manual

WordFindLite
by Graham Wheeler
gramster@bigfoot.com

0. Release Information

This document describes WordFindLite v1.1. WordFindLite v1.1 uses the same underlying search engine as WordFind++ v2.4.

1. Introduction

WordFindLite is a fast and powerful dictionary searching program for use with word games like Scrabble and for crosswords, and codewords/cryptograms. You can use it to generate lists of anagrams or to find word matches given a subset of known letters.

WordFindLite is a simplified version of the WordFind++ and WordFindPro programs. It does not support the advanced features of these programs, but has a simpler interface which makes it easier to use for the casual user. It also does not have as many dictionary databases as the other programs, nor include the dictionary builder (that comes with WordFindPro only).

To use WordFindLite, you must also install one of the dictionary databases it comes with for it to search.

The currently available dictionaries are:

demo.pdb - the dictionary that comes with the trial versions of WordFindLite, WordFind++ and WordFindPro, this has 30,240 words, of up to 9 letters in length.

ospd3.pdb - for Scrabble players, this dictionary is made from the OSPD3 word list of 116,887 words of up to 13 characters in length.

small.pdb - a crossword dictionary of 52,033 common words.

medium.pdb - a medium sized crossword dictionary of 133,426 words.

The trial versions may be used with the demo.pdb dictionary only. Unauthorised redistribution of the other dictionary database files is not permitted.

2. Using WordFindLite

General Crossword Help

For help with a crossword word, where only some letters are known:

make sure the button at the bottom right is set to "Anchored"
enter the word or words in the Template field. For positions where the letter is unknown, press the "?" button. For multi-word clues, use the "|" button to indicate word breaks.
tap on the "Go!" button to start the search

For example, if you have a four letter clue with word lengths 2,4,2,4 and you know the first letter of each word, you would enter the pattern "A?|G???|A?|G???".

(In this case, the cryptic clue is "Behaviour deserving top trophy", and the answer is "As good as gold").

Finding Anagrams

To find anagrams, you need to enter the letters in the Anagram field. For multi-word anagrams, use the "|" character as before to mark specific positions as word breaks (as in a crossword anagram clue). For example, if you had a crossword clue "Wicked television arrangement (4,3,3)" which you guessed was an anagram of "television", you could enter "tele|vis|ion" to find all possible matches. (The answer, in this case, is "evil ion set").

The User Interface

The Main Form in WordFindLite looks like:

There is a keyboard that you can use to enter letters, shortcut buttons for the unknown letter indicator `?' and word separator `|', the `Go' button to start a search, `Clear' buttons to clear the current pattern, and two fields for entering patterns, one for template patterns and one for anagram patterns.

After pressing Go! in the Main Form, WordFindLite will display the matches found in the Word Form, shown below.

The Word Form, displaying the partial results of a pattern search.

The controls in the Word Form are:

Next - show the next screenfull of matches
Redo - start displaying the matches again from the first screen
New - go back to the Main Form to start a new search

Note that the words shown are broken at the third character position, rather than at the the fourth position, while the search pattern is broken at the fourth position. This is due to a subtle difference between the anagram and template style searches. If you insert word breaks in the anagram field, this tells WordFindLite the lengths of the allowable matches, but does not enforce the position of the break. That is, the anagram search pattern "teac|her" tells WordFindLite to find two-word anagrams of the letters "teacher" where one word is four letters long and the other is three letters long.

Entering a word break in the template field, however, fixes its position. You can combine the two. For example, if you entered "????|???" in the template field, and "teacher" in the anagram field, then WordFindLite would find two-word anagrams of "teacher" where the first word is four letters long and the second word is three letters long.

3. Registration

WordFindLite is shareware, and cost US$8. The trial version can be used with the demo.pdb dictionary for 21 days for evaluation purposes. If you continue to use the program after that, you must pay for it. The full version can be purchased and downloaded from PalmGear Headquarters at http://www.palmgear.com. Registered users get access to other dictionaries, to future updates, and to e-mail support.

Before purchasing WordFindLite, I recommend that you try WordFind++ and WordFindPro. They offer considerably more powerful search types, although they are somewhat more complicated to use. You may find that they suit your requirements better. WordFindLite has been designed to support the most common types of word searches, with the simplest possible interface. WordFind++ supports much more powerful searches, but has a more complex interface. WordFindPro supports even more types of searches, such as cryptogram style searches (using numbers in place of letters), and UNIX regular-expression style searches. It also allows you to search more than one dictionary, and includes an MS-Windows program for creating your own dictionaries.

4. Disclaimer

While every endeavour has been made to eliminate bugs in this software, the software is provided "as is", and the author makes no warranties as to its fitness for any purpose, nor shall the author be held responsible for any data loss incurred as a result of the use of this software.

5. Known Bugs/Limitations/Common Problems

There are no known bugs in this release.

There are some limitations. Search patterns are restricted to 63 characters, while words are restricted to 31.

From questions I get asked by e-mail, I think I should just stress one point:

You must load a dictionary .pdb file or WordFindLite will just show a "No dictionary!" error when you try to search.

6. Version History

Changed the name from PalmWordLite to WordFindLite to avoid trademark and copyright issues with Palm, Inc.

Release 1.1 is built using an updated C++ application framework library. This framework will be described in an article in Dr Dobbs Journal in late 2001, for those who are interested. There are very few functional changes, except that previously WordFindLite would report a `no dictionary loaded' error in response to an invalid search pattern; this has been corrected and it will now distinguish between being unable to perform a search due to the absence of a dictionary, and being unable to perform a search due to an error in the search expression.

Release 1.1 is built using PalmOS SDK 3.5 and requires PalmOS 3.1 at the minimum.

7. Contacting the Author

I am always interested to hear bug reports, feature requests, and of novel uses the WordFind range of programs (such as using them to solve puzzles in computer adventure games, substitution ciphers, and so on. Please mail any comments to gramster@bigfoot.com

Enjoy using WordFindLite!