Ubuntu Manpage: wnb - WordNet window-based browser interface

NAME

       wnb - WordNet window-based browser interface

SYNOPSIS

wnb

DESCRIPTION

       wnb()  provides  a  window-based  interface  for  browsing  the WordNet database, allowing
       synsets and relations to be displayed as formatted text.  For each search word,  different
       searches  are  available  based  on  syntactic  category  and information available in the
       database.

       wnb is written in Tcl/Tk, which is available for Unix and Windows platforms.  This  allows
       the same code to work on all supported WordNet platforms without modification.

WNB WINDOWS

wnb() was developed with the philosophy that only those searches and buttons that are
applicable at the current time are displayed. As a result, the appearance of the
interface changes as it is used. Use the standard windowing system mouse functions to
open and close the WordNet Browser Window, move the window, and change its size.

The WordNet Browser Window contains the following areas, from top to bottom:

Menubar A menubar runs along the top of the browser window with pulldown menus
and button entitled File, History, Options, and Help.

Search Word Entry Below the Menubar is a line for entering the search word. A search
word can be a single word, hyphenated string, or a collocation. Case
is ignored. Although only uninflected forms of words are usually
stored in WordNet, users may search for inflected forms. WordNet's
morphological processor finds the base form automatically.

Search Selection Below the Search Word Entry line is an area for selecting the search
type and senses to search. Until a search word is entered this area
is blank. After a search word is entered, buttons appear
corresponding to each syntactic category (Noun, Verb, Adjective,
Adverb) in which the search string is defined in WordNet.

At the right edge of the Search Selection line is a box for entering
sense numbers. When this box is empty, search results for all senses
of the search word that match the search type are displayed. The
search may be restricted to one or more specific senses by entering a
comma or space separated list of sense numbers in the Senses box.
These sense numbers remain in effect until either the user changes or
deletes them, or a new search word is entered.

Results Window Most of the browser window consists of a large text buffer for
displaying the results of WordNet searches. Horizontal and vertical
scroll bars are present for scrolling through the output.

Status Line A status line is at the bottom of the browser window. When search
results are displayed in the Results Window, this status line reflects
the type of search selected. When there is no search word entered,
your are prompted to "Enter search word and press return." If the
search word entered is not in WordNet, the message "Sorry, no matches
found." is displayed.

SEARCHING THE DATABASE

The WordNet browser navigates through WordNet in two steps. First a search word is
entered and an overview of all the senses of the word in all syntactic categories is
displayed in the Results Window. The senses are grouped by syntactic category, and each
synset is annotated as described above with synset_offset, lex_filename, and sense_number
as dictated by the advanced search options set. The overview search also indicates how
many of the senses in each syntactic category are represented in the tagged texts. This
is a way for the user to determine whether a sense's sense number is based on semantic
tagging data, or was arbitrarily assigned. For each sense that has appeared in such
texts, the number of semantic tags to that sense are indicated in parentheses after the
sense number.

Then, within a syntactic category, a specific search is selected. The desired search is
performed and the search results are displayed in the Results Window. Additional searches
on the same word can be performed, or a new search word can be entered.

To enter a search word, click the mouse in the horizontal box labeled Search Word, type a
single word, hyphenated string, or collocation and press RETURN.

wnb() responds by making a set of Part of Speech buttons appear in the Search Selection
line. Each button corresponds to a syntactic category in which the search string is
defined in WordNet. At the same time, an Overview of the synsets for all senses of the
search word is displayed in the Results Window. The Overview includes the gloss for each
synset and also indicates which of the senses have appeared in the semantically tagged
texts. For each sense that has appeared in such texts, the number of semantic tags to
that sense are indicated in parentheses after the sense number.

The pulldown menus in the Search Selection line list all of the WordNet searches that can
be performed for the search word in that part of speech. To select a search, highlight it
by dragging the mouse to it, and release the mouse while it is highlighted. Drag the
mouse outside of the pulldown list and release to hide the menu without making a
selection. Dragging the mouse across the Part of Speech buttons displays the available
searches for each syntactic category.

To restrict a search to one or more senses within a syntactic category, enter a comma or
space separated list of sense numbers in the Senses box before selecting a search.

After a search is selected, wnb() performs the search on the WordNet database and displays
the formatted results in the Results Window. Whenever search results are displayed, a
button entitled Redisplay Overview is present at the right edge of the Search Word Entry
line. Clicking on this button redisplays the Overview of all synsets for the search word
in the Results Window.

Changing the Search Word
A new search word can be entered at any time by moving to the Search Word Entry box, if
necessary highlighting it by clicking, erasing the old string, typing a new one and
pressing RETURN. The Senses box is cleared if necessary, the Part of Speech buttons
applicable to the new search word appear, and the Overview for the new search word is
displayed.

The middle mouse button can also be used to select a new search word by placing the mouse
over any word in the Results Window and clicking. The selected word will replace the text
in the Search Word Entry box, and the overview for that word will automatically be
displayed.

