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

  • From: "Gerald Hovas" <GeraldHovas@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sat, 19 Aug 2006 11:42:02 -0500

Evan,

 

Yes, that was me, but I was talking about Word, not K-1000.  I'm not sure
that K-1000 allows for using multiple dictionaries at one time.  Here's what
I do with Word in case it does, though.

 

I keep my general additions like my last name, Bookshare, and other words
which I want to always be able to recognize as being spelled correctly in
the main dictionary which is set up when Word is installed.  I also create
an additional dictionary for a series of books because not all of the words
which appear in a given series may be valid words in other books.  For
example, I have a dictionary for the Wheel of Time books, a dictionary for
the J. D. Robb books, and I have a dictionary for the Mitford books.  All
three series have words which are valid words in those series, but would be
misspelled words if they were encountered in a different context, such as a
book not in that series.

 

I agree with Pratik that this is extra work which you may not want to do
normally, but in the case where you plan to work on several books from the
same series and the series has a lot of made up words or proper nouns, then
it's definitely worth the trouble because creating the additional dictionary
and turning on and off the use of it is not as much effort as having to
always tell Word to ignore the same set of words each time you validate a
book from that series.  You also have to set the specialized dictionary as
the default when working with it so that any words that you add to the
dictionary are added to the specialized one instead of the main one.  Still,
this is less work than telling the spell checker to ignore the same 50, 100,
or in the case of the Wheel of Time books, several hundred of the same words
each time you validate one of those books.

 

HTH

 

Gerald

 

  _____  

From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Evan Reese
Sent: Saturday, August 19, 2006 6:41 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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