Copyright: Copyright ® Bryson Limited, 1996.


TEA for Windows Help Contents
TEA for Windows Help

The Electronic Alveary

Word Search for Microsoft Windows

Copyright © Bryson Limited, 1996. All Rights Reserved.

Using TEA for Windows

The Electronic Alveary allows you to search for words in a dictionary that match a pattern. Here are some example problems that can be investigated with TEA (click on each one to see the TEA pattern that will give the answer):

What matches the pattern -O-O-O-O-Y?

What anagrams can you make from the letters of STARTING-POINT?

What words end in GRY?

What words include a Q, an X and a Z?

What words have the letters IRONAGE and either S or Z?

What words include a Q not followed by U?

What words of 15 letters or more have no repeated letters?

What words include all five vowels consecutively?

Click on the following topics for further information:

Using the Main Window

Configuring TEA for Windows

Main Menu Commands

TEA Patterns

Other topics

What is an alveary?

Program History


.o.o.o.o.y


;startingpoint


*gry


;qxz*


;ironage[sz]


*q[^u]*


...............*;abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz


*(;aeiou)*


Main Menu Commands

This index lists the different menus available. Select one to view the list of commands for each menu:

File Menu Commands

Export Menu Commands

Help Menu Commands


 File Menu Commands

Setup Command

Exit Command


Setup Command

This command allows you to configure the TEA for Windows application using the TEA Properties Dialog.


Exit Command

This command allows you to quit the TEA for Windows application.


 Export Menu Commands

To Clipboard Command

To Printer Command

Printer Setup Command

Lookup Command

Select All Command


Edit Copy Command
Export To Clipboard Command

This command copies the selected entries in the output list to the clipboard.

The Copy button on the Main Window performs the same function

This command is only available when entries have been selected.


File Print Command
Export To Printer Command

Pops up the Print Dialog allowing you to print the selected words in the output list.

The Print... button on the Main Window performs the same function.

This command is only available when entries have been selected.


File Printer Setup Command
Export Printer Setup Command

Pops up the Print Setup dialog allowing you to configure the printer.


Lookup Command

This command attempts to look up a word selected from the search output in various third party dictionaries: the definition of the word will appear in whichever of the supported dictionaries is running at the time.

Most dictionaries provide interfaces that allow you to look up words from other applications such as word processors: TEA for Windows supports two styles of interface that are commonly used:

DDE Interface. Some dictionaries (such as those based on the CompLex software) support lookup from other applications using Dynamic Data Exchange.

Command Interface. With other dictionaries (such as the American Heritage Dictionary for Windows), applications send a Windows message to invoke a lookup command in the application.

The Lookup button on the Main Window performs the same function

This command is only available when a single entry been selected.


Select All Command

This command selects all the entries in the output list.

This is useful if you want the full results of a search to be printed or copied to the clipboard.


Help Menu Commands

On This Window Command

Contents Command

How to Use Help Command

About TEA Command


Help On This Window Command

Starts the help application and displays information about the Main Window.


Help Contents Command

Starts the help application and displays the contents page of this help file.


How to Use Help Command

Starts help on How to Use Help topic


About Command
About TEA Command

This opens TEA for Windows's About Box


Main Window

This dialog allows you to search for words in the currently loaded dictionary (the one shown in the TEA Properties Dialog) that match a particular pattern.

To search for a word, type a pattern into the box to the right of the Pattern: label. The Start button stays grayed out until a valid pattern has been entered. The box for entering patterns is a combo box, so that you can also recall previously entered patterns from the list. Here are some simple example patterns (see TEA Patterns for more detailed information):

m.nt.a	finds words matching the template M-NT-A

;easting	finds anagrams of EASTING

Click on the Start button to start searching. The matched words will appear in the list labeled Matches. When a search is running, the length of the words being scanned is shown and a progress bar shows what proportion of the words of that length have already been scanned.

Click on the Stop button to pause a search: after doing this, you can click on Continue to resume the search.

TEA's Alphabet Mapping ensures that only the alphabetical parts of words are considered during matching.

Dictionary Lookup. If you have a supported third party dictionary installed on your computer and want to check the meaning of any word in the list produced by a word search, select the word you are interested in and click on the Lookup button (or press return with the Ctrl button held down). See the Lookup Command section for further information.

Printing Output. You can print the results of a word search by selecting the words you are interested in and clicking on the Print... button.

Copying Output to the Clipboard. You can copy the results of a word search to the Windows clipboard by selecting the words you are interested in and clicking on the Copy button.


TEA Patterns

Simple Templates

Templates with Choice Lists

Templates with Wildcards

Simple Anagrams

Anagrams with Choice Lists

Anagrams with Wildcards

Templates and Anagrams Combined

Sub-Patterns

Macros

Escaping Special Characters


Simple Templates

The simplest form of pattern is just a template with letters at the positions that must be matched and match-all characters at other positions.

