WordGenerator

Contents

1. Description
2. Details
3. Documentation
4. Downloads
5. Change Log
6. Environment
7. Bugs

Description

WordGenerator generates hypothetical words from specifications of their syllable structure. You specify the maximum length of the words in syllables, the abstract structure of syllables in the language (in terms of such units as consonants and vowels or onsets and rhymes), and the actual sounds that comprise each abstract class (e.g. the list of vowels in the language) and WordGenerator then generates the words that conform to this specification.

Such lists are useful to field linguists exploring the vocabulary of a language and to designers of artificial languages. Random samples of such lists may also be of use to historical linguists wishing to simulate chance resemblances. The counts of the various syllable types and words of various lengths are automatically updated whenever relevant parameters are changed. This may be useful in teaching students about the combinatorics of languages.

All input is in UTF-8 Unicode. A number of tools are provided for entering non-ASCII characters, including clickable IPA charts and custom character entry widgets. Output defaults to UTF-8 Unicode, but other encodings may be selected.

Details

Documentation

The program is largely self-explanatory, but an explanation of how to use it is available on the Help menu. Right-clicking over most headings brings up an explanation of the function of that section of the interface. Configuration files are explained in the file README_CONFIGURATION included with the distribution.

Downloads

WordGenerator-1.9.tar.gz

WordGenerator-1.9.tar.bz2

WordGenerator-1.9.zip

For those for whom installing Tcl/Tk is a problem, the following are single-file executables that contain WordGenerator along with the Tcl interpreter and the necessary libraries (but not Iwidgets).

• WordGenerator-linux-x86.kit (GNU/Linux on Intel)
• WordGenerator-darwin-univ.kit (Mac OS X universal binary)
• WordGenerator-win32.exe (Microsoft Windows)

Packages

• OpenBSD

If you would like to be notified of new releases, subscribe to WordGenerator at Freshmeat.

Changes

1.9 [2008-12-11]

• We now check for Tk8.5 or greater on X11 and if this is detected use smaller type sizes.
• Console output is now avoided under MS Windows.
• A Spanish translation has been added.
• The license is now version 3 of the GPL.

1.8

• The Iwidgets library is now optional. Its presence is detected. If it is not present, custom character charts are not available.
• The encoding used when reading the configuration file is now set by default to UTF-8, eliminating problems when this file is in UTF-8 and the system encoding is not (as on MS Windows). If the output encoding is set in the configuration file using the "Encoding" parameter, this encoding is used to read the rest of the configuration file. This permits configuration files to use encodings other than UTF-8 and distinct from the system encoding.
• The system and output encodings are now shown in the titlebar.
• The dialogue popped up on exit if the words generated have not yet been saved now grabs the focus so that it is not possible for the user erroneously to attempt to exit again (if, for example, he or she cannot see the popup).

1.7

• Results may now be saved in a variety of encodings.

1.6

• Arbitrary precision arithmetic is now used to compute word counts. This eliminates the bug that made word counts become inaccurate when they became too large to represent with fixed-size integers.
• WordGenerator now looks for a configuration file automatically, first in the current directory, then in the user's home directory.
• Configuration parameter names are now case-insensitive and less strict as to word separators, which may consist of a space, an underscore, a hyphen or nothing.
• The colors of the main components are now configurable.
• Documentation for configuration files is now provided.

1.5

• This release fixes a bug that triggered an error when saving the configuration or saving the list of words generated with headers enabled.
• This release fixes a bug that prevented font choices from affecting the character insertion tools.
• The accented letter entry widget has been improved. A number of characters have been added, and upper-case counterparts are now available by right-clicking.

1.4

• This release fixes a typo that triggered an error when alphabetization of the output was requested.

1.3

• The help menu buttons that bring up popups are now toggles.
• If the user attempts to exit without saving the words generated, he or she is queried as to whether to do so.
• A partial Spanish message catalog is now included.

1.2

• Selected text is now exported for copy and pasting in the About, Bug Report, How To and Macintosh Notes popups.
• Validation of codepoints in the popup for entering characters by codepoint has been improved. The message window is now cleared at the beginning of each attempt to insert a character. The popup now has a title.
• Less garish colors have been used.

1.1

• The Alphabetize option may now be combined with random sampling.
• The entries for the maximum number of syllables and sample size are now validated.
• Random sampling has been speeded up a little.