Conversions

Using the Conversions menu you can convert a dictionary to a text file so you can edit it. This is useful if you want to remove or add words. You can also convert a text file to a dictionary. The words do not have to be sorted.

When you convert a dictionary to a text file, Excalibur gives you the option of setting the file creator for the resulting text file. You can choose MS Word, Alpha, or a generic text file.

Excalibur is capable of keeping track of up to 7 dictionaries at a time. If you have 7 dictionaries in the Dictionary menu and you try to convert a dictionary that is not already there, Excalibur will display an error saying that the dictionary list is full. You can correct the problem by quitting Excalibur and removing at least one dictionary from the Excalibur folder.

When you convert a text file to a dictionary, Excalibur gives you the option of saving the file as read only. If you choose this option, you will not be able to add words to the dictionary from within Excalibur. It's a good idea to keep the Standard Dictionary read only.

Excalibur will recognize accents and ligatures if the Do LaTeX Command Parsing option is checked. If you don't have any accents or ligatures, you can uncheck this option and the conversion will be a little faster.

Excalibur also looks at the Word Boundaries options when doing a text to dictionary conversion. So, if you have Regard 's as end of word selected, Excalibur will not add any words ending in 's to your dictionary.

If you want to add a few words to a larger dictionary, first convert the larger dictionary to a text file. Then, copy the words you want to add onto the end of the file. Finally, convert the file back into a dictionary. We expect that this will be the most common use of conversions, so we have tuned the text to dictionary conversion so that it performs best under these circumstances. If you have a completely unsorted list of words that you would like to convert to a dictionary, the conversion may be lengthy. Sorting the words first will speed things up greatly. Convert your word list to lower case before doing the sort.

If you are using System 7 or higher Excalibur will use temporary memory (if necessary) when doing conversions. If your machine has a lot of free memory, it will grab as much as it needs to complete the conversion. It releases this memory when it is finished.

If you are using System 6, you may have to increase Excalibur's memory partition to convert a large file. See Large Documents and Dictionaries for information on how to do this.

You can use Excalibur's conversions to produce a sorted list of words that appear in a document. First, perform a text to dictionary conversion using a text document as input. Then, convert your new dictionary to a text document. The result will be a sorted list of all the words that appear in your document. Since the words in the original file are unsorted, this operation can be slow if the original document is large.

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