Verb Conjugator by BEIKS

BEIKS' Verb Conjugator

Introduction Designed to help foreign language students, the Verb Conjugator is a handy substitution for the fat grammar books. The application is implemented as one host program with language specific add-ons providing the conjugations for each particular language. Each language add-on utilizes a combination of grammatical rules, exception lists and other language specific database to provide proper inflections in various tenses and forms. Starting with version 2.0, the Conjugator introduces the ability to extend the recognized infinitives database as well as to correct the existing inflections or enter the ones for the newly entered infinitives.
How to use the program First anf foremost, make sure the language selector at the upper right corner of the screen displays the language you want to operate in. As mentioned above, the Conjugator can have several language add-ons installed, so indicating the desired language is the logical first step in the process. Each language add-on supports a certain number of tenses and forms for which it can provide inflections. Those are displayed in the "Tenses" list at the lower part of the screen. Note the list may not include all available tenses known and used in that language; this simply means that those tenses/forms are not presentlhy supported by the program. Please contact BEIKS if you feel we have omitted an important tense and ask when a new version will be made available that will include it. At the bottom of the screen there is a field where you enter the verb infinitive. The inflections are displayed in the upper part of the screen, which is labeled "Result". They will change as you enter the infinitive or as you change the desired tense. Indicating known, user-defined, allowed and incorrect infinitives Note the icon on the left of the input field. The Conjugator uses several different icons to provide helpful information about the currently entered infinitive. You can see the distinct icons and their meansings by taping the icon at any time. We will briefly explain the reasons behind those icons and how they are helping you. Unlike the fat conjugation books, which are basically a simple database of infinitives and inflections, the Conjugator relies on a mix of rules and databases to perform its job. The otherwise huge database of inflections is replaced by a significantly smaller set of rules. Irregular inflections are obviously still handled as an explicit list. This results in tremendous savings in terms of device memory, speed at ultimately flexibility to the user. This was particularily important in the earlier days of mobile computing and while admittedly much less of a neccessity these days, the concept was widely successful and by all means still usable. Its major drawback: unlike a classic grammar book, it may provide perfectly valid virtual conjugation if you supply a virtual input infinitive. There are two ways to address this issue and Verb Conjugator utilizes both: first, sometimes, depending on the language, the Conjugator may be able to tell the entered wod is not a valid infinitive by applying some basic checks (e.g. presence of a vowel, standard suffixes etc.); and second, starting with version 2 the language add-on module contains a list of known valid infinitives against which it compares your entry. And ultimately, the application allows you to extend the stock database of known infinitives with your own as well as overwrite the stock inflections with your own. What all this comes down to is this: when you enter an infinitive, the application first checks against the user database to see if it can be found there, with our without inflections. If the word is found there, you are being told so by a particular icon so that you know this has been your entry. Otherwise, the entered word is matched against the stock list of infinitives for the language and if it is found there, you are also being notifies about it via particular icon. If the verb was not found in our list, it is being analyzed for basic compliance with the requirements for a verb in the particular language and an attempt is being made for it to be conjugated; you are again being notified about the result: the verb may seem conjugatable and you may be looking at a virtual conjugation (which may be correct, if the verb is correct and we have simply missed to include it as known) or you may be looking at a verb that could not be conjugator.
Custom extensions Despite our best desire and attempts to provide complete and correct output it would be naive to think we or anyone would achieve that at 100%. Therefore, the Conjugator was designed to allow you overwrite the provided conjugations and extend the word list of recognized verbs (and/or their inflections) on your own. Note you may simply add an infinitive to the list of recognized valid forms or, alternatively, you may overwrite the inflections for a given infinitive (be it stock or manually added) for a given tense. To do either of the two, enter an infinitive and tap the custom editions form that's on the right of the input field. A new form comes up, which lets you add the infinitive only or, alternatively, enter/edit the 6 inflections and save them for the currently selected tense. Once done, tap the "Close" button to return to the main screen. We kindly invite you to report and errors and omissions and eventually submit to BEIKS your custom editions so we can review and incorporate them in future program releases.
Registration The freely downloadable versions of the Verb Conjugator have limited functionality providing a trial look and feel of the complete product. Sometimes they would refuse conjugating in every other tense, sometimes they may only operate for a limited amount of time and so on. To obtain an unlimited, fully functional version please use the link displayed by the application itself when indicating it is operating in evaluation mode. The purchase can be made directly over the air if you use a device with network ability, or you may simply type the displayed URL in your desktop browser and proceed as instructed until you complete the ordering and checkout process. Once completed, you will need to download the full application version and install it over the trial one. Although recommended, it is not neccessarily to delete the trial first, you may simply overwrite it. Note we work with many distributors and partners, but you will always find the most recent Conjugator releases and updates at its home page on the BEIKS website.
Revision history Note: since the release of version 2 of the conjugator "shell" program, the versioning rules have changed; this was neccessary because the conjugator now relies on an additional database module, which may get updated independantly from both the core shell application and the language specific conjugating module. In short, the new versioning is in the format : <conjugator shell application version>.<language add-on version>.<language verbs database> . 08/01/2007 - v.2 Verb Conjugator now has updated interface, allows user editions and extensions, supports installation and launching from a media card...all FREE to current customers! 09/14/2003 - v.1.11 Minor UI improvements 06/22/2002 - v.1.1 Mostly bug fixes on menu bar behaviors (both main menu bar and command bar with the buttons) 03/26/2001 - v.1.0 Initial version; no configurable preferences; French and Spanish plug-ins developed

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