Summary of changes made to WordNet between versions 1.5 and 1.6

The most significant change between WordNet 1.5 and 1.6 is the
introduction of a new window based WordNet Browser application. The
new program is written in Tcl/Tk, which runs on Unix, PC and Macintosh
platforms.  Using Tcl/Tk for the user interface and the WordNet
library functions for accessing the database files enables us to
provide a common, uniform user interface on all supported platforms.

In developing the new browser, we stepped back from the old, familiar
one and, with the wondeful insight of our student programmer, David
Slomin, redesigned the look and features provided.  While most users
complimented us on the ease of use of the "old" WordNet, we feel that
the new interface is easier yet, and incorporates additional features
that users have been asking for.

A summary of the changes:

	New Tcl/Tk based interface that is uniform on all platforms.
	
	New options:
		show synset location in database file (synset offset)
		show lexical file information
		show sense numbers for words in synsets
		user selectable fonts and sizes
	
	Functional Changes:
		new "Overview" of all senses comes up first
		substring search (grep) is now a "File" option
			- not tied to word in syntactic category
		new search "History"
		new print search results
		improved save search results
		keyboard shortcuts
		improved "Help"


With this release of WordNet we have added a package that contains
information about mapping WordNet 1.5 noun senses to their
corresponding 1.6 senses.  This package is intended primarily to
assist users who have semantically tagged text to WordNet 1.5 senses,
and who wish to upgrade to the 1.6 database.

The WordNet Reference Manual is provided in the form of manual pages.
In this release, we have included the documentation as nroff source,
ASCII formatted files, Postscript files, and HTML files.

There have been many smaller changes in all parts of the WordNet
system since the last release.  The summary information below is
mainly for developers.

WordNet database:

	added tagged_cnt field to index file

	added verb group pointer type

	index.sense file: added number of tags for each sense

	removed list of filenames from database "data" files

	use DBLICENSE_SIZE to get starting offset of first synset 
		in each data file

	frequency counts (polysemy) now based on # of WN senses, not Collins
	
	new gloss index (index.gloss) file 
	
	example sentences for verb senses


Prolog version of the database:

	added new file wn_vgp.pl -> verb group pointers

	added field to end of w_s.pl file -> 
		1 : sense is tagged
		0 : sense is tagged

	changed wn_at.pl to be semantic relation rather than lexical


WordNet Library:

	new WNDBVERSION environment variable that indicates which
		version of the database to work on.  Defaults to
		"1.6".  If set to "1.5", the new Browser and WordNet
		library can be used with the WordNet 1.5 database
		files.

	new WNHOME environment variable.  If "old" WNSEARCHDIR is set,
		it uses that.  If not, and WHOME is set, library code 
		looks for database files in WNHOME/dict.  Otherwise
		the default for your computer platform is used.
	
	moved SenseCount, OutSenseCount to new "wnresults" data structure

	removed "datastart" variable (use DBLICENSE_SIZE instead)

	new OVERVIEW search

	WNGREP substring search now done in (fast) library code, and
		not with 'wngrep' system call

	example sentences for some verb senses

	new VERBGROUP searches for grouping verb senses by similarity
		of meaning

	Synset structure changed:
		"wnsense" is gone
		"lexid" is old "wnsense" (lexicographer id)
		"wnsns" is  WordNet sense number

	Index structure:
		added "tagged_cnt" field

	new SnsIndex structure for parsed "sense index" entry