To select a new search string collocation from text in the Results Window, highlight the
text with the mouse and press CONTROL-S.

Interrupting a Search
When a search is in progress the message "Searching...(press escape to abort)" is
displayed in the Status Line. Note that most searches return very quickly, so this
message isn't noticeable. As indicated, pressing the ESCAPE key will interrupt the
search. The results of the search obtained before the time the search was interrupted are
displayed in the Results Window.

MENUS

File Menu
Find keywords by substring
Display a popup window for specifying a search of WordNet for words or
collocations that contain a specific substring. If a search word is
currently entered in the Search Word box, it is used as the substring to
search for by default. The Substring Search Window contains a box for
entering a substring, a pulldown menu to its right for specifying the part
of speech to search, a large area for displaying the search results, and
action buttons at the bottom entitled Search, Save, Print Dismiss.

Once a substring is entered and a part of speech selected, clicking on the
Search button causes a search to be done for all words and collocations in
WordNet, in that syntactic category, that contain the substring according to
the following criteria:

1. The substring can appear at the beginning or end of a word, hyphenated
string o collocation.

2. The substring can appear in the middle of a hyphenated string or
collocation, but only delimited on both sides by spaces or hyphens.

The search results are displayed in the large buffer. Clicking on an item
from the search results list causes wnb() to automatically enter that word
in the Search Word box of the WordNet Browser Window and perform the
Overview search.

Clicking the Save button generates a popup dialog for specifying a filename
to save the substring search results to. Clicking the Print button
generates a popup dialog in which a print command can be specified.

Selecting Dismiss closes the Substring Search Window.

Save current display
Display a popup dialog for specifying a filename to save the current Results
Window contents to.

Print current display
Display a popup dialog in which to specify a print command to which the
current Results Window contents can be piped. Note - this option does not
exist in the Windows version.

Clear current display
Clear the Search Word and Senses boxes, and Results Window.

Exit Does what you would expect.

History
This pulldown menu contains a list of the last searches performed. Selecting an item from
this list performs that search again. The maximum number of searches stored in the list
can be adjusted from the Options menu. The default is 10.

Options
Show help with each search
When this checkbox is selected search results are preceded by some
explanatory text about the type of search selected. This is off by default.

Show descriptive gloss
When this checkbox is selected, synset glosses are displayed in all search
results. This is set by default. Note that glosses are always displayed in
the Overview.

Wrap Lines
When this checkbox is selected, lines in the Results Window that are wider
than the window are automatically wrapped. This is set by default. If not
selected, a horizontal scroll bar is present if any lines are longer than
the width of the window.

Set advanced search options...
Selecting this item displays a popup window for setting the following search
options: Lexical file information; Synset location in database file; Sense
number. Choices for each are:

Don't show (default)
Show with searches
Show with searches and overview

When lexical file information is shown, the name of the lexicographer file
is printed before each synset, enclosed in angle brackets (< ... >). When
both lexical file information and synset location information are displayed,
the synset location information appears first. If within one lexicographer
file more than one sense of a word is entered, an integer lex_id is appended
onto all but one of the word's instances to uniquely identify it. In each
synset, each word having a non-zero lex_id is printed with the lex_id value
printed immediately following the word. If both lexicographer information
and sense numbers are displayed, lex_ids, if present, precede sense numbers.

When synset location is shown, the byte offset of the synset in the database
"data" file corresponding to the syntactic category of the synset is printed
before each synset, enclosed in curly braces ({ ... }). When both lexical
file information and synset location information are displayed, the synset
location information appears first.

When sense numbers are shown, the sense number of each word in each synset
is printed immediately after the word, and is preceded by a number sign (#).

Set maximum history length...
Display a popup dialog in which the maximum number of previous searches to
be kept on the History list can be set.

Set font...
Display a popup window for setting the font (typeface) and font size to use
for the Results Window. Choices for typeface are: Courier, Helvetica, and
Times (default). Font size can be small, medium (default), or large.

Save current options as default
Save the currently set options. Next time the browser is started, these
options will be used as the user defaults.

Help
Help on using the WordNet browser
Display this manual page.

Help on WordNet terminology
Display the wngloss(7WN) manual page.

Display the WordNet license
Display the WordNet copyright notice and license agreement.

About the WordNet browser
Information about this application.

SHORCUTS

       Clicking on any word in the Results Window  while  holding  down  the  SHIFT  key  on  the
       keyboard  causes the browser to replace Search Word with the word and display its Overview
       and available searches.  Clicking on any word in the Results Window with the middle  mouse
       button does the same thing.

       Pressing  the  CONTROL-S  keys  causes  the  browser  to  do  as above on the text that is
       currently highlighted.  Under Unix, this will work even if  the  highlighted  text  is  in
       another  window.  This works on hyphenated strings and collocations, as well as individual
       words.

       Pressing the CONTROL-G keys displays the Substring Search Window.

