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

  • From: "Evan Reese" <mentat1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sat, 19 Aug 2006 12:51:41 -0700

Well, if you hadn't told me that you weren't bureaucratic, Pratik, I might not 
have known.  Having a name that rhymes with bureaucratic can be misleading. 
<grin>  I'm not as organized as I should be.  You should see my inbox.  On the 
other hand, I'd rather that you didn't.  I wouldn't want you to see the My 
Documents folder either.  I do put things into subfolders eventually, but I'm 
always behind the curve.

Seriously, though, I did some rereading of Chapter 9 of the manual for K1000 
last night after sending that message, and I realize that I should have 
differentiated between corrections files and the spell checker file.  If I 
understand things properly, the corrections file is for words that are 
misspelled, while the spell checker file is for correctly-spelled words that 
K1000 doesn't know.

Unfortunately, unless I have missed something, you can add words to the default 
corrections file from the spell checker, but not from rank spelling.  I say 
'unfortunately', because I am not sure why I would want to use the spell 
checker rather than rank spelling.  Also, the spell checker file must have been 
empty, or nonexistent and created when I added the first word to it, because 
the only words in it are ones that I remember adding when I was in rank 
spelling.  So what happens to the words you fix up in rank spelling by 
replacing them?  I don't think they go to a temporary file, because they do not 
reappear after restarting my computer.  They must be stored in a file 
somewhere, so why not be able to add them to the corrections file?

I was actually talking about the spell checker file, I think, so that technical 
terms and specialized words didn't keep coming up in every book I scan.  
Apparently, unlike the corrections file, you cannot create more than one spell 
checker file, so I will have to put everything into that one file.  You are 
right that I will have to be careful and try not to put every little thing in 
it.  
That will make for a huge file after a while with the kind of stuff I read.

But I'm not sure if I am understanding things correctly here.  That is mainly 
why I am describing it here.  Please correct anything I have gotten wrong.

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Pratik Patel 
  To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  Sent: Saturday, August 19, 2006 8:23 AM
  Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: One Big Dictionary Or a Bunch of Little Ones?


  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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