🚀 go-pugleaf

>Dear Avi
>
>I think also thesaurus function would be a good add-on
>to Endnote.
>
>You ask how this could work. I think this hierarchical thesaurus
>could consist in a tree like structure, or even in a set of trees. Every
>tree is in fact a shortcut for a search specification, e.g. every
>edge stands for an OR.
>
>Using the example from Ejan Mackaay:
>
>    animals
>       ^-------- mammals
>                    ^--------- cats
>                    ^--------- dogs
>
>
>Specifing 'animals' as search string, this would be expanded to
>   'animals OR mammals OR cats OR dogs'
>
>Specifing 'mammals', this would be expanded to
>   'mammals OR cats OR dogs '
>
>Every keyword specified in a search would be checked against the
>defined tree. If there is a node labeled with this keyword, the
>keyword is expanded to match its subtree.
>
>Perhaps a simple mechanisme may be forseen to switch the checking
>procedure on, e.g. by preceding a keyword by @. Example:
>  '@animals' would be expanded to
>     'animals OR mammals OR cats OR dogs'
>   'animals' would not be expanded
>
>                                         Karl
>--------------------------------------------------------------
>Karl Guggisberg                   Tel    : +41 31 65 48 68
>Institute for Informatics         e-mail : guggis@iam.unibe.ch
>and Applied Mathematics
>Laenggassstr. 51
>CH - 3012 Berne
>---------------------------------------------------------------

I hope this discussion is giving Avi some ideas for the implementation.
Most important to me is that when you are adding a specific term to your
key word abstract (say by clicking on it in the thesaurus display), you are
automatically alerted to the idea of adding the more general terms (there
may be several levels) as well. You then click those you wish to retain for
the current key word abstract.

One could even imagine an option to be checked once for all whereby more
general terms are automatically added ("posted") to your key word abstract
once you have used a specific term.

To embellish matters further, one could imagine that, if you are in the
thesaurus display and type the first three or four distinctive letters of a
term, that term will be added to the abstract and its hierarchy, if there
is any, will be displayed in the thesaurus window.

EJAN MACKAAY