SWAPH
By Christopher Hurley
To continue the trend of turning books into applications - with the added benefit of being
able to search in them much more quickly - Mark O'Neill's SWAPH, the Song Writer's and
Poet's Handbook, you no longer need a rhyming dictionary either, with SWAPH also being
free. SWAPH is available through FreEPOC .
Obviously, this won't appeal to everyone, as unless you are writing rhyming songs, poems,
headlines or slogans this application will be useless. For those of you who do, SWAPH,
which stays in the background until called up by a hotkey, has a dictionary of 12,000
words. It finds words based on a certain number of syllables and a word to rhyme to.
For instance, if I felt like writing:
There was once a young woman from York
As a vegan, she wouldn't eat pork
When asked about cat
She declined, and she...
I could now search for a one-syllable word rhyming with cat - such as sat - and could
complete my poem:
She declined, and she sat
And threw at the waiter a fork.
If a word you want is not in the dictionary to search for or find, you can enter it
by choosing its final vowel sounds and number of syllables.
It does have some minor problems on screen with the Revo, but these do not detract
from its everyday use, as the only problematic areas are the two 'About' screens
and the Preferences dialog in which the title bar is off-screen but all of the
buttons and options are visible.
In general, if it's useful for you, SWAPHis a very handy application and might help
you to shake off writer's block.
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