In the examples given in this section, '.' is used as the match-all character. In fact, you can use any non-alphabetic character as a match-all character.

Examples:

....

lists all the four letter dictionary entries, and

m.nt.a

lists all the dictionary entries matching the template M-NT-A:

mantra

mantua


Templates with Choice Lists

If the character at a position in an entry is known to be one of a set of letters, then this situation can be represented using a choice list.

A choice list is entered by giving the list of possible letters between square brackets '[' and ']'. The complete choice list matches just one letter in the entry.

If the list of letters begins with a caret ('^'), the sense is negated: only letters not in the choice list are matched.

Examples:

[abcd]ean

lists the four letter dictionary entries starting with either A, B, C or D and ending EAN:

bean

dean

we[air]..er

lists the 7 letter dictionary entries starting with either WEA, WEI or WER and ending --ER:

wearier

weather

weigher

weirder

q[^u]..

lists the 4 letter dictionary entries starting with Q, but not followed by U:

qadi

qoph


Templates with Wildcards

Gaps in the template that can be of variable length are indicated by the '*' wildcard. The '*' wildcard matches zero or more letters in the word. The use of wildcards implies that different lengths of words may be found.

Examples:

bluest*

lists dictionary entries of any length starting with BLUEST:

bluest

bluestone

bluestones

bluestocking

bluestockings

*robin*

lists dictionary entries of any length including ROBIN anywhere:

robin

robing

robins

probing

robings

robinia

enrobing

robinias

Robinson

sea-robin

unrobing

etc.

*.boule.*

lists dictionary entries of any length including BOULE anywhere except the start and end:

tabbouleh

éboulement

tabboulehs

éboulements

probouleutic


Simple Anagrams

Anagrams are specified by including a semicolon (';') in the pattern, followed by the elements of the pattern that can be matched in any order:

Examples:

;easting

lists all the anagrams of EASTING:

easting

eatings

genista

ingates

ingesta

seating

tangies

teasing

Anagram patterns can also include match-all characters. Like the anagram letters, they can be matched at any position in the entry.

;string.

lists all the dictionary entries including the letters in STRING plus one arbitrary letter:

gastrin

G-string

ratings

resting

rusting

sorting

staring

stinger

storing

strings

stringy

tirings

trigons

tryings

tyrings


Anagrams with Choice Lists

Choice lists can be used in anagram patterns, when one of the constituent letters in the anagram isn't known exactly.

A choice list is entered by giving the list of possible letters between square brackets '[' and ']'. The complete choice list matches just one letter in the word.

If the list of letters begins with a caret ('^'), the sense is negated: only letters not in the choice list are matched.

Examples:

;br[au]sh

lists the anagrams of BRUSH and BRASH:

brash

brush

shrub

;q[^u][^u][^u][^u]

lists the five letter dictionary entries containing a Q, but no U:

bar-b-q

Iraqi

qadis

Qajar

qanat

Qatar

Q-boat

Q-celt

qibla

qophs

Q-ship

talaq


Anagrams with Wildcards

Wildcards can be used in anagram patterns, when the word being sought is known to contain a particular set of letters, but its exact length isn't known.

Examples:

;abcdefg*

lists the dictionary entries of any length including all the letters A-G:

black-figured

negative feedback


Templates and Anagrams Combined

A template and anagram can be used together. A ';' marks the boundary between the template part of the pattern and the anagram part of the pattern.

Examples:

..a....;easting

lists the anagrams of EASTING that also match the template --A----:

seating

teasing

The number of letter positions specified in the template and anagram do not have to agree. When the anagram has more letters than the template, only the number of letters required for the template need to be matched from the anagram part.

....;donet

lists all the dictionary entries that can be made up from 4 out of the 5 letters of DONET:

dent

done

don't

dote

Eton

node

note

tend

toed

tone

If the template includes a wildcard, then the range of word lengths from the smallest length implied by the template to the length implied by the anagram is treated as above.

.........*;sportscaster

lists words longer than 9 letters made up of the letters in SPORTSCASTER:

assertors

assorters

attercops

prostates

prostrate

protracts

recaptors

rest stops

retroacts

Sarcoptes

sectators

spectator

sports-car

prostrates

spectators

sports-cars

sportscast

sportscaster

When the anagram has fewer letters than the template, the anagram is automatically padded with match-all characters to the length of the template.

.......w;krs

.......w;krs*

.......w;krs.....

are all equivalent and list the 8 letter dictionary entries ending W and including the letters K, R and S anywhere along their length:

rickshaw


Sub-patterns

Sub-patterns can also be used as a match element within the template or anagram part of a pattern. Sub-patterns are surrounded with round brackets '(' and ')'.

If a sub-pattern is specified as part of the template, the sub-pattern is matched at the exact position within the template. The usual reason for doing this is to include an anagram specification within a template.

