If you have a question about the functionality or a certain aspect of the smart thesaurus, we would like to encourage you to contact us and send your questions or any other suggestions that help us to continuously improve this application.

For your convenience the smart thesaurus avoids dozens of hotkey combinations, and simply comes up with two hotkeys:

• ESC is used to reset any kind of pre-selections or selections in a term's graph.
• SHIFT while left mouse down initiates a meaning or description either of a term that appears as part of a search term's graph, or of the music record you are actually listening to.

A certain noun, verb or adjective of the English language may have a lot of other terms lexically related to it (e.g. try 'train'). Due to the choosen radial visualization technique, some terms may be covered by others, or located outside the main display area. To keep complete control over such terms, smart thesaurus provides three different strategies to improve visibility:

• ROTATING the actually displayed graph may help to make terms, covered by others, visible. To rotate, click on the center button of a term graph. To stop rotation, click again.
• MOVING the actual graph may help to make terms, located outside the main display area, visible. To move a graph, press the left mouse button and simultaneously move your mouse.
• PRESELCTING a certain (covered) term by rolling over it lets the term move in radial direction.

To easily get the meaning of a term, press SHIFT and click on the term. This opens an additional window, carrying the meaning of the selected term. This window is made modal, i.e. it must be closed before any further mouse event is accepted.

Another way to get informed about the meaning of a specific term is to use the THESAURUS component. It provides access to the different meanings of all the words represented by the displayed web of related terms. These meanings are organized with respect to the PART OF SPEECH lexically assigned to the represented terms.

Any word you typed into smart thesaurus appears on the main display area like a spider in a web of related terms. Click on any word at the periphery of this web and a new lookup is started, resulting in a new web of related terms and so on. The previous web is moved off to the wordline, where it is still accessible, represented by its focus or search term. A click on this term restores the according graph.

After having entered a certain word into the search box, a graph appears, representing a web of related terms. This graph provides words, and also circles or spheres with different colors. Each circle or sphere represents a SYNSET of the term you looked up. A synset is a set of synonyms, i.e. a set of words that are interchangeable in some context.

Synonyms may appear as nouns, verbs or adjectives. These PART OF SPEECH are coded with different colors. To best explore which color is assigned to which part of speech, please additionally use the THESAURUS component.

A synset is represented by a set of terms (synonyms). These are connected to the synset circle or sphere by equally colored edges.

In some graphical representations of related terms, there appear circles or spheres that are directly connected to other circles or spheres. This is indicated by a yellow colored edge between them. From a lexical point of view this may be described as a relation between two (different) SYNSETS.
This representation is used by smart thesaurus is such cases where a synset is represented by a single term, which, in addition is identical to the lookup one. For example, the term 'ball' is represented by a set of synsets, where some of these comprise a single synonym, 'ball': A certain meaning for 'ball' exists, which is solely represented by the word 'ball'. In such cases, instead of displaying this redundancy, smart thesaurus replaces the according synonym by its HYPERNYM synset(s).

In other words, the relationship of two circles or spheres is a '...IS A KIND OF' lexical relation.

In addition to the web of related terms that represents synonyms of the term you looked up, smart thesaurus supports further lexical relationships, dependent on the part of speech (noun, verb, etc.) you are actually interested in:

NOUNS

• [1] Hypernym or broader term (...is a kind of)
• [2] Hyponym or narrower term (kinds of ...)
• [3] Antonym (opposites of ...)
• [4] Meronym (parts of ...)
• [5] Holonym (... is a part of)
• [6] Related verbs
• [7] Related Adjectives

VERBS

• [1] Hypernym or broader term (...is a kind of)
• [2] Hyponym or narrower term (kinds of ...)
• [3] Related verbs
• [4] Related nouns

ADJECTIVES

• [1] Antonym (opposites of ...)
• [2] Similar adjectives
• [3] Related adjectives
• [4] Related nouns

Lexical pointers are accessed via the THESAURUS component. So first, you have to ensure, that this component is added to your application. Then second, select the part of speech you are interested in. Finally, click on one of the meanings. The corresponding part of the actual web of related terms is selected (red), and, a list of lexical pointers is made available to you. Select one, and a lookup is started for this pointer and the selected meaning.

All components are made resizable and draggable. To resize it, click on the grabber icon (see left side), located on the right hand side of the bottom of a component's window, and simultaneously move the mouse.

To move a component's window around, click on its top or label and simultaneously move the mouse.

OPEN a certain application component by first click on the arrow button of the component manager (located, and always present, at the bottom of the main application window. Then the component manager is opened and enables you to click on one of the four window icons, each representing a certain component. After a mouse click on one of the icons, the selected component window is opened and located at its predefined window position.

CLOSE a certain application component by clicking on the minimize (or minus) button, located on the right hand side of a component's window top.

Equally, you may also maximize a certain component (please use the plus button) or roll it up (please use the arrow button).

smart thesaurus offers a music store with an exquisite selection of music records. In the basic edition, this store is empty. Independent of your actual edition, you may customize this store: Any installation of the smart thesaurus comes up with a \music\ directory. This directory comprises all the MP3 audio files (not in the basic edition), and, additionally a xml file with all the application-relevant data of the music store. To add a certain audio track, first locate the corresponding MP3 file in the music directory. We advise you, to ensure, that the audio resources must be at one of the following sample rates: 11.025 khz, 22.5 khz, and 44.1 khz, and encoded at no more than 160 kbps. Then, second, create a new record entry in the xml file, using the given record entries as an example. Provide a label, intro and source attribute with an appropriate value. To finally enjoy your audio track, please restart the application.

smart thesaurus is based on Princeton University's WordNet 2.0, a lexical database for the English language with actually more than 145,000 unique terms and 110,000 meanings.

smart thesaurus is not designed to export or print any of its lookup results. So, if you are interested to export or print these results or parts of them, we ask you to do this by making screenshots.

The main window provides you with a stop button, located at the right bottom side. Click on this button, and the application is closed. After the shutdown window appears, you may also close the browser. We advise you to always shutdown the application this way. Otherwise, smart thesaurus's internal web server is not closed. This may lead to an impairment of your system's performance.