Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 21, 1993 TAG: 9311190078
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: F-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BY JAMES COATES CHICAGO TRIBUNE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The publishers of the revered Random House Unabridged Dictionary put the mighty 13-pound reference book on CD-ROM.
The single Random House disc holds full text versions of the 23 million word reference for IBM compatibles running Windows or for machines with DOS alone. The same disc also works with Macintosh versions 6 and 7.
Thus are raised a whole raft of new questions and new possibilities that transcend a mere dictionary.
Admittedly you win and lose when you transform such great books to the new computer readable CD discs, each of which are capable of holding as many as 130 million words or about 260 copies of "Gone With the Wind."
You can't flatten a prom corsage or a wedding bouquet between the pages of a CD-ROM. But, because the mammoth dictionary is on disc, its entire contents now are searchable at computer speeds.
In less time than it takes to say "one hippopotamus" you can call up any word in the English language.
Don't know how to spell the word in the first place? RHUD-CD allows searching by "wildcards."
For example, say you wanted to find "catechism" but couldn't remember whether it was spelled "catachism" or "catichism" or whether it started with a "c" or a "k."
You just send a search command for "?at?chism" and the dictionary will solve your quandary.
If you're even more unsure of the word you want, this package has a browse function. A box pops up, and you are asked to type in a few letters. All the words that start with the letters you type pop instantly on the screen.
Furthermore, because the giant dictionary now is in computer form, you also can search much more than just the alphabetic listing of the defined words themselves as you do with a bulky print dictionary.
To find the entries of every French painter from Hans Arp to Jean Watteau, for example, you need only type in "french AND painter."
Original scholarly research can be a snap with this search feature. Say, for example, you wanted all of the slang words for taxicabs in American English usage. Just type "taxi AND slang" and you'll get a list of all the ways people refer to cabs.
All of these computer tricks have been around for several years now in the CD-ROM world. Hundreds of out-of-print books such as the fables of Aesop and the philosophical ramblings of the pre-Socratic Grecian Eleatics have been on searchable CD discs almost since the day the things surfaced.
But, until now, you'll look high and low without finding today's exciting new titles. Where are the CD-ROM versions of Ann Rice's wonderful fables? Where is the CD for the best-selling "Bridges of Madison County?"
Considerations of copyright and that book publishers are notorious for their technophobic tendencies heretofore have denied CD-ROM users the best fruits of the world's print media.
Even the best CD-ROM titles have been affected. Microsoft Corp.'s elegant CD-ROM encyclopedia, Encarta, is based on the relatively lowbrow Funk & Wagnalls print encyclopedia.
Meanwhile, the awesome Encyclopaedia Britannica's publishers have resisted making that book available to mass market computer users even though the company readily put its lesser title, Compton's, on CD-ROM.
Encarta and Compton's are treasures on CD-ROM. They are searchable by key words; they include wonderful pictures and other treats ranging from sound recordings of rare musical instruments to photos of the latest movie stars.
But until now the gap between little league and big league has been painfully wide. RHUD, is big league stuff indeed.
From now until Jan. 1, Random House will sell the combination book-CD package for $100, the going rate usually for the book alone.
After the special offer ends, the company says it will sell the book alone for $100 and the CD alone for $100.
by CNB