WNB(1)

📦
version 3.0 · 2 versions
, in fedora 43, fedora 44, opensuse-leap 16.0

💖 NAME 💖

wnb — the WordNet window-based browser interface, bestie 💅

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

wnb

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

okay so wnb() gives you a whole window-based interface for browsing the WordNet database, and it lets you look at synsets and relations as, like, nicely formatted text. no cap. 🌸

For every search word you throw at it, there are different searches available — it all depends on the syntactic category and whatever info is chillin' in the database.

wnb is written in Tcl/Tk, which is out here existing for both Unix and Windows platforms. that's the whole slay of it honestly — the same code works on all supported WordNet platforms without modification. iconic behavior, we love to see it. 👑

🎀 WNB WINDOWS 🎀

wnb() was developed with one very specific philosophy: only the searches and buttons that are applicable at the current time get displayed. so yeah, the interface literally changes appearance as you use it — it's giving main character energy that adapts. 💫

Use the standard windowing system mouse functions to open and close the WordNet Browser Window, move the window around, and change its size. that's all you, bestie.

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 a button entitled File, History, Options, and Help.
  • Search Word Entry — below the Menubar there's a line for entering the search word. a search word can be a single word, a hyphenated string, or a collocation. case is ignored. and listen — even though usually only uninflected forms of words are stored in WordNet, you can still search for inflected forms. WordNet's morphological processor finds the base form automatically. it's so smart, obsessed. 🧠✨
  • Search Selection — below the Search Word Entry line is the area for selecting the search type and senses to search. until a search word is entered, this area is blank. once 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 there's 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. you can restrict the search to one or more specific senses by entering a comma or space separated list of sense numbers in the Senses box. those sense numbers stay in effect until either you change or delete them, or a new search word is entered. periodt. 💅

  • Results Window — most of the browser window is literally just a big 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 sits 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's no search word entered, you're prompted to "Enter search word and press return." and 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:

  1. 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 how you figure out whether a sense's sense number is based on semantic tagging data, or was just 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. 👀
  2. 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's 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 — just move to the Search Word Entry box, if necessary highlight it by clicking, erase the old string, type a new one, and press 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. fresh start energy, we love it. ✨

The middle mouse button can also be used to select a new search word — just place the mouse over any word in the Results Window and click. the selected word will replace the text in the Search Word Entry box, and the overview for that word will automatically be displayed. lowkey magic. 🪄

To select a new search string collocation from text in the Results Window, highlight the text with the mouse and press CONTROL-S. 💅

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. 😌

🌸 File Menu 🌸

  • Find keywords by substring — pops open a whole window for searching WordNet for words or collocations that contain a specific substring. If there's already something typed in the Search Word box, bestie, that's what gets used as the default substring to hunt for. The Substring Search Window has: a box for typing your substring, a pulldown menu right next to it for picking which part of speech to search, a big ol' area for showing the results, and action buttons down at the bottom called Search, Save, Print, Dismiss. 💅

So once you've typed a substring and picked a part of speech, clicking Search makes it go find every word and collocation in WordNet, in that syntactic category, that contains the substring — and the criteria are giving very specific:

  1. The substring can appear at the beginning or end of a word, hyphenated string or 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 results land in that big buffer. Clicking an item in the results list makes wnb() automatically drop that word into the Search Word box of the WordNet Browser Window and run the Overview search. Iconic behaviour honestly. ✨

Clicking Save brings up a popup dialog where you specify a filename to save the substring search results to. Clicking Print brings up a popup dialog where you can specify a print command.

Hitting Dismiss closes the Substring Search Window. Bye bestie 👋

  • Save current display — popup dialog, you give it a filename, it saves whatever's currently in the Results Window. Easy.
  • Print current display — popup dialog where you specify a print command that the current Results Window contents get piped to. 👑
Heads up: this option does not exist in the Windows version. Not me being the bearer of bad news 😭
  • Clear current display — wipes the Search Word and Senses boxes, and the Results Window. Fresh start energy.
  • Exit — does what you would expect. 🚪

🌈 History 🌈

This pulldown menu is literally just a list of the last searches you did. Click one and it runs that search again — no retyping, we love to see it. 🫶

The max number of searches kept in that list is adjustable from the Options menu. The default is 10.

