NAME¶
wnb - WordNet window-based browser interface
SYNOPSIS¶
wnb
DESCRIPTION¶
wnb() provides a window-based interface for browsing the WordNet
database, allowing synsets and relations to be displayed as formatted text.
For each search word, different searches are available based on syntactic
category and information available in the database.
wnb is written in Tcl/Tk, which is available for Unix and Windows
platforms. This allows the same code to work on all supported WordNet
platforms without modification.
WNB WINDOWS¶
wnb() was developed with the philosophy that only those searches and
buttons that are applicable at the current time are displayed. As a result,
the appearance of the interface changes as it is used. Use the standard
windowing system mouse functions to open and close the WordNet Browser Window,
move the window, and change its size.
The WordNet Browser Window contains the following areas, from top to bottom:
- Menubar
- A menubar runs along the top of the browser window with
pulldown menus and button entitled File, History,
Options, and Help.
- Search Word Entry
- Below the Menubar is a line for entering the search word. A
search word can be a single word, hyphenated string, or a collocation.
Case is ignored. Although only uninflected forms of words are usually
stored in WordNet, users may search for inflected forms. WordNet's
morphological processor finds the base form automatically.
- Search Selection
- Below the Search Word Entry line is an area for selecting
the search type and senses to search. Until a search word is entered this
area is blank. After a search word is entered, buttons appear
corresponding to each syntactic category ( Noun, Verb,
Adjective, Adverb) in which the search string is defined in
WordNet.
At the right edge of the Search Selection line is a box for entering sense
numbers. When this box is empty, search results for all senses of the
search word that match the search type are displayed. The search may be
restricted to one or more specific senses by entering a comma or space
separated list of sense numbers in the Senses box. These sense
numbers remain in effect until either the user changes or deletes them, or
a new search word is entered.
- Results Window
- Most of the browser window consists of a large text buffer
for displaying the results of WordNet searches. Horizontal and vertical
scroll bars are present for scrolling through the output.
- Status Line
- A status line is at the bottom of the browser window. When
search results are displayed in the Results Window, this status line
reflects the type of search selected. When there is no search word
entered, your are prompted to "Enter search word and press
return." If the search word entered is not in WordNet, the
message "Sorry, no matches found." is displayed.
SEARCHING THE DATABASE¶
The WordNet browser navigates through WordNet in two steps. First a search word
is entered and an overview of all the senses of the word in all syntactic
categories is displayed in the Results Window. The senses are grouped by
syntactic category, and each synset is annotated as described above with
synset_offset,
lex_filename, and
sense_number as dictated
by the advanced search options set. The overview search also indicates how
many of the senses in each syntactic category are represented in the tagged
texts. This is a way for the user to determine whether a sense's sense number
is based on semantic tagging data, or was arbitrarily assigned. For each sense
that has appeared in such texts, the number of semantic tags to that sense are
indicated in parentheses after the sense number.
Then, within a syntactic category, a specific search is selected. The desired
search is performed and the search results are displayed in the Results
Window. Additional searches on the same word can be performed, or a new search
word can be entered.
To enter a search word, click the mouse in the horizontal box labeled
Search
Word, type a single word, hyphenated string, or collocation and press
RETURN.
wnb() responds by making a set of Part of Speech buttons appear in the
Search Selection line. Each button corresponds to a syntactic category in
which the search string is defined in WordNet. At the same time, an Overview
of the synsets for all senses of the search word is displayed in the Results
Window. The Overview includes the gloss for each synset and also indicates
which of the senses have appeared in the semantically tagged texts. For each
sense that has appeared in such texts, the number of semantic tags to that
sense are indicated in parentheses after the sense number.
The pulldown menus in the Search Selection line list all of the WordNet searches
that can be performed for the search word in that part of speech. To select a
search, highlight it by dragging the mouse to it, and release the mouse while
it is highlighted. Drag the mouse outside of the pulldown list and release to
hide the menu without making a selection. Dragging the mouse across the Part
of Speech buttons displays the available searches for each syntactic category.
To restrict a search to one or more senses within a syntactic category, enter a
comma or space separated list of sense numbers in the
Senses box before
selecting a search.
After a search is selected,
wnb() performs the search on the WordNet
database and displays the formatted results in the Results Window. Whenever
search results are displayed, a button entitled
Redisplay Overview is
present at the right edge of the Search Word Entry line. Clicking on this
button redisplays the Overview of all synsets for the search word in the
Results Window.
Changing the Search Word¶
A new search word can be entered at any time by moving to the Search Word Entry
box, if necessary highlighting it by clicking, erasing the old string, typing
a new one and pressing
RETURN. The
Senses box is
cleared if necessary, the Part of Speech buttons applicable to the new search
word appear, and the Overview for the new search word is displayed.
The middle mouse button can also be used to select a new search word by placing
the mouse over any word in the Results Window and clicking. The selected word
will replace the text in the Search Word Entry box, and the overview for that
word will automatically be displayed.
To select a new search string collocation from text in the Results Window,
highlight the text with the mouse and press
CONTROL-S.
