What is AMIGO?
AMIGO is a language reference tool for the Apple Newton Personal Data Assistant. The current version of the program uses a dictionary that contains approximately 15,000 words and phrases in English and
Spanish. AMIGO does simple translations from English to Spanish and vice versa. You can examine the dictionary, and store words and phrases of your own in a custom dictionary. During a search, the custom
dictionary is searched along with the main dictionary.One of the truly amazing things about the Newton was its ability to recognize writing. Even though the first Messagepad did not do
this with 100% accuracy, the attempt by Apple to build a computing device that recognized written input was most impressive. Add to this the Graffiti application that did bring recognition to 100%
accuracy and you have a device which opens a world of possibilities from the standpoint of new kinds of computer applications. |
A few years ago I spent some time in Peru and although I knew enough Spanish to get along and I carried along
with me a small dictionary. Whenever I had to use the dictionary it would always seem to me to take a long time to find the word I was looking for. At that time I thought of maybe
writing a program for my
laptop computer to facilitate this process. Of course, carrying a laptop around did not seem to be a good idea. I then took a look at the "pocket" translators and was very disappointed. Seldom
would they "find" a word and typing the word into the translator was no quicker than using the dictionary. When the Messagepad was introduced I thought this would be the perfect platform for a
translation device and I subsequently implemented the first version of AMIGO. My beliefs were proven. It was much easier to write a word and have the device and program translate the word. AMIGO was born.
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AMIGO's Dictionary AMIGO's
dictionary contains words and phrases. The present version of AMIGO (2.0) contains about 15,000 of these. At the present time, an AMIGO dictionary entry consists of three elements. An English entry, a
Spanish entry, and a word classification. Words are classified into a general category, medical or computer. The earliest version of AMIGO's dictionary was derived from several travel dictionaries. As you might imagine, since I believed AMIGO would be a good tool for
travelers, this is where the dictionary began. As people began to use AMIGO various suggestions were made and I decided to augment AMIGO's dictionary with specialized vocabulary - specifically medical
vocabulary and later specialized terms from computing. In addition to these specialized terms, AMIGO's dictionary contains whole phrases. Click to see a table of sample words and phrases in AMIGO's dictionary. |
