Where do I find XYLNS.ZIP?; dictionaries

[dkanagy@xxxxxxxx (Dan Kanagy)]

Time to delurk. Thanks Daniel Say for pointing me to this list,
and thank you Nathan Sivins for starting it!

FWIW, I've been using XyWrite since 1986, first XyWrite III+
(culminating in the classic v 3.55) and then XyWrite 4.0 for the
last two years. What a happy discovery finding XyWrite was. My
profession is translating Japanese into English, meaning more
often than not I spend the entire day in XyWrite writing English.
 XyWrite's speed and configurability made it the perfect tool for
my profession. (In fact, I can name a number of translators in
Japan who use XyWrite. The recommendation of a fellow translator
is how I found XyWrite in the first place.) And I didn't mind in
the least being able to use automatic word expansion for years
before that feature became available in competing software with
more generous waistlines. I can't imagine translating without
it.

A simple question for today and then a comment about
dictionaries.

I see the info file for the list refers to a XYLNS.ZIP file in
the ftp directory. Somehow I've been unable to find this file
(although I did find XPLNS.ZIP). Could someone point me to the
proper directory for this file? Off and on I think of using
XyWrite with Yarn to write e-mail, but I didn't want to go
through the trouble of printing to file first. According to the
description of XYLNS.ZIP in the info file, this may be just what
I've been looking for.

Now a comment about dictionaries. Someone asked some time ago
about the electronic American Heritage Dictionary. I've used
both the American
Heritage and the Random House electronic dictionaries. The AH
has a slightly better interface, in my opinion, but it is still
surpassed by the RH in terms of content. This is a little old,
but there is a good review of electronic dictionaries and other
writing tools in the _PC
Magazine_ of 25 May 1993. According to the review, the AH uses a
generous formula to count its entries, which gave it the highest
word count at the time of the review. The RH uses a more
conservative formula but still effectively has more entries than
the AH. The RH is based on the complete text of the _Random
House Webster's College
Dictionary_ and scored the highest in the _PC Magazine_ review.
My personal use of the two dictionaries does not contradict the
review's findings.

_________________________________________________________________
___________
Dan Kanagy     Work: wordwise@xxxxxxxx    Play:
dkanagy@xxxxxxxx
Tokyo, Japan
dkanagy@xxxxxxxx