Langur - User Guide

Langur is a desktop thesaurus for RISC OS computers. It uses thesaurus databases from the OpenOffice.org project.

1. Requirements
2. Quick installation instructions
3. Verbose installation instructions
4. Using the application
5. Choices
6. Adding a thesaurus
7. Adding a web search
8. Version history
9. Reporting bugs
10. Contacting the developer
Appendix A. Miscellaneous
Appendix B. License

1. Requirements

In order to run, Langur requires the following to be present on your system:

RISC OS 3.50 or greater.
Acorn URI version 0.12 or greater.
SharedUnixLibrary version 1.02 or greater.

2. Installation - quick instructions

Here are brief instructions on how to install the application. For more assistance please read the verbose instructions.

Copy !Langur to your hard disc
Copy !LangurDB to !Boot.Resources

Download a thesaurus database from http://lingucomponent.openoffice.org/thes_dic.html
Doubleclick !Boot.Resources.!LangurDB
Copy the /dat and /idx files from the zip file to LangurDB:thes
Edit the !LangurDB index file - remove the '#' from the appropriate line

Steps 3-6 should be repeated for each thesaurus that you wish to use.

3. Installation - verbose instructions

There are two components provided with this distribution - !Langur, the main application, and !LangurDB, a container for the thesaurus databases. You will also need a thesaurus database, which can be downloaded from the OpenOffice.org web site.

3.1. Installing !Langur

Copy the !Langur application to your hard disc.

3.2. Installing !LangurDB

You should copy !LangurDB to the shared resources directory inside !Boot. To find this directory, shift-doubleclick !Boot and open Resources, or simply run the !ShowBootR file that comes with the distribution.

3.3. Installing thesaurus databases

Langur uses OpenOffice.org format databases. These can be downloaded from http://lingucomponent.openoffice.org/thes_dic.html. At the time of writing there are four available - US English, French, German, and Hungarian.

Download a thesaurus zip file from the above site, and open it (eg. using SparkFS, SparkPlug, or InfoZip). In this example we will be using the US English database, th_en_US.zip. Inside the zip file should be two files: th_en_US/dat and th_en_US/idx.

Double-click !LangurDB (your copy of it inside !Boot.Resources - if you can't find it, double-click !ShowBootR). This will open a directory where you can store thesaurus databases. Copy th_en_US/dat and th_en_US/idx to this directory.

Note: if you are using SparkPlug to unzip these files, they may not be named correctly. If you see th_en_US_dat and th_en_US_idx (ie. an underscore before dat and idx instead of a slash) then rename them appropriately.

Nearly there. You should now edit the index file - double-click it to open it in a text editor.

Scroll down to the bottom of the file. You should see a line:

#th_en_US:English (US)

Remove the hash (#) from the start of this line. Save the file.

Note: If you are installing a new database and cannot see it on the list, you will have to add a new line. Read the comments in the index file to learn how to do this, although it should be fairly obvious - it's basically just a filename and a short description.

That's it. Repeat this section if you want to install another thesaurus.

4. Using the application

To show a thesaurus, either:

Click SELECT or ADJUST on the iconbar icon.
Choose a language from the iconbar menu.

To search for a word, either:

Enter the word in the text box. Click "Look up" or press Enter.
Double-click on an word in the list.
Drag a text file to the window. The first word will be used.
Drag a selection from another application to the window.

To insert a word in another application, either:

Drag the word to another window.
Click MENU on the word and select "Copy to clipboard".
Position the caret in another window. Click MENU on the word and select "Insert at caret".
The current list of words can be saved by clicking MENU and choosing "Save word list".

If no words are found:

Check the spelling, particularly for "-ise" and "-ize" endings.
Enter the start of the word, followed by an asterisk. Eg: "exam*".

To look up a word on the World Wide Web:

Click MENU on the word, and select a service from the "Web search" submenu.

5. Choices

To open the choices window, click MENU on the icon bar icon and choose "Choices...".

You can choose which thesaurus is shown when you click SELECT or ADJUST on the icon bar icon. If you choose "No language" nothing will happen when you click.

You can choose whether the word lists are shown using a single or multiple columns using the "Multiple columns" tick box.

The maximum width of each thesaurus window can be set using the "Window width" box. This is measured in standard OS units.

Click OK or Save to make the changes.

6. Adding a thesaurus

To use an additional thesaurus with this application, please refer to steps 3-6 of the quick installation instructions or the "Installing thesaurus databases" section of the verbose installation instructions.

7. Adding a web search

The web search menu can be altered by editing the file !Langur.Resources.UK.WebSearch.

The file contains lines in the format:

Description:Url

Please note:

The text before the first colon (:) is used in the menu.
The text following the first colon is the URL.
Use %s to insert the word. (Use this in the URL - once and once only!)
Use %% for the percent character.
Lines can be commented out using #

8. Version history

The latest version can be obtained from http://www.monkeyson.info/software/langur/.

Version 1.00 (16th October 2004)

Initial release.

9. Reporting bugs

If you experience any crashes or unexpected behaviour while using this application, please report the problem to the developer. See below for contact details.

Queries regarding the content of the thesaurus should be directed to the OpenOffice.org developers.

Langur is 32 bit compatible and has been tested on RISC OS 5.06.

10. Contacting the developer

You can contact Phil Mellor here.

Appendix A. Miscellaneous

The Langur is a new world monkey.

Appendix B. License

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA