How come synonyms are not displayed in AutoSearch or in the Lookup window?

A termbase in Déjà Vu X3 allows you to specify many different kinds of relations between the terms it contains. The most often used relation between terms is the "translation" relation, which means that terms bound by this relation are translations of one another. Another example of a relation in a Termbase is the "synonym" relation, which means that terms bound by it are synonyms of one another.

You may notice that, if you have a Termbase attached to a project and you lookup a word, Déjà Vu X3 will not show you synonyms, or antonyms of the term you are looking up; indeed, it won't show you any terms with any relation to the word you are looking up, other than its translations. The same thing applies to the AutoSearch results window.

This is because Déjà Vu X3 does not support relations other than the "translation" relation in the Lookup or AutoSearch results windows. It is possible to