K-Rhymes

SOFTWARE REVIEW: K-RHYMES
-OR-
EXPLORING THE WORLD OF EASY POETRY
by Richard Karsmakers

Long, long time ago
I always walked to and fro
Searching through many a file and book
But no matter what I undertook
I never came up with the proper word
(At least, none that I preferred)
That would rhyme sufficiently
And wouldn't look like sheer simplicity
Until I read in a magazine
Something that made me very keen
An advertisement I did behold
And 'bout a rhymes dictionary it told
Finally, my wishes had been overheard
And to the software retailer I whirred
To get my hands, possibly soon
On this program that would make me swoon
But alas! I came back with empty hands
My rhyming method had yet to enhance
I phoned through countries far and wide
And several times even to Kuma I did stride
But the post had miraculous ways
And after supposed delays
I received nothin' - not even a bit
And I must admit
Doubts were beginning to rise
And after many sighs
I thought I would never get this program
My own rhymes I would have to jam
Until I accidentally walked into a shop
And I came to a sudden stop
I flashed my eyes - did they truly behold
The program of which the advertisements foretold?
After seconds of coming by
I pointed out the program I wanted to buy
The salesman was happy to sell
The program I needed to excel
So now I am the happy owner
Of an automated rhyme words donor!

*****

Yeah! After Kuma's John Day supposedly sent the program to me
THREE times (each time it got 'lost in the mail') I have now
finally been able to lay my hands on a copy of Kuma's "K-Rhymes"
automated rhymes dictionary! As you can imagine, I am now a much
happier man - although I could have been much happier (but more
about that later).

Just like "K-Roget" (a synonyms dictionary from Kuma), "K-
Rhymes" is a desk accessory that can be accessed from any program
using GEM (like most word processors). It only needs you to type
in the word you want to rhyme on, and then searches through its
dictionary for all the words that would fit. A terrific feature
of the program is that it does not only come up with words that
are written the same way at the ends, but also words that sound
the same. This allows you to use more words when needed.
Something that I find very strange, though, is that the word you
type in actually has to be RECOGNIZED before it starts looking
for rhyme words that correspond with it. Wouldn't it have been
much handier if the program would only look at the last couple of
letters and then 'know' which words would fit? This would have
made the program much better, as the dictionary is fairly
limited (the dictionary file is 'only' 71 Kb).
Here we touch the most significant disadvantage of "K-Rhymes":
Its rather limited dictionary. Words like 'beautiful', 'weeks'
and 'books' are not recognized, and I think there will of course
be MANY more if one works more often with the program. I realise
that the "K-Rhymes" dictionary does not have to be as extensive
as that huge one of "K-Roget" (150,000 words, weren't it?), but I
would have been more satisfied if at least the program disk would
have been formatted with some extra sectors and filled to its
brim (that would have been 40 Kb more dictionary!). It would also
have been a great idea if it would have recognized the presence
of "K-Roget" and then use the "K-Roget" dictionary...
I find the fact that it recognizes 'Mousse' (as in 'Chocolate
Mousse', the Divine Dessert) a definite PLUS point.

But, hey, let's look at the positive side of the program. It is
of course again very fast and can be installed on harddisk
(though the manual does not mention the fact that this can not be
done by mere copying!). It works smoothly, even when you have "K-
Roget" installed, and I now have it installed in my system by
default.
The above 'introductory rhyme' was created with "K-Rhymes", so
you have a neat idea of its potential power even when in the
hands of someone who pretends to be able to write poems but
isn't.

Concluding, I can say that "K-Rhymes" is not as impressive as
"K-Roget", but surely a good helping hand when writing poems.
Some own creative input is still needed, however! The package set
me back for ƒ70 Dutch guilders (which is about £20). The manual
is meagre and mainly devoted to PC user instructions and
explanation of what 'rhymes' and 'rhyme dictionaries' are.

Harddisk users note:

Since I happen to have a harddisk, first thing I did was copying
it to my boot partition and try it out. The manual stated that
pure copying was the only thing necessary, but when I searched
for a word all I got was a "FILE \KRHYME.DCT NOT FOUND" message.
Since this happened on a saturday and I suspected that Kuma
would not be available by telephone, I scanned the accessory code
and found out that the file KRHYME.PTH contained the path name.
All I had to do was change the 'a:' to 'c:' and it worked!
Hope you can do something with this 'trick'.