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artha

NAME

Artha - An open cross-platform thesaurus based on WordNet

DESCRIPTION

Artha is an open thesaurus based on the WordNet database, created with simplicity in mind. Once executed, Artha stays on the system tray, monitoring for a set global hot key combination. When the user selects some text in any window, and presses this set hot key combo, Artha looks up WordNet for the selected text and pops-up with the results.

The hot key combo selection is done by Artha is in this Order:

       * Ctrl + Alt + W

       * Ctrl + Alt + A

       * Ctrl + Alt + T

       * Ctrl + Alt + Q

i.e. when executed, Artha tries to register a hot key for it. First it tries to register Ctrl + Alt + W, if it is already occupied by some other application, it tries for Ctrl + Alt + A, likewise until it succeeds. If all the above listed 4 combinations are taken up by other applications, Artha disables its hot key call and notifications features. Hence its highly recommened that the user keeps atleast one of these combinations free, so as to use all the features of Artha effectively. When running, the current hot key set can be known from the About dialog.

Definitions are categorized based on the PoS (Part of Speech - Noun, Verb, Adjective and Adverb). Apart from showing the definitions/senses of a searched string with usage examples, Artha also shows a word's relatives like Synonyms, Antonyms, Derivatives, Pertainyms (Related noun/verb), Attributes, Similar Terms, Domain/Domain Terms, Causes, Entails, Hypernyms (is a kind of), Hyponyms (Kinds), Holonyms (is a part of), Meronyms (Parts).

A word can have more then one sense i.e. it can convey more than a single meaning/definition. Relative words are words that are related to one or more senses of the searched word, by a relationship like Synonym, Derivative, etc. To know which all sense a relative is related to, just select the it, the corresponding senses it maps to are highlighted. As per WordNet, depending on the number of senses a word has (polysemy count), it's familiarity is determined. It gets displayed next to the PoS in the definition area. There are 7 types: extremely rare, very rare, rare, uncommon, common, familiar, very familiar and extremely familiar.

Artha has 2 modes. Simple and Detailed. Artha enters Detailed mode when the 'Detailed' button in the toolbar is pressed. When toggled again, it returns back to simple mode. For relatives like Antonyms, Pertainyms, Hypernyms, Hyponyms, Holonyms and Meronyms, where more than one level of relatives may be present, is showed in a tree fashion, in detailed mode. If in simple mode, only one level of relatives are shown even when more levels are present. E.g. 'rich' has 'poor' and 'lean' alone as antonyms in simple mode. While in detailed mode, 'poor' further infers broke, skint, etc. which are shown as children of 'poor'.

Should the user prefer system tray notifications (balloon tips), rather than the application popping up with the definitions, it can be done by enabling Notifications. This is done via the Notify tool button or by right-clicking on Artha's system tray icon, and tick off the 'Notifications' check box in the menu. When notifications are enabled, and the user selects text in a window and presses the hot key combo, Artha takes the prime definition of that term from WordNet and shows that definition as a system tray notification.

Note: For the notifications feature to be present, Artha should have been compiled against that option. Also your system should have the notification-daemon installed. If not, Artha will not show the feature at all.

AVAILABILITY

Artha has a World Wide Web site at http://artha.sourceforge.net. From this web site users can know more about the Artha project and also download its source and binary distributions for various distros.

AUTHOR

Sundaram Ramaswamy <legends2k@yahoo.com>