DroiDic v 1.0



François Pessaux (c) may 2011

 

What is DroiDic ?

DroiDic is a basically a dictionary program. It basically provides 3 main features:

Dictionaries are database containing all the words that are assumed to be known. It's possible to change the dictionary as the user wishes. This means that DroiDic is independent of the language. Just provide it a dictionary database containing the words you assume to be allowed, and DroiDic will work with it.

Two additional features that are saved in the user's preferences allow you to:

Currently, 7 dictionaries are available (English, French, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish), with different numbers of words for each. Some of them have been submitted by users of the previous versions of the software. Some have more words than others. Anyway, if you are interested in contributed to new or more extended dictionaries, please feel free to contact me.

What is the status of DroiDic ?

DroiDic is freeware. This means that you do not have anything to pay to use it.

This program is provided without any warranties. This means that I won't be responsible in any case of whatever happens if you use it. I also have no obligation to change, fix, upgrade or whatever DroiDic. This program is gracefully provided to who wants and need it, in any case I remain the author, with the right to do whatever I want with it.

Once it will reach a stable state, sources will be released to provide support and example for people wishing to develop on the machine.

How to use it ?

DroiDic presents 3 working modes you can switch between with the bottom radio buttons. The "Spell" mode allowing to spell-check a word, "Exist" allowing to simply check if a word exists in the dictionary, and "Cheat" allowing to find all words matching a pattern.

Words and patterns to process must be entered in the upper text field of the screen.

To submit the request, you can either tap the top-right button "Search" or validate the "Return" touch of the popup keyboard that arises as soon as you are typing a text in the upper text field of the screen.
According to the selected processing mode, thanks to the 3 mutually exclusive bottom buttons "Spell", "Exist" and "Cheat", DroiDic will process differently your request.

Finding spelling suggestions for a word

You are given the words belonging to the current dictionary, whose spelling is close from the submitted word. Note that DroiDic does not verify is the word already exists in the dictionary. This means that even if the word is correctly spelt, suggestions will be provided.

Searching if a word exists in a dictionary

This is a "yes / no" answer telling if the submitted word belongs to the current dictionary.

Finding all the words matching a pattern

This feature can be used to cheat in crosswords. Instead of a word, you submit a pattern in the upper text field. A pattern is a "word" that can contain special characters called wildcards. There are 3 kinds of wildcards that are '?' (or ' ' the blank space character), '*' and '+'. Once you entered your pattern, you'll be given all the words in the current dictionary that match this pattern.
The 3 available wildcards are pretty close to those used in "regular expressions", like in Lex, Sed and other programs dealing with them.

Meaning of the wildcards in a pattern:

Menus

Dictionaries

Allows to select the currently used dictionary.

Case sensitivity (difference uppercase lowercase)

Allows to perform searches taking or not into account the case sensitivity of words. If search is case sensitive then upper-case and lower-case (for example "A" and "a") letters will be considered as different. If search is case insensitive, then they will be considered as the same letter.

Note: This currently doesn't work in "Exist" working mode, i.e. "A" and "a" are always considered as different.

Help

Displays the present help page.

About

Gives the version of DroiDic.

Exit

Allows to quit DroiDic, avoiding leaving it running in background, hence freing resources.

How to reach me ?

I will stay open to any suggestion, bug report, and so on... (this doesn't mean that I will take anything into account ;)). So if you want to reach me, you can try my email address: francois_pessaux@yahoo.fr.

I hope this little piece of software will be useful and you will enjoy it !... Cheers,

    -- François