Dictionary Software

[BOB BRODY]

I'm familiar with SoftKey's Definition's Plus clone (for lack of a
better word). I don't recall if it was this BBS but I recently
commented about SoftKey's Publish It! clone being offered via DAK for
$9.90 (plus $4 p&h). It is guaranteed to be identical to Publish It!
v1.2. I was curious how they do this and not get sued (look & feel, or
whatever it's called). I was told by DAK that these are privately
licensed copies of the same thing but to a different label. Anyway,
I've not tried SoftKey's iteration (I assume it too will load to EMS and
use only 4K RAM if one wants it TSR, or swap to disk file) but suspect
it's the same thing, confirmed all the more by your observation.

Yeah, I tend to agree about exactly how useful, or not, Definitions Plus
is. It may be more an individual thing than a blanket surmise. I work
with quite a bit of language in the course of a day and have found
Definitions Plus useful and helpful. (I've since written a XyWrite PM
to call it up rather than load it TSR.) I don't think I've not known
the definition of every word I encounter but my exactness of certain
definitions is not always, well, exact, and I've enjoyed browsing, as it
were, by just placing the cursor on a word and hitting a hotkey. Poof,
there's the exact definition with secondary definitions as well as
homonymic separations (such as "size" being a homonym). Plus, in my
line, I try to keep words simple. Screenwriting isn't a wordsmithing
arena and I vet/edit anything I think may hurt the cadence of the read.
Sometimes, rather than just scan synonyms, a definition is more helpful
to me. (A noted writer of fiction once said, albeit tongue-in-cheek,
using a thesaurus was cheating. Like using a crossword puzzle
dictionary when doing a crossword puzzle.) Anyway, I do this frequently
enough that it's a nuisance to keep opening a hardcopy dictionary, or
tote one around with me and 'me laptop. I've found some of the usage
notes helpful as well, plus displaying inflected spellings along with
the definition has come in handy on occasion (the little got'chas for me
are things like 'dinning' vs. 'dining' and so forth). I suspect a CD
ROM dictionary might be dangerous as I might spend inordinate amounts of
time perusing. (I do tend to enjoy a certain preoccupation with
lexicons. Work therapy, perhaps. Or would that be word therapy? )