What's new in Anagram Artist 3.05
Dec 6, 2011
- In 3.0, minimizing the Help window caused a crash. Now fixed.
- Starting Anagram Artist when the dictionary last used has been deleted was a problem in 3.0; works correctly now.
- In the Anagram Finder, a check for certain unusual letter distributions was too aggressive, complaining about cases that even version 2.61 could handle. This has been fixed so it works like 2.61.
- Trying to build or use very large dictionaries (with roughly 200,000 or more distinct words) caused problems in the dictionary maker and AA itself. Now fixed.
- Quit, get save nag, hit Yes, then hit Cancel caused Anagram Artist to exit rather than returning you to your work. Now works correctly.
- Note that this version will install to a new folder (Anagram Artist 3.05), leaving your Anagram Artist 3.0 folder unchanged.
- Tip: you can keep all your old preferences without having to remake them by just copying the file aartist.ini from your Anagram Artist 3.0 folder to the new Anagram Artist 3.05 folder. Do this after installing 3.05.
- You can also copy any custom dictionaries you've made (files named "something.ud") to the Anagram Artist 3.05 folder to make them available for use in 3.05.
New in Anagram Artist 3.0 (Dec 6, 2011)
- New Features:
- Everything to do with constraints: the C box, the Constraint Manager, constraint checking with the Check button.
- Spell check (really "is-in-dictionary" check) via the Check button.
- The Dictionary Maker tool (which lets you change the dictionary).
- For some new wordlists, collected by Larry Brash, click here
- British/American/Both switch for spelling.
- Five levels of "common words" instead of just two (common on/off).
- Option to ban words from original when doing a short anagram.
- The Anagram Finder is improved. For most letter sets, especially those where the search space is large, it is faster and it finds more and better-quality anagrams. Also, it allows up to 25 letters now instead of just 20.
- "Free" mode for generic constrained writing unrelated to anagrams.
- Help is now divided into topics.
- Comments using "//" are allowed in the Anagram window.
- Changes (things that actually work differently):
- The "1" command in the U box (to restrict to heterograms - words with no repeated letters) is gone, but this function is still available as one of the commands in the new C box.
- "Original" mode is accessed differently now - not by clicking on the "Ana" button but by right-clicking in the Original pane.
- The shortcut for "Save As" is now CTRL-E instead of CTRL-A. The reason for this is to make CTRL-A available for use as the standard Window's "Select All" function, so you can easily select all the text in a window for copying to another program.
- Bug Fixes:
- A bug in tweak-replace mode was fixed; now, words inserted by double-clicking a suggested word are properly surrounded by spaces (and also when doing tweak-undo).
- A bug in the Anagram Finder was fixed. In 2.6x if you type eight E's into the original box and ask for anagrams the program crashes. This unusual letter distribution is still problematic (due to the way the anagram finder works), but the program now displays an error message instead of crashing.
New in Anagram Artist 2.61 (Dec 6, 2011)
- A bug introduced in version 2.6 (if you set the histogram to show all letters together, the letter I is repeated and Z is missing) is fixed.
- A new feature has been added to the U box. In addition to specifying letters that must be used in the suggested words, you can also specify letters that must NOT be used. This is done by putting "-" then some letters at the end of what you type in the box. For example, putting "ppt-abc" in the box will display only words containing at least two P's, one T, and NOT containing any A's, B's, or C's. Thanks to Richard Brodie for suggesting this feature.
- Aside from helping shape the letter distribution of suggested words (e.g., you can make sure that a letter that currently has a bad deficit is completely disallowed), this feature can help when constructing anagrams with additional letter constraints (as in Richard Brodie's recent anagram where part of the anagram only used letters with descenders, or to make one that's an E lipogram in places, etc.).
- While I was putting that one in I thought of another. Its usefulness is debatable but it was so easy to do so I couldn't resist. If you put a "1" anywhere in the U box (along with other stuff, perhaps) then suggested words will be restricted to those with no repeated letters (i.e., to those which have no more than 1 occurrence of each letter of the alphabet).
New in Anagram Artist 2.6 (Dec 6, 2011)
- In recognition of computers being faster than they were 2 years ago when the last version came out, the 4-word limit in the final anagram finder has been increased to 5. It's an option in Settings now so you can set it to whatever you want (from 1 to 5), in case you have a slower computer and want to keep it at 4.
- A major new feature: you can type a "xxxxx" string into the Syll box in final anagram finder mode; this tells it to only show anagrams with that many total syllables. Very useful for finishing off a poem.
- A minor but useful feature: you can turn off the "you changed something, do you want to save?" nag message when you exit, via Settings.
- Another semi-major new feature: you can switch it from giving you suggested words for the anagram text to giving you suggested words for the *original*. This is useful when you're doing an anagram where you have some control over the original; if you use the suggested words then, as usual, the letter distribution of the unused letters will be optimized, thus making the anagram easier to do. Also note that when you ask for suggested words for the original there are no constraints on letters used, which means this gives you a way to access AA's entire dictionary (which might be useful even for non-anagramming purposes).
- Some UI blocks-of-color ugliness on XP has been, I think, fixed.