
		    Lexis - Shareware version  2.0


    Compared with the previous versions, all program restrictions have
  been removed and this is a fully working version.
    The maximal number of excerpts is now set to 6000;
    You can enter up to 40000 translations (words or phrases).

    Several new important features have been added:

     - A tutorial has been added.

     - Now you need not to scroll all the sentences found as the result
       of a search but can choose relevant translations directly from a list.

     - The notion of an unresolved translation has been defined. If you
       didn't manage to translate a piece of text you can mark it as
       'unresolved'. Afterwards you can easily locate it.

     - You can mark a phrase before actually entering its translation.
       It allows immediate search for translations of phrasal verbs in 
       English or separable verbs in German as single items.

     - While reading text from a file, you can enter the preview mode to
       see what will be read to the foreign text window without actually
       reading it and so split the text in the most appropriate manner.

     - Full color differentiation has been introduced.

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    To install run install.exe

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    The purpose of this program is to help to its users to enlarge their
  vocabulary through reading texts of their choice with a relatively large
  amount of unknown words and to use their previous work in the future
  translations automatically.

    The program allows providing words (discerning separable verbs in German)
  and phrases (discerning phrasal verbs in English) of foreign texts with
  translations.
    Previously translated sentences are stored for subsequent automatic 
  referencing when related words are encountered.
    Besides providing translations and automatic referencing Lexis allows
  to check knowledge of the translated material. The translations provided 
  are checked within the context of the excerpt that contains the translated 
  words. But don't take the checks too seriously - read as much as you like.

    The program supports English, French, German, Hebrew or Russian or any 
  language with its alphabet contained in one of the alphabets of these 
  languages as user's mother tongue;
    English, French or German are supported as studied foreign languages. 
  For these languages the program is able to find related words for regular
  and irregular verbs in different conjugations, nouns in different 
  declensions and so on, although some reservations ought to be made
  due to heuristic nature of the algorithms.
    It is worth mentioning that the search for related words is the only
  essential aspect of the program that is dependent from the foreign 
  languages in question. It can be (and has been) hopefully well formalized 
  based on their grammar.

    When an interested user intends to deal with hundreds if not thousands
  of new lexical items, he or she is expected to be ready to learn 3 basic 
  functional keys F2-F4 for editing and new properties of the Enter, Space 
  and '+' keys for editing and checking translations and this suffices
  to work with the program. A tutorial has been provided that can be chosen 
  during the installation.

    You can use electronic texts which can be found on the Internet or 
  enter them by hand. Some recommended sites:
			  English
   Project Gutenberg: 
	http://www.ul.cs.cmu.edu/gutenberg/web
			   German
   Project Gutenberg-DE: 
	http://www.abc.de/gutenb/autor.htm
			   French
   Alexandrie La Bibliothe`que virtuelle:
	http://www.alexandrie.com/alex2/pagealex/litterat/litterat.html

    Lexis can calculate the page and column numbers of each translated word 
  in a dictionary if some relatively small amount of data has been provided 
  in advance (at least the first word on each page in the dictionary).

    The program is virtually independent of what letters a particular 
  computer can display. But for a keyboard, that cannot handle some
  German or French letters several keys has been redefined or introduced 
  to cope with German and French.

    Data integrity was the highest priority in the program design so that 
  even if the program data is corrupted in one place - at worst one-two 
  excerpts are effected; if a power break occurs during the program 
  execution - at most changes to the current edited excerpt (one-screen size) 
  are lost. Two  separately created data files for a particular language can 
  be merged by the plain 'copy /b file1+file2 file3' Dos command.

    Remember that the Windows presence essentially slows down display
  output in the DOS shell, so if you are not satisfied with the output
  speed -  exit Windows and run Lexis in DOS (for Windows 95 shut down 
  with restart in the DOS mode).

    Using SmartDrive or any other disk cashing utility will significantly 
  speed up the program.

    The program requires registration only for use in business, commercial
  or institutional environments or any other use for profit.
    Otherwise you don't have to pay for it.

      The author can be reached by email:

		    alexande@tx.technion.ac.il or
		    alexande@cs.technion.ac.il

					(Alexander Birzh)
