1991:2 - Universitetet i Bergen

If onc enters '?at' in WiIdCard's en0 box, 12 words are returned in
rhe scrotlable window. Thesa indude 'bal, cat, eat. fat. hat. mat, oat,
gat, rat, sat, U t h d "at.' '??atm finds words like 'beat, boat, gnat,,
kyat' and 'that.' The '?' wildcard can appear within a word @g.. 'g??t*
returns 'gait, geEt. gent. gift ...g out, grit.') or at the end of a ward (e.g.,
'be?' returns 'be-, bed, bee, beg. bcthnd %eyy'}.
The other wildcard symbol. '*' perfornis sirnilarly. although more
slowly since more combinations must be evaluated. IF, for example you
wanted a list of a11 EngIish words that end in 'ust.' you would type
'"ust' and get words ranging from 'adjust, antitrust, august' to kawdusl.
unjust, upper cmst' and 'wanderlust.' The list also incfudes a phrascs
'bile the dust,' and 'in trust,' An unfortunale lirnitation of the program
reslncts the number of found words to 150. There does not appear to
bo any way to continue the list with different words on a sccond pass,
for example. Nor is there any way to save the list, say in a separate
file, far future considerntien.
As in the oher programs, one can select a wasd from the list. and
click an the 'dictionary' button to gct the definition of that word
withaut reiyping it.
Anagram offers words that use the same letters as khe target word.
For exampfe if one enters 'stop' in the entty box. ihe following are
rctnrned: opts, post, pots. spot. siap, and tops. Here Anagram shows
words [hal use all the letters of the target word, One can adjust the
number of letters ta select words that use fewer han ihe total, also,
While Anagram is interesting, it is not a feature that P find myself
using very often.
The final module of AHED, SearchText, is the most inventive and
creatire of Ihe group. For many people, it rnay be enough reason to
considor buying and keeping AHED on one's hard disk. It does sornelhing
a prinled diclianary cannot do, and thus extends the usefulncss of
computers beyond merely the convenient.
SearchText nllows the user to make queries of the definizions and
other infomation in the micles nsing 'and, or* and 'noz' Entering
"tree' in the entry bcix returns all dictionq ensries hat mention 'tree.'
Many hits =e names or dcscriptions of pa, of trees (acacia, acorn,
ailanthus, annud ring, arborvime, bark...). 'Roman AND god' retunis
twelve Roman gods' names or descriptive terms (Bacchus, faun, Janus,
Jupiter...). "~ermanic AND Ianguage' retarns Danish, Dutch, EngIish,
Norwegian, Old Nerse. Saxon and Swedish' among othcrs, (The dktionmy
apparently dues not know about Faroese or Frisian.)
In SearchText, the user can include other types of information in
querying thc dictionary's articles. One can request a11 articles that have
"slang' as a usage label, for example. some of which are shown in