Interrupting a Search¶
When a search is in progress the message
"Searching...(press escape
to abort)" is displayed in the Status Line. Note that most
searches return very quickly, so this message isn't noticeable. As indicated,
pressing the
ESCAPE key will interrupt the search. The
results of the search obtained before the time the search was interrupted are
displayed in the Results Window.
- Find keywords by substring
- Display a popup window for specifying a search of WordNet
for words or collocations that contain a specific substring. If a search
word is currently entered in the Search Word box, it is used as the
substring to search for by default. The Substring Search Window contains a
box for entering a substring, a pulldown menu to its right for specifying
the part of speech to search, a large area for displaying the search
results, and action buttons at the bottom entitled Search,
Save, Print Dismiss.
Once a substring is entered and a part of speech selected, clicking on the
Search button causes a search to be done for all words and
collocations in WordNet, in that syntactic category, that contain the
substring according to the following criteria:
1. The substring can appear at the beginning or end of a word, hyphenated
string o collocation.
2. The substring can appear in the middle of a hyphenated string or
collocation, but only delimited on both sides by spaces or hyphens.
The search results are displayed in the large buffer. Clicking on an item
from the search results list causes wnb() to automatically enter
that word in the Search Word box of the WordNet Browser Window and
perform the Overview search.
Clicking the Save button generates a popup dialog for specifying a
filename to save the substring search results to. Clicking the
Print button generates a popup dialog in which a print command can
be specified.
Selecting Dismiss closes the Substring Search Window.
- Save current display
- Display a popup dialog for specifying a filename to save
the current Results Window contents to.
- Print current display
- Display a popup dialog in which to specify a print command
to which the current Results Window contents can be piped. Note - this
option does not exist in the Windows version.
- Clear current display
- Clear the Search Word and Senses boxes, and
Results Window.
- Exit
- Does what you would expect.
History¶
This pulldown menu contains a list of the last searches performed. Selecting an
item from this list performs that search again. The maximum number of searches
stored in the list can be adjusted from the
Options menu. The default
is 10.
Options¶
- Show help with each search
- When this checkbox is selected search results are preceded
by some explanatory text about the type of search selected. This is off by
default.
- Show descriptive gloss
- When this checkbox is selected, synset glosses are
displayed in all search results. This is set by default. Note that glosses
are always displayed in the Overview.
- Wrap Lines
- When this checkbox is selected, lines in the Results Window
that are wider than the window are automatically wrapped. This is set by
default. If not selected, a horizontal scroll bar is present if any lines
are longer than the width of the window.
- Set advanced search options...
- Selecting this item displays a popup window for setting the
following search options: Lexical file information; Synset location in
database file; Sense number. Choices for each are:
Don't show (default)
Show with searches
Show with searches and overview
When lexical file information is shown, the name of the lexicographer file
is printed before each synset, enclosed in angle brackets ( <
... >). When both lexical file information and synset
location information are displayed, the synset location information
appears first. If within one lexicographer file more than one sense of a
word is entered, an integer lex_id is appended onto all but one of
the word's instances to uniquely identify it. In each synset, each word
having a non-zero lex_id is printed with the lex_id value
printed immediately following the word. If both lexicographer information
and sense numbers are displayed, lex_ids, if present, precede sense
numbers.
When synset location is shown, the byte offset of the synset in the database
"data" file corresponding to the syntactic category of the
synset is printed before each synset, enclosed in curly braces ( {
... }). When both lexical file information and synset
location information are displayed, the synset location information
appears first.
When sense numbers are shown, the sense number of each word in each synset
is printed immediately after the word, and is preceded by a number sign (
#).
- Set maximum history length...
- Display a popup dialog in which the maximum number of
previous searches to be kept on the History list can be set.
- Set font...
- Display a popup window for setting the font (typeface) and
font size to use for the Results Window. Choices for typeface are:
Courier, Helvetica, and Times (default). Font size
can be small, medium (default), or large.
- Save current options as default
- Save the currently set options. Next time the browser is
started, these options will be used as the user defaults.
Help¶
- Help on using the WordNet browser
- Display this manual page.
- Help on WordNet terminology
- Display the wngloss(7WN) manual page.
- Display the WordNet license
- Display the WordNet copyright notice and license
agreement.
- About the WordNet browser
- Information about this application.
SHORCUTS¶
Clicking on any word in the Results Window while holding down the
SHIFT key on the keyboard causes the browser to replace
Search Word with the word and display its Overview and available
searches. Clicking on any word in the Results Window with the middle mouse
button does the same thing.
Pressing the
CONTROL-S keys causes the browser to do as
above on the text that is currently highlighted. Under Unix, this will work
even if the highlighted text is in another window. This works on hyphenated
strings and collocations, as well as individual words.
Pressing the
CONTROL-G keys displays the Substring Search
Window.
SEARCH RESULTS¶
The results of a search of the WordNet database are displayed in the Results
Window. Horizontal and vertical scroll bars are present for scrolling through
the search results.
All searches other than the Overview list all senses matching the search results
in the following general format. Items enclosed in italicized square brackets
(
[ ... ]) may not be present.
