Unregistered version 0.91


Organization
------------

I.   Usage information
     1. Overview
     2. Usage
     3. Applications
II.  Registration information
III. Copyright notices and development history



I.  Usage information
---------------------

1. Overview

Palmetto Bay Wordmaster is a fast and efficient 
dictionary search tool.  It encompasses the power
of a rhyming dictionary, allowing you to find 
all of the words that rhyme with or sound like
a certain target word.  It encompasses the power 
of a thesaurus, allowing you to find synonyms 
and words that mean nearly the same thing as a 
target word.  It is also useful as a generic 
spelling dictionary, allowing you to find words 
in its vocabulary that match a certain letter
pattern.

Palmetto Bay Wordmaster developed from a popular
tool on the World Wide Web called the Semantic 
Rhyming Dictionary (http://www.cs.cmu.edu/
~dougb/rhyme.html).  This version is optimized
for offline use, allowing you a superset of the
online functionality but without requiring you 
to be logged into the Internet.  Wordmaster is 
specifically designed to use very little memory,
even during searches.


2. Usage

To submit a query to Wordmaster, simply type in 
the word or spelling pattern that you would like 
to match against, select from the list of five 
offered functions, and click on the "Search"
button.  You can enter the word in upper or lower 
case.  When you hit "Search", a window with a list
of words matching the query will be presented to
you.  At this point you can view the list and
submit another query.  Multiple query result
windows may be open simultaneously.  

The precise definition of the query functions is 
given below. The sound of each word is 
represented internally as a sequence of phonemes, 
the atomic unit of human speech.

    *  "Find perfect rhymes":  This will return
       words with a phonetic sequence that 
       matches with everything from the target
       word after and including the primary-
       stressed vowel. This is perhaps the most 
       widely embraces definition of "rhyme", 
       although sometimes it is called feminine 
       rhyme in contrast to the less restrictive
       masculine rhyme below.

    *  "Find words that match the spelling
       pattern":  In the registered version,
       this will return words with a spelling 
       that matches the pattern provided in the
       first input field.  A pattern can consist
       of letters and wilcards such as '?' 
       and '*' that match, respectively, any
       single character and any sequence of
       characters.  No wildcards are allowed
       in the unregistered version.

    *  "Find words with the same last sound":
       Queries of this form return words that 
       have a phonetic sequence with the same 
       last sound. "Sound" here is defined as 
       the phonetic suffix up to and including 
       the consonant sounds before the last 
       vowel sound. This sometimes captures a
       little more than one syllable. In fact,
       it sometimes it captures the entire word.
    
    *  "Find words that sound exactly the same":
       This function returns homophones, or 
       words with exactly the same pronunciation
       that are spelled differently.

    *  "Find words with similar meaning":  
       This will return words that mean the 
       same thing, or nearly the same thing, as 
       the target word.  You can control how
       semantically "near" a match must be in 
       the Options window, described below.


Clicking "Options..." from the main window 
allows you to set a few parameters that affect 
the performance of Wordmaster.  In particular, 
you can choose whether or not the words returned 
from a query should by default be separated by 
syllable count or by letter count.  (Note that 
you can toggle between this setting and a flat 
sorted list from within a results window by 
clicking the checkbox above the list.  Also, 
you can change the behavior of the "Words with 
similar meaning" query type by changing the 
"similarity distance" value. When this distance 
is 1, exact synonyms are returned.  When it is 2, 
synonyms, hypernyms (words one level more 
general), and hyponyms (specializations) are 
returned.  Distance 3 offers another level of 
indirection.  For now, only distances 1 through 3 
are supported.


3. Applications

What can you do with this dictionary tool? 
Composing rhymed poetry and lyrics is one obvious 
application, since you can use the program as a 
rhyming dictionary.  One feature of this program
that sets it apart from tangible rhyming
dictionaries is that it can sort output based 
on how near in meaning a word is to a certain 
target meaning you provide. For example, suppose 
you're writing a poem and you need a word that
rhymes with grape that means roughly the same 
thing as hominid. Enter grape into the first 
text field, and hominid into the second, and lo 
and behold, the first word on the output list is 
ape! Or suppose you're Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 
transported two hundred years into the 
information age, writing a little something about 
Kubla Khan.

    In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
    A stately pleasure-dome decree:
    Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
    Through caverns measureless to man
    Down to a sunless...uhhhh...ummmm....ocean?

