emacs-powerthesaurus

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emacs-powerthesaurus is a simple plugin to integrate Emacs with amazing powerthesaurus.org.

Installation

emacs-powerthesaurus is available on MELPA. You can install it using the following command:

M-x package-install [RET] powerthesaurus [RET]

How to use

emacs-powerthesaurus defines a single interactive function, namely powerthesaurus-lookup-dwim, should be used for retrieving results from powerthesaurus.org. This command asks for the type of the query to perform and tries to infer the term for which synonyms, antonyms, etc. should be downloaded.

Particularly:

• If the region is active, the search term defaults to the region's contents.
• If the region is inactive and point is located at a word, the search term defaults to that word.
• In any other case, the user will be directly prompted for the phrase to search.

Currently, the following query types are supported:

• synonyms,
• antonyms,
• related terms,
• definitions, and
• sentences.

Depending on the type of query performed, powerthesaurus-lookup-dwim will either replace the original term with one of the fetched results, insert a selected result at point, or display the list of all results in a pop-up buffer. By default, results corresponding to "synonyms", "antonyms" and "related" queries will be inserted in place whereas results for sentences and definitions are displayed separately, although one can override this behavior through the prefix argument (i.e., C-u M-x powerthesaurus-lookup-dwim will cause to replace/insert the selected result in the current buffer independently of the query's type).

For the sake of convenience, the following commands are also provided which wrap around powerthesaurus-lookup-dwim and provide a quick way to perform a specific type of query:

• powerthesaurus-lookup-synonyms-dwim
• powerthesaurus-lookup-antonyms-dwim
• powerthesaurus-lookup-related-dwim
• powerthesaurus-lookup-definitions-dwim
• powerthesaurus-lookup-sentences-dwim

Finally, the function powerthesaurus-lookup is provided for non-interactive use.

Old API

The following subsections describe the now obsolete API before version 0.2, which is still provided for the time being although use of it should

How to use

emacs-powerthesaurus defines three interactive functions:

• powerthesaurus-lookup-word
• powerthesaurus-lookup-word-at-point
• powerthesaurus-lookup-word-dwim

If you have any active selection, powerthesaurus-lookup-word fetches selected text at powerthesaurus.org and gives you a list of synonyms to replace it with. Without any selection it asks you for the input first, and insert selected synonyms at point.

powerthesaurus-lookup-word-at-point finds a word at point (according to the current mode settings), fetches it at powerthesaurus.org, and also replaces it with the selected synonym.

powerthesaurus-lookup-word-dwim combines these two functions into one. It tries to infer whatever user wants to look up. If there is an active selection that will be the choice. Otherwise, it checks if there any word at point and fetches that word. And if there is nothing appropriate, it asks the user to provide a word.

Demo

Changelog

Version 0.2.2

• Remove redundant headers in request messages to server that potentially cause failure to parse received candidates (Github issue #16).

Version 0.2.1

• Fix regression involving result sorting during selection.
• Fix minor bugs.

Version 0.2.0

• Revamp the package's overall architecture.
• Extend mechanism allowing different types of queries, namely synonyms, antonyms, related terms, definitions, and sentences.
• Support queries involving terms that consist of multiple words (e.g., "give up").
• Fix Github issues #13, #14, #15 and #17.