WordSmith News

Up and running again

2008-01-16T14:08:00.000-08:00

The new WSConcGram feature is what held things up. Give it a try!

Why no news?

2007-12-28T13:04:00.000-08:00

Because I've been B-U-S-Y. Writing a "concgram" tool (see recent article in IJCL by Greaves, Warren & Cheng). This is now out but in beta, check out yesterday's upload. It seems to be fast enough but still needs some development.

12 Sept

2007-09-12T15:05:00.000-07:00

Menus gave more of a problem than I expected. It has to do with the programming environment I use (Delphi) accepting Unicode.
Anyway now I think the problem is fixed.

Also fixed a bug whereby # was not picking up numbers in Concord but seems to have been accepting any character at all.

Version of 5 Sept

2007-09-06T08:32:00.000-07:00

Apologies -- I noticed that the last version had menu problems, a crash when the menu was accessed! This all arose because I had to update the menus themselves to allow for Chinese in the menus, buttons etc. and because the previous menu system was not able to handle Unicode.
Fixed that problem now.

4 September version

2007-09-04T14:41:00.000-07:00

NEW:
Lemmas can now have non-alphabetical symbols in them. (These still need to be defined as acceptable characters in the Language settings.)

FIXES:
1. Unicode handling of context words when concordancing
2. Print Preview updating
3. Search in File Viewer

version checking

2007-08-30T04:35:00.000-07:00

Sorry I realise the version checker STILL ain't right and that after running it you'll probably have to find the registration in readme.txt. I will fix this asap.

version of 30 Aug

2007-08-30T04:07:00.000-07:00

1 Several fixes for Unicode-formatted text files
2 File Viewer utility (plus documentation in the Help)
3 Work has started on WSConcGram

Immediate plans

2007-08-16T04:10:00.000-07:00

I plan for WS5 to have better and speedier handling of XML files. At present WS5's ability to handle attributes in mark-up is quite limited. I hope to implement a solution which will save a WS5-compatible version of each text which it can re-read as needed much faster than re-parsing the original.
Secondly (and with his agreement) I want to build an implementation of Chris Greaves' ConcGram into WordSmith 5.

Version of 16 Aug

2007-08-16T04:03:00.000-07:00

Fix to detection of the user's default language.
Fix to WordSmith's noticing when you double-click on a .CNC, .KWS, .LST file (etc.) (only if registered with Windows in the Registry).
WS5 no longer pesters you to start a new file off (if you want that, choose File | New).
Fix to processing of an index in Chinese/Japanese etc whereby an index ended up with only one entry.

Shakespeare corpus availability

2007-08-10T02:53:00.001-07:00

At www.lexically.net/wordsmith you should now see access to the Shakespeare corpus I've been working with. Feel free to download and let me know if it is useful to you.
Cheers -- Mike

More fixes 9 Aug

2007-08-09T14:58:00.000-07:00

1. index filename choosing made easier
2. "symbol to count as alphabetical" feature installed (for ampersands etc.)
3. WS5 KW files not opening problem is fixed

Fixes and Improvements

2007-08-03T01:28:00.000-07:00

WordSmith 5 of 3rd August 2007

UTF8 detection
Unicode menus (because localization into Chinese is starting)
Easier renewal of licence for time-limited users (Register menu option is visible)
Follow-up improvements
Save As Excel default folder fix

UTF8 and Unicode text file formats

2007-08-02T06:49:00.000-07:00

I have recently realised that some users processing Russian, Bulgarian etc. may not be getting suitable results because they do not know that WordSmith won't be happy with UTF8. (This is a text file format which doesn't necessarily use 1 byte per character.) I have been working to get WS5 to detect files in this format and automatically compensate, preferably re-saving the text file in 16-bit Unicode.
Cheers -- Mike

XP Rules OK!

2007-07-19T01:46:00.000-07:00

The Dell XPS M1210 laptop seems to like XP. Much more responsive! It was worth the hassle. If I were to do this again, I'd insist on XP when I bought it. Vista may come good eventually (they say there's a service pack coming out soon) but I think it will take some time.

Vista giving grief

2007-07-16T10:43:00.000-07:00

Fed up with Windows Vista?
I got fed up with Vista on a new Dell laptop (XPS M1210) bought in April (2007) and so I have just put Windows XP Pro on it. The troubles I had --

slow recovery from hibernation

generally flakey graphics (the Dell laptop has a fairly standard graphics card) especially after emerging from hibernation

reverting to completely unacceptable graphics (monochrome or 16 colours only) when connecting to a display projector

far too much protection; Vista won't let you do anything even if you do know what you are doing

slow to connect to WIFI (I don't know whether that is Vista's fault or the XPS's)

This does mean that until we get a new Windows Vista service pack, I won't be able to test WS5 on Vista.

Unwanted columns question

2007-07-06T09:49:00.000-07:00

I got this message:
******
Is there an easy way to adjust the program so that the results show only the word and frequency without showing the other columns of results? I have to delete those--we only use the word list and the frequency information.
******

The answer -- in Settings | Adjust Settings | Concord | What you see, uncheck those you don't want to see usually. Then save your settings.

Cheers from Salamanca -- Mike

new feature

2007-06-23T10:49:00.000-07:00

Run from a USB drive. THat way you can take one copy of WS5 with you from home to work etc. Some USB drives are pretty fast, though little pen-drives are usually s-l-o-w.
Cheers -- MIke

version 5.0.0.6 uploaded

2007-06-23T10:45:00.000-07:00

IF you had an earlier version of 5.0 you may have had trouble using the version checker; if so it will have left you in demo mode. This is because I had to change the registration process somewhat to allow use of WS5 on a USB drive. The solution will be to do a complete re-installation. http://www.lexically.net/wordsmith/version4/faqs/updating_or_reinstalling.htm explains how.

Away for a few days

2007-06-22T13:47:00.000-07:00

I shall be in Siena at the conference on Keyness and then in Salamanca.

WordSmith 5 (beta)

2007-06-22T13:18:00.000-07:00

Just so you know, WordSmith 5 is now being started -- which means WS4 will no longer be worked on.
Cheers -- Mike