Examples:

.(;reed).

lists the 6 letter dictionary entries that have an anagram of REED as the middle 4 letters:

aredes

breded

bredes

breeds

creeds

greeds

greedy

Hedera

herded

redrew

teredo

verdet

yerded

If the sub-pattern is specified as part of the anagram, then the sub-pattern can AS A UNIT be matched anywhere in a word. This is useful when a word is known to contain a particular sequence of letters, but where the exact position isn't known:

.a.........er;(and)

lists the 13 letter dictionary entries that match the template -A---------ER and include the letters AND together, at any position in the entry:

candle-lighter

candle-snuffer

salt and pepper

tar and feather


Macros

Macros are a quick way of entering a common sequence of characters into a pattern. TEA for Windows supports two macro characters - at ('@') and hash ('#'). When these are encountered in a pattern, they are replaced by the characters set up in the TEA Properties Dialog.

One common use for this would be to set up choice lists specifying vowels and consonants: by default @ expands to [aeiou] and # expands to [^aeiou].

Examples:

#@#@#@#@#@#@#@

lists the 14 letter words containing consonants and vowels alternately:

pararosaniline

recapitulative

rehabilitative

supererogative

verisimilitude


Escaping Special Characters

If a special character used in the TEA syntax ever needs to specified as a real 'letter', this can be done by preceding it with the backslash ('\') escape character.

Note, however, that most standard dictionaries will be built such that non-alphabetic characters (including all the special characters in the TEA syntax) are insignificant and therefore considered as match-alls. The need to escape special characters is really only relevant to dictionaries built with a non-standard Alphabet Mapping.

Examples:

;.\..\..\..\.

lists the four letter abbreviations in a dictionary where dot is alphabetic:

I.N.R.I.

R.S.V.P.

S.P.Q.R.

U.S.S.R.


TEA Properties Dialog

To open this dialog, use the Setup Command on the File menu. This dialog allows you to configure the way the TEA Main Window works.

The Dictionary section shows which dictionary file is being used: as well as the file name, a description of the dictionary, the number of entries and the range of entry lengths are shown. To change the dictionary, click on Change... which will pop up the Open Dialog so you can select a different dictionary. See the help file for the TEA&Sympathy Dictionary Builder (Tsbuild) for information about creating TSD format dictionaries from word lists.

In the Length range searched section, you can configure the shortest and longest words that will be searched for using the Minimum letters and Maximum letters settings: it is often useful to set these in conjunction with patterns containing wild cards so that searching doesn't extend beyond words of a particular length range.

In the Pattern expansions section, you can configure how the @ and # macros are expanded within TEA Patterns.

In the Fonts section you can choose which font will be used to display the pattern and matched output: click in the box to the right of Pattern: to change the font used in the pattern input box; click in the box to the right of Matches: to change the font used in the list of matched output.

In the Matches section you can determine whether the output will appear in the same order as in the dictionary or sorted alphabetically: dictionaries used with Sympathy will typically be ordered based on letter frequency. Check Sorted to get alphabetically sorted output.

Save As Defaults allows the current settings to be saved to the TEA.INI file so they will apply every time you use the program.


Open Dialog

This is the Windows common dialog box for selecting the name of a file to be opened. It is used to select a TEA&Sympathy dictionary file (.TSD) file for opening.


License Dialog

This dialog allows you to enter your license key.

To enter a license, follow the instructions given with the license key.


About Box

This displays status, version and copyright information about TEA for Windows.


Alphabet Mapping

Dictionaries used with TEA for Windows have an associated alphabet which determines how searching is done using that dictionary:

which characters are non-alphabetic and not considered significant in matching;

which sets of characters are considered equivalent in matching.

Although the alphabet in a dictionary is user configurable, the default mapping provided for use with word lists in the Windows ANSI Character Set will be used in the examples here.

Common non-alphabetic characters are space and hyphen: these won't be considered to be significant in matching; for example, dinner-dance and dinner table are both 12 characters long as dictionary entries, but they are considered to be 11 letters long during matching.

Case differences and accents aren't considered significant either: for example, e and E are equivalent and considered the same as é and É.

See the help file for the TEA&Sympathy Dictionary Builder for more detailed information about alphabets and how to customize them for a word list.


Alveary Meaning
What is an alveary?

The Chambers Dictionary gives three meanings for the word 'alveary':

a beehive

a hollow of the external ear

an early dictionary of English, French, Greek and Latin

TEA is an 'alveary' updated for the electronic age, with the similar ability to support a number of different languages.


Program History
History

The first version of TEA was a freeware implementation for DOS (archive names TEA10n.ZIP, where n is the minor version number). This is based on an older and less flexible dictionary technology: it is still available, but unsupported.

Here are the releases of TEA for Windows to date:

v1.10 (9 June 1996)

    Release for Windows 3.1.

v1.2 (1 November 1996)

    Releases for Windows 3.1 and Windows 95. Pattern and output font configuration.


Sympathy is TEA for Windows's companion program for constructing and filling crossword grids. Sympathy incorporates TEA for Windows as its Word Search Dialog.