Oxford English Dictionary on CD-ROM, Macintosh

Rating:
Summary: Have the _OED2_ on Your Mac!
Review: It's three o'clock in the morning, and you need to know the meaning of that obscure English word now! It's not in any of your dictionaries, including _Webster's Third New International Dictionary_. The libraries are closed. If you are lucky, you can pop the _OED2_ CD into your Macintosh CD/DVD-ROM drive, and you have the Dictionary entry on your screen in a flash. This entry includes the headword, ("[t]he word whose spelling, pronunciation, and meaning are the subject of the entry"). In the print version of the Dictionary, this headword is the only way you can search for an entry; in the _OED2 on CD-ROM for the Apple Macintosh®_, it is but one of several ways to access the data in the text.

Also included in the entry are: pronunciation; the part of speech; any variant forms; etymology; definitions, including subsidiary headwords and phrases; subordinate headwords; phrases; and quotations, which include the headword in use and contain a citation, which generally gives further details. All of these included items are separately searchable, too.

The _OED2 on CD-ROM for Apple Macintosh®_ [ISBN: 0199617279] comes packaged in a plastic vinyl box, which includes the CD in its plastic jewel case; a floppy disk, which contains Monotype TrueType™ fonts that need to be installed in the System folder on your hard disk; a software license and mail-in user registration card; and a 109-page spiral-bound manual.

The manual is excellent. Its introduction gives a brief overview and history of the _OED_, and it reminds the user that "the _OED_ is a descriptive dictionary, not a prescriptive one. It does not attempt to set a standard of correct English: it records impartially the uses of writers from every part of the English-speaking world and at every level of the social or literary scale."

Here is the Table of Contents: 1. Introduction (system requirements; installation; getting started; error messages); 2. About the _Oxford English Dictionary_; 3. Application overview (SEARCH menu; carrying out a search; wildcards; proximity searches; FILE menu; EDIT menu; DISPLAY menu; SETTINGS menu; HELP menu; WINDOW menu); 4. Searching (word look-up; text searches; etymology searches; definition searches; quotation searches, including author searches); 5. The query language (the query statement--search field, type, item, results file; constructing complex queries--Boolean operators; combining queries); 6. Troubleshooting: performance tips and warnings; 7. Glossary; Appendix: "Character sets" (3 main groups: Group 1--all the standard Roman characters; accented European characters; Old and Middle English characters; special characters (symbols); keyboard output mnemonics are given for all; Group 2--the Greek alphabet and International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA); Group 3--Other characters and symbols (astronomical, mathematical, musical, palæographic, philological & phonetic (e.g., Arabic, Cyrillic, Early Greek, Hebrew, etc.), prosodic, punctuation mark, scientific, and typographical; Index.

Here are the System Requirements, as stated in the Manual:

•Macintosh® computer with Motorola 68030 processor •Apple® System 6.07 or higher •2 Mb RAM (in addition to the RAM required by the system and any other applications that are open). [You may need to install more RAM in your computer, depending on what other applications (e.g., Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel) you many want to use concurrently with this application.] •1 Mb free hard-disk space •Apple® CD drive or full compatible •Apple® CD-ROM software extension, version 4.0 or higher (to allow ISO 9660 file access) •TrueType™ font extension software •4 Mb RAM resident on printer for Quality Printing. [This option "outputs text the same way as it is displayed on screen."]

Overall, I have found the _OED2 on Compact Disc for Apple Macintosh®_ to be indispensable for work and study. I find the small manual to be quite handy for using the keyboard mnemonics. As a bonus, all the language and symbol character sets remain installed on your hard drive and are available for other uses when the CD is not in "residence." On the downside, you do need to have the CD in your CD/DVD-ROM drive to access the Dictionary. However, I have found the additional searching capabilities of the CD-ROM version (over the print version) to more than compensate for this drawback. If you use a PowerBook, the CD-ROM version is wonderful for use on-the-road, at workshops and conferences, or when holing up in a hideaway to finish that work-in-progress!

Please excuse all the detail if you have found it tedious. I have made the assumption that you would be familiar with this Dictionary, so I have focused on the more technical aspects of this CD-ROM version in case you have need of this information before ordering it. [For the _OED2_ on CD-ROM (Windows), see ISBN: 0195215737]

Highly recommended!