DIMAP provides the capability for creating and maintaining dictionaries for use in natural language processing and language technology applications. DIMAP contains basic functionality for managing multiple dictionaries, search and analysis of dictionary data (such as parsing definitions to create semantic networks, extracting subdictionaries to focus on specific lexical items, and mapping definitions between dictionaries), importing and exporting data (e.g., into XML), and automatic creation of dictionaries using integrated resources (such as WordNet). All parsing functionality uses the Proximity Parser, with integrated and dynamic auxiliary dictionary lookup, using either WordNet or licensed dictionaries (e.g., from Oxford University Press (The Oxford Dictionary of English)). Several publicly-available dictionaries are available, including alphabetic versions of WordNet, the UMLS Specialist Lexicon, and FrameNet. For users not requiring all of DIMAP-4, a demo version contains the core portions of the full functionality. The chart below shows the features included in the two versions (the yellow for the full version, the green for the demo version).
| Feature | DIMAP Version | |
| Full | Demo | |
| File Operations | ||
| Dictionary Management (open any number of dictionaries at a time, with quick overview of dictionary entries; rapid opening of recently used dictionaries; merge several dictionaries; and easy backup or renaming) | ||
| Entry Management (easy editing, deletion, and creation of new entries; quick overview of an entry's senses; create bilingual dictionaries entries in source language and dictionary information in English (enabling use of most of the DIMAP functionality) | ||
| Entry Maintenance (multiple senses; special fields for: part of speech (customizable), definition identifier, label number, usage label, definition, usage note, multiple superconcepts (hypernym, genus), multiple instances (hyponyms), multiple feature structures (attribute-value pairs), multiple roles (semantic relations) each with multiple links; customized editing for superconcepts, instances, feature structures, and roles) | ||
| Drop-down Feature Attributes and Value (user can predefine commonly used feature attributes and their associated values to be used as a drop-down list that can facilitate reuse of these items with single keystrokes) | ||
| Hypernym Disambiguation (superconcept or hypernym links can access the sense inventory of the auxiliary dictionary, e.g., WordNet, a licensed dictionary, or a user-developed dictionary, for easy lookup and selection of one or more appropriate senses) | ||
| Search of Definitions | ||
| Regular expression search (on all fields, with search results shown on screen or printed to a file, with format to your specifications) | ||
| Extract subdictionaries (using search mechanism to create a file of selected entries that can be uploaded into a new DIMAP dictionary) definition parsing (using the Proximity Parser) | ||
| Definition Parsing (Using the Proximity Parser) | ||
| Parse individual definitions or all definitions, in step or batch mode; start at any entry, with position remembered between sessions; automatically identify and/or add semantic relations discovered during parsing (including synonyms), with user-customizable regular expression patterns for recognition; diagnostic definition parsing aids (print to files such things as parse output, identified semantic relations, bad parses, definitions with no identified semantic relations, comparison to WordNet hierarchy, and unknown words) (See slide show.) | ||
| Definition Analysis | ||
| Compare and map definitions (across dictionaries, useful for mapping among a main dictionary and independently developed derived dictionaries; all or individual entries, with or without stop list; word overlap using best fit and componential analysis using score based on matches between hypernyms and other semantic relations, using WordNet synsets to allow "fuzzy" matches; visual display of edit distance difference between definitions (See slide show.) | ||
| Analysis of dictionary digraph (based on hypernym links to identify primitive senses among the definitions, for whole or partial dictionaries such as thesaurus groupings;summarizes hypernym links among entries; identifies non-primitive (derived) entries and senses; identifies primitive defining vocabulary; identifies definitional cycles; particularly useful when thesaurus entries are linked to definitions. (See slide show.) | ||
| Conversion (Import and Export) | ||
| Uploading dictionary data from other sources (requires specific format) | ||
| Downloading dictionary data for use elsewhere according to your own format (template editor to facilitate format specification, including addition of your own strings (such as SGML, HTML, or XML codes) | ||
| Lexical Acquisition | ||
| Create dictionaries based on analyzing your own texts (lists or continuous, including Latin-1 languages): all words (with automatic tokenizer), capitalized phrases (with join words, approximating named-entity acquisition), longest contiguous non-interrupted phrase without a stop word or punctuation (with dictionary lookup, approximating compound noun acquisition) | No lookup | |
| Batch creation using integrated licensed dictionary or WordNet | Requires licensed dictionary | |
| Integrated Dictionary Lookup | ||
| WordNet, with all information converted into DIMAP format, thus allowing a word-based use of WordNet, rather than a synset-based use | ||
| Licensed dictionary (or use WordNet as auxiliary dictionary) | Requires DIMAP WordNet Download |
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