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Wordy v1.01

My vocabulary consists of about 100 words in total (and that includes not-quite-words such as “uh“ and “eh“ and several not-so-good but very multi-purpose words).  It's definitely pretty limited and has never been one of my strong points.  As a result of this weakness, having quick access to a dictionary has always helped me out quite a bit.

A few years back, I decided to write a quick app to provide me with immediate access to a dictionary and it's been running on my machines ever since.  I originally wrote it in C++ in straight Win32 but also wrote a C# version as soon as C# and the framework were capable of doing it. 

If it sounds like it would be useful to you, feel free to download it.  I just uploaded the binary and C# source and made it available to all on this page.  I've also included a link to the old Win32 version which provides the same functionality but is a bit more efficient when it comes to working set, etc.  I can't find the source to that version though. 

You can find both versions of Wordy and more info on how it works here.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    March 09, 2004
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    March 09, 2004
    Yep, I use the Google toolbar in the browser and used the taskbar toolbar for a bit but ended up removing for some reason. Not sure why now, I think it was back in the beta days for it and it was a bit flaky. I should play with a more recent version.

    The problem with these is that you have to in some cases bring up a browser (if you just have the google toolbar) and then type or copy/paste. The way I use Wordy is double-click whatever word I want to look up to select it, hit Ctrl-C, and then double-click the Wordy icon. That's a little quicker and is what I'm used to doing for years now.

    I will look into possibly hooking up Wordy to the Google define command though, especially if it's exposed via the Google web services...

    Thanks though Moshe.
  • Anonymous
    March 09, 2004
    me tank u :-)
  • Anonymous
    March 10, 2004
    A "what I mean is..." tool would be more useful. A dictionary helps you figure out how to spell words if you already know you're in the ballpark of the word. A thesaurus helps you find words similiar to the word you want.

    A ____ is like a keywords searchable thesaurus/dictionary?

    Example use:

    Me> "its like, an, um, tape thing, for um, rock climbing"

    It> Did you mean "webbing", "runners", "slings"? And here are some pictures to help you out...

    That would be nice.
  • Anonymous
    March 10, 2004
    Dave, I certainly agree that would be a sweet tool. But it's a significantly harder problem than the one I set out to solve for myself. You mention that a dictionary is useful to figure out how to spell words. I agree with that. But I actually rarely have problems with spelling, it's more about the actual definition of the word for me. I'll have an idea of what it means but reading the definition makes it much clearer. So to me, a dictionary is more of a tool to find the meanings of words instead of spelling.

    What you suggest would be a really cool tool though.