No, Sam, that doesn't quite work. Why not search
for rhymes of decree with meaning similar to 
ocean?  When you query Wordmaster with these
two parameters, you get "sea" at the head
of the list. In general only the first few 
words (or in this case the first) make a lot
of sense in these kinds of queries, and only 
if there exists a good match.

This semantic sorting function is also useful for
spelling searches. Suppose you have a word on 
the tip of your tongue that is related to war 
and you know it begins with "BL".  If you enter 
"BL*" into the main query box on top, and 
"war" into the meaning box on bottom, you'll 
find "blitzkrieg" at the top of the list when you
hit "Search".


II.  Registration information
-----------------------------

Palmetto Bay Wordmaster is shareware. If you 
continue to use this program, you are asked to 
register with Palmetto Bay Publishing. 
Registration allows you to download or receive
a version of Wordmaster with a dictionary of 
over 110,000 words. (This shareware version has 
only about 20,000.)  The registered version of 
the program also supports spelling pattern 
searches and other enhancements.  Furthermore, 
registration entitles you to free upgrade 
downloads of this program until version 2.0.

Standard registration is priced at $12 U.S.  
Upon receipt of your registration we will give 
you a World Wide Web URL from which you can
download the enhanced version of Wordmaster.  
If you send an additional $3 for shipping and 
handling, we will mail you the software 
on high-density 3.5" diskettes.

Please send a check for $12 or $15 U.S. (payable 
to "Palmetto Bay Publishing") to

  Palmetto Bay Publishing
  40 Club Course Drive
  Hilton Head, SC  29928

More information about registration, including 
a printable order form, is available on 
Palmetto Bay's World Wide Web site at 
"http://www.watershed.com/pb/".


III.  Copyright and development notices
---------------------------------------

Palmetto Bay Wordmaster is Copyright (C) 1997 by 
Palmetto Bay Publishing.  It was developed by 
Doug Beeferman (dougb@watershed.com) using a 
wide variety of resources and tools:

* The Carnegie Mellon University Pronouncing 
  Dictionary, distribution of which is 
  completely unencumbered, was used to derive
  pronunciations.  This resource has the 
  following copyright notice:

  The Carnegie Mellon Pronouncing Dictionary 
  (cmudict.0.4 and all previous versions) is 
  Copyright 1993, 1994, and 1995 by Carnegie 
  Mellon University.

* The WordNet lexical database, distribution of
  which is completely unencumbered, was used to 
  derive semantic distance information.  
  WordNet has the following copyright statement:

  WordNet 1.5 Copyright (C) 1995 by Princeton 
  University. All rights reseved.

  THIS SOFTWARE AND DATABASE IS PROVIDED 
  "AS IS" AND PRINCETON UNIVERSITY MAKES   NO 
  REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR
  IMPLIED. BY WAY OF EXAMPLE, BUT NOT LIMITATION, 
  PRINCETON UNIVERSITY MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS 
  OR WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS
  FOR ANY PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR THAT THE USE OF 
  THE LICENSED SOFTWARE, DATABASE OR 
  DOCUMENTATION WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY THIRD 
  PARTY PATENTS, COPYRIGHTS, TRADEMARKS OR 
  OTHER RIGHTS.

* The Structured Dictionary Format was developed 
  in the Unix environment with C, C++, and 
  Java.   Code for I/O of this format in these 
  languages is available in these languages 
  from the author, and will be released to the
  public domain in mid 1997.  SDF is a format
  supporting the efficient storage and retrieval 
  of phonetic, spelling, and semantic dictionary 
  information for offline disk access.

* Development of Wordmaster was in Java, using 
  Microsoft J++ and Asymetrix SuperCede, 
  Java Edition.  These products are copyrighted
  by Microsoft and Asymetrix, respectively.


Future development

Upcoming versions (before 2.0) of Wordmaster
will offer much faster "similar meaning"
lookups.  Alternate word pronunciations 
(such as the noun and verb forms of "refuse")
will be handled correctly.  A richer notion
of spelling pattern will be supported,
including vowel and consonant wildcards and
anagrams (ideal for Scrabble and crossword
puzzles.)

Later versions will offer richer pronunciation
and spelling queries, including "sounds like"
and "spelled like" options that perform fuzzy
matches against candidate words.  A "meaning
browser" that allows you to explore the
WordNet semantic tree is also slated.