If a search cannot be performed on some senses of
searchstr, the search
results are headed by a string of the form:
X of Y senses of searchstr
One line listing the number of senses matching
the search selected.
Each sense matching the search selected displayed as follows:
Sense n
[{synset_offset}] [<lex_filename>] word1[#sense_number][, word2...]
Where
n is the sense number of the search word,
synset_offset is
the byte offset of the synset in the
data.pos file corresponding
to the syntactic category,
lex_filename is the name of the
lexicographer file that the synset comes from,
word1 is the first word
in the synset (note that this is not necessarily the search word) and
sense_number is the WordNet sense number assigned to the preceding
word.
synset_offset,
lex_filename, and
sense_number are
generated if the appropriate Options are specified.
The synsets matching the search selected are printed below each sense's synset
output described above. Each line of output is preceded by a marker (usually
=>), then a synset, formatted as described above. If a search
traverses more one level of the tree, then successive lines are indented by
spaces corresponding to its level in the hierarchy. Glosses are displayed in
parentheses at the end of each synset if the appropriate Option is set. Each
synset is printed on one line.
Senses are ordered from most to least frequently used, with the most common
sense numbered
1. Frequency of use is determined by the number of times
a sense is tagged in the various semantic concordance texts. Senses that are
not semantically tagged follow the ordered senses. Note that this ordering is
only an estimate based on usage in a small corpus.
Verb senses can be grouped by similarity of meaning, rather than ordered by
frequency of use. When the
"Synonyms, grouped by
similarity" search is selected, senses that are close in meaning
are printed together, with a line of dashes indicating the end of a group. See
wngroups(7WN) for a discussion how senses are grouped.
The output of the
"Derivationally Related Forms" search shows
word forms that are morphologically related to
searchstr. Each word
form pointed to from
searchstr is displayed, preceded by
RELATED
TO-> and the syntactic category of the link, followed, on the next
line, by its synset. Printed after the word form is
#n where
n indicates the WordNet sense number of the term pointed to.
The
"Domain" and
"Domain Terms" searches show
the domain that a synset has been classified in and, conversely, all of the
terms that have been assigned to a specific domain. A domain is either a
TOPIC, REGION or
USAGE, as reflected in the specific
pointer character stored in the database, and displayed in the output. A
Domain search on a term shows the domain, if any, that each synset
containing
searchstr has been classified in. The output display shows
the domain type (
TOPIC, REGION or
USAGE), followed by
the syntactic category of the domain synset and the terms in the synset. Each
term is followed by
#n where
n indicates the WordNet
sense number of the term. The converse search,
Domain Terms, shows all
of the synsets that have been placed into the domain
searchstr, with
analogous markers.
When the
"Sentence Frames" search is specified, sample
illustrative sentences and generic sentence frames are displayed. If a sample
sentence is found, the base form of the search word is substituted into the
sentence, and it is printed below the synset, preceded with the
EX:
marker. When no sample sentences are found, the generic sentence frames are
displayed. Sentence frames that are acceptable for all words in a synset are
preceded by the marker
*>. If a frame is acceptable for the search
word only, it is preceded by the marker
=>.
Search results for adjectives are slightly different from those for other parts
of speech. When an adjective is printed, its direct antonym, if it has one, is
also printed in parentheses. When the search word is in a head synset, all of
the head synset's satellites are also displayed. The position of an adjective
in relation to the noun may be restricted to the
prenominal,
postnominal or
predicative position. Where present, these
restrictions are noted in parentheses.
When an adjective is a participle of a verb, the output indicates the verb and
displays its synset.
When an adverb is derived from an adjective, the specific adjectival sense on
which it is based is indicated.
The morphological transformations performed by the search code may result in
more than one word to search for.
wnb() automatically performs the
requested search on all of the strings and returns the results grouped by
word. For example, the verb
saw is both the present tense of
saw
and the past tense of
see. When there is more than one word to search
for, search results are grouped by word.
DIAGNOSTICS¶
If the WordNet database files cannot be opened, error messages are displayed.
This is usually corrected by setting the environment variables described below
to the proper location of the WordNet database for your installation.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES (UNIX)¶
- WNHOME
- Base directory for WordNet. Default is
/usr/local/WordNet-3.0.
- WNSEARCHDIR
- Directory in which the WordNet database has been installed.
Default is WNHOME/dict.
REGISTRY (WINDOWS)¶
- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WordNet\3.0\WNHome
- Base directory for WordNet. Default is C:\Program
Files\WordNet\3.0.
- HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\WordNet\3.0\wnres
- User's default browser options.
FILES¶
- index.pos
- database index files
- data.pos
- database data files
- *.vrb
- files of sentences illustrating the use of verbs
- pos.exc
- morphology exception lists
SEE ALSO¶
wnintro(1WN),
wn(1WN),
wnintro(3WN),
lexnames(5WN),
senseidx(5WN),
wndb(5WN),
wninput(5WN),
morphy(7WN),
wngloss(7WN),
wngroups(7WN).
BUGS¶
Please reports bugs to wordnet@princeton.edu.