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dtSearch Text Retrieval Engine Programmer's Reference
Synonym search settings

To enable synonym searching, combine the dtsSearchSynonyms flag with one or more of: dtsSearchUserSynonyms, dtsSearchWordNetSynonyms, dtsSearchWordNetRelated, or dtsSearchExternalSynonyms to specify the type of synonym expansion to apply.

You can enable synonym searching for all words in a request or you can enable synonym searching selectively by adding the & character after certain words in a request. Example: fast& w/5 search 

Search flags control where dtSearch looks for synonyms for words in a search request. The four types of synonym expansion are: user synonyms, WordNet synonyms, WordNet related words, and external synonyms. 

The User Thesaurus is a user-defined set of synonyms stored in an XML file (by default, thesaur.xml.) dtSearch Desktop has a dialog box to edit this thesaurus (Options > Preferences > User thesaurus). 

The WordNet thesaurus is a concept network included with dtSearch. It includes synonyms and related words (holonyms, meronyms, antonyms, etc.). 

External synonyms are synonyms returned by an external thesaurus used with the dtSearch Engine. 

In a phrase search, synonym searching applies to the phrase, not to individual words in the phrase. For example, a search for "object lesson" with WordNet synonym expension enabled would find "example", which is a synonym for "object lesson". The individual words in the phrase, object and lesson, would not be expanded into their respective synonym lists. 

The search flags to enable synonym searching are:

Flag
Purpose
dtsSearchSynonyms
Enable synonym searching for all terms in a search request.
dtsSearchUserSynonyms
Use user-defined synonyms in the Options.UserThesaurusFile for synonym searching.
dtsSearchWordNetSynonyms
Use synonyms from the WordNet thesaurus for synonym searching
dtsSearchWordNetRelated
Use related words from the WordNet thesaurus for synonym searching
dtsSearchExternalSynonyms
Use synonyms generated by an external thesaurus for synonym searching. (See "External Thesaurus API" in the dtSearch Engine API Reference.)

dtSearch gets the user thesaurus filename Options.UserThesaurusFile. This should be the full path and filename of the thesaurus file with your user thesaurus list. 

The WordNet thesaurus must be in a folder named WordNet that is a subfolder of either the HomeDir or the PrivateDir.