Manual

Searching a Lexicon

As your personal lexicon grows you will more and more find the need to search it quickly. Sometimes you may want to look for a particular item while other times you might want to find a group of items that share certain characteristics, like those that contain a specific particular translation or are assigned a specific lexical type or both.

Fortunately, there are several methods to efficiently find what you're looking for. The easiest way is to use the theme and lexical item lists in the main application window. Right away you'll notice these lists are sorted according to the natural sort order of the language, usually alphabetically. If you know the items you're interested in are contained within one or two themes then you can select those themes to decrease the number of items shown in the lexical item list. Alternatively, if you are looking for lexical items that aren't assigned to a theme then you can select [Unassigned] in the theme list. If you're not sure which theme the items are assigned to or you're searching across themes then simply select [All] in the theme list to show all items in the lexicon.

Whatever theme selection you make, there still may be too many items to search the item list visually. In this case, if you're looking for items with specific item text or a particular translation then you can use the search text field right above the item list. By typing text into this field the list of lexical items will be narrowed to those that contain the typed text. If the language view is set to the target language then the item text of each item is shown in the lexical item list. Therefore, the text you type into the search text field is compared with item text. However, if the language view is set to the native language then (minor) translations are shown in the item list and they are used when looking for the typed text.

In situations when you're looking for a group of items that share characteristics not based on item text or translation then you will use the Advanced Search dialog. To open this dialog click the magnifying glass button to the right of the search text field or select Advanced Search from the Edit menu. Here, you will have the ability to search on any lexical item field.

Once you've initiated a search with the search text field or the Advanced Search dialog then the magnifying glass button will change to contain a red X. You can click the button at any time to cancel the search or you can select other themes from the theme list to change which ones you are searching in.

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