Trans-Linc in many ways resembles Euroglot, a package developed by Linguistic Systems (Nijmegen, the Netherlands) that has been on the market for about two years. Like Soft-Art, Linguistic Systems has licensees in the OEM world but lately has been directing most of its energies towards marketing Euroglot.
    Leo Konst, the company’s founder and director, says he’s planning a major upgrade to Euroglot this fall. The most significant enhancement will be what Konst calls a “second-order” level for navigating through Euroglot’s concepts. While Euroglot’s “first-order” level is the extensi ve concept-based network of synonyms, the second-order will be a rich array of associations which don’t fall under the formal definition of a synonym. Cathedral, for example, would return such associations as building and religion. These associations also include antonyms and hyponyms, parts, and layers of a concept. According to Konst, a derivational morphology component is also under development.
    An additional enhancement will be an extensive grammar reference with examples and hypertext links for cross references. Also, a Windows version of Euroglot will be ready in September.
    While there is no sign that paper dictionaries are doomed to oblivion for many good reasons, thesauri — as memory aids for well-educated writers — are such a natural application for the computer that you have to wonder why publishers continue to print them on paper. Building upon the original concept of a thesaurus, Trans-Linc and Euroglot are new kinds of writing tools that don’t fall into the traditional categories of their paper-based counterparts. As they get broader in coverage and smarter linguistically, these writing tools can only get better.

Linguistic Systems, Postbus 1186, 6501 BD, Nijmegen, The Netherlands; Tel +31 80 226302, Fax +31 80 242116

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