SEARCH RESULTS

The results of a search of the WordNet database are displayed in the Results Window.
Horizontal and vertical scroll bars are present for scrolling through the search results.

All searches other than the Overview list all senses matching the search results in the
following general format. Items enclosed in italicized square brackets ([ ... ]) may not
be present.

If a search cannot be performed on some senses of searchstr, the search results are headed
by a string of the form:
X of Y senses of searchstr

One line listing the number of senses matching the search selected.

Each sense matching the search selected displayed as follows:

Sense n
[{synset_offset}] [<lex_filename>] word1[#sense_number][, word2...]

Where n is the sense number of the search word, synset_offset is the byte offset of
the synset in the data.pos file corresponding to the syntactic category,
lex_filename is the name of the lexicographer file that the synset comes from,
word1 is the first word in the synset (note that this is not necessarily the search
word) and sense_number is the WordNet sense number assigned to the preceding word.
synset_offset, lex_filename, and sense_number are generated if the appropriate
Options are specified.

The synsets matching the search selected are printed below each sense's synset
output described above. Each line of output is preceded by a marker (usually =>),
then a synset, formatted as described above. If a search traverses more one level
of the tree, then successive lines are indented by spaces corresponding to its
level in the hierarchy. Glosses are displayed in parentheses at the end of each
synset if the appropriate Option is set. Each synset is printed on one line.

Senses are ordered from most to least frequently used, with the most common sense
numbered 1. Frequency of use is determined by the number of times a sense is
tagged in the various semantic concordance texts. Senses that are not semantically
tagged follow the ordered senses. Note that this ordering is only an estimate based
on usage in a small corpus.

Verb senses can be grouped by similarity of meaning, rather than ordered by
frequency of use. When the "Synonyms, grouped by similarity" search is selected,
senses that are close in meaning are printed together, with a line of dashes
indicating the end of a group. See wngroups(7WN) for a discussion how senses are
grouped.

The output of the "Derivationally Related Forms" search shows word forms that are
morphologically related to searchstr. Each word form pointed to from searchstr is
displayed, preceded by RELATED TO-> and the syntactic category of the link,
followed, on the next line, by its synset. Printed after the word form is #n where
n indicates the WordNet sense number of the term pointed to.

The "Domain" and "Domain Terms" searches show the domain that a synset has been
classified in and, conversely, all of the terms that have been assigned to a
specific domain. A domain is either a TOPIC, REGION or USAGE, as reflected in the
specific pointer character stored in the database, and displayed in the output. A
Domain search on a term shows the domain, if any, that each synset containing
searchstr has been classified in. The output display shows the domain type (TOPIC,
REGION or USAGE), followed by the syntactic category of the domain synset and the
terms in the synset. Each term is followed by #n where n indicates the WordNet
sense number of the term. The converse search, Domain Terms, shows all of the
synsets that have been placed into the domain searchstr, with analogous markers.

When the "Sentence Frames" search is specified, sample illustrative sentences and
generic sentence frames are displayed. If a sample sentence is found, the base
form of the search word is substituted into the sentence, and it is printed below
the synset, preceded with the EX: marker. When no sample sentences are found, the
generic sentence frames are displayed. Sentence frames that are acceptable for all
words in a synset are preceded by the marker *>. If a frame is acceptable for the
search word only, it is preceded by the marker =>.

Search results for adjectives are slightly different from those for other parts of
speech. When an adjective is printed, its direct antonym, if it has one, is also
printed in parentheses. When the search word is in a head synset, all of the head
synset's satellites are also displayed. The position of an adjective in relation
to the noun may be restricted to the prenominal, postnominal or predicative
position. Where present, these restrictions are noted in parentheses.

When an adjective is a participle of a verb, the output indicates the verb and
displays its synset.

When an adverb is derived from an adjective, the specific adjectival sense on which
it is based is indicated.

The morphological transformations performed by the search code may result in more
than one word to search for. wnb() automatically performs the requested search on
all of the strings and returns the results grouped by word. For example, the verb
saw is both the present tense of saw and the past tense of see. When there is more
than one word to search for, search results are grouped by word.

DIAGNOSTICS

       If  the  WordNet  database  files cannot be opened, error messages are displayed.  This is
       usually corrected by setting the environment  variables  described  below  to  the  proper
       location of the WordNet database for your installation.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES (UNIX)

       WNHOME              Base directory for WordNet.  Default is /usr/local/WordNet-3.0.

       WNSEARCHDIR         Directory  in  which the WordNet database has been installed.  Default
                           is WNHOME/dict.

REGISTRY (WINDOWS)

       HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WordNet\3.0\WNHome
                           Base directory for WordNet.  Default is C:\Program Files\WordNet\3.0.

       HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\WordNet\3.0\wnres
                           User's default browser options.

FILES

       index.pos           database index files

       data.pos            database data files

       *.vrb               files of sentences illustrating the use of verbs

       pos.exc             morphology exception lists

BUGS

       Please reports bugs to wordnet@princeton.edu.