[bksvol-discuss] Re: One Big Dictionary Or a Bunch of Little Ones?

  • From: "Pratik Patel" <pratikp1@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sat, 19 Aug 2006 11:23:23 -0400

Evan,
 
The key to managing dictionaries is to be absolutely certain that you want a
word in the dictionary.  When editing material you would need to ensure that
the word actually belongs there.  Science fiction contains many words that
are technical in nature.  Those may belong in the dictionary.  However
science fiction also contains words that are made up by authors that are
purely fictional in nature.  What you need to ask yourself is whether you
are likely to encounter the word again and again in the readings that you
do.  If the word doesn't belong in the dictionary, just ignore it or tell
Kurzweil to "ignore all."  I don't find the time savings to be substantial
when categorizing into different dictionaries.  All of my words are in the
default dictionary.  I find too much organization distracting.  That's why I
find bureaucracies annoying.  So, evan, the world wants to know, are you a
bureaucrat at heart?
 
Pratik
 
  _____  

From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Evan Reese
Sent: Saturday, August 19, 2006 7:41 AM
To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] One Big Dictionary Or a Bunch of Little Ones?


A while back, I think it was Gerald who said that he uses several
dictionaries in K1000 for rank spelling? for different types of books?
Sorry, Gerald, if it wasn't you.  I didn't have K1000 at the time, so wasn't
paying attention to that subject.
 
My question is what are the pros and cons of having everything in one
dictionary?  How big can it get before things start to slow down?  If you,
or anyone else here, uses a bunch of little ones, don't you have to keep
putting many of the same words in each one in addition to the specialized
terms it doesn't know, such as words that aren't in the dictionary but are
not specialized terms, including those that are in the default dictionary,
or proper names?  Or do you just leave proper names out and ignore them when
they come up?  If so, certain common ones may keep showing up.  I'm not very
familiar with this part of the program yet.  Can I use more than one
dictionary at once, so I don't have to keep adding certain things to each
one?  If so, why not just use one big one?  If I can only use one dictionary
at a time, don't I have to basically recreate the default dictionary to
avoid all the words that would have been covered by the default dictionary?
We're back to one big one again.
 
As you can see, I am leaning more toward throwing everything into one large
dictionary if I can do it without bogging down my system.  What are the
thoughts here?  I read a lot of science fiction and fantasy, so the number
of added words could get large pretty quickly.  The first book I scanned
with K1000 had hundreds, and I am not kidding, or exaggerating!
 

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