✨ Options ✨

  • Show help with each search — when this checkbox is on, your search results get preceded by some explanatory text about the type of search you picked. It's off by default.
  • Show descriptive gloss — when this checkbox is on, synset glosses show up in all search results. This one's set by default. Also note: glosses are always displayed in the Overview, no matter what. 💖
  • Wrap Lines — when this is on, any lines in the Results Window that are wider than the window get automatically wrapped. Set by default. If it's not selected, you get a horizontal scroll bar whenever any lines are longer than the width of the window. Pick your fighter.
  • Set advanced search options... — selecting this shows a popup window where you set the following search options: Lexical file information; Synset location in database file; Sense number. And the choices for each one 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 gets printed before each synset, wrapped 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 gets appended onto all but one of the word's instances so it can be uniquely identified. In each synset, every word with a non-zero lex_id gets printed with the lex_id value right after the word. And if both lexicographer information and sense numbers are displayed, the lex_ids — if they're there — come before the 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 gets printed before each synset, wrapped 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 gets printed immediately after the word, and it's preceded by a number sign (#). Slay.

  • Set maximum history length... — popup dialog where you set the max number of previous searches kept on the History list.
  • Set font... — popup window for setting the font (typeface) and font size used in the Results Window. Typeface choices are: Courier, Helvetica, and Times (default). Font size can be small, medium (default), or large. 🎀
  • Save current options as default — saves the options as you've currently set them. Next time the browser starts up, these become your user defaults. Lowkey the most useful button here ngl.

💜 Help 💜

  • Help on using the WordNet browser — displays this manual page. (Hi, you're reading it 🫶)
  • Help on WordNet terminology — displays the wngloss(7) manual page.
  • Display the WordNet license — displays the WordNet copyright notice and license agreement.
  • About the WordNet browser — info about this application.

⭐ SHORCUTS ⭐

Clicking on any word in the Results Window while holding down the SHIFT key makes the browser replace Search Word with that word and show its Overview and available searches. Clicking any word in the Results Window with the middle mouse button does the exact same thing. Two paths, one destiny. 💫

Pressing the CONTROL-S keys makes the browser do the same as above, but on whatever text is currently highlighted. Under Unix, this works even if the highlighted text is in another window — yes, fr fr, other-window highlights are fair game. It works on hyphenated strings and collocations, not just individual words. 🔥

Pressing the CONTROL-G keys displays the Substring Search Window.

💖 SEARCH RESULTS 💖

okay bestie, so 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. slay.

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. iykyk

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. periodt.

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. one line only, bestie.

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. it's giving "vibes-based ranking" but make it lexicography.

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(7) for a discussion how senses are grouped. group chat energy fr fr.

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. morphology bestie, we love her.

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. TOPIC REGION USAGE — the holy trinity.

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 =>. EX: bestie behavior.

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. prenominal, postnominal, predicative — say that three times fast.

When an adjective is a participle of a verb, the output indicates the verb and displays its synset. verb participle realness.

When an adverb is derived from an adjective, the specific adjectival sense on which it is based is indicated. adverb to adjective pipeline, iconic.

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. saw said "I contain multitudes."

🩺 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. so if it's broken, check ur env bestie.

🌸 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.

set them, love them, export them.

🪟 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.

Windows girlies, this is ur moment.

📁 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

the whole squad.

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

wnintro(1), wn(1), wnintro(3), lexnames(5), senseidx(5), wndb(5), wninput(5), morphy(7), wngloss(7), wngroups(7).

go read these next, bestie. no cap.

🐛 BUGS 🐛

Please reports bugs to wordnet@princeton.edu. yes the original says "Please reports" — we are keeping it exactly, because grammar is not the vibe, accuracy is.

and that's the whole page, bestie. this was WordNet 3.0, dated Dec 2006, manual section WNB(1). slay, eat, no crumbs. 💅✨

📦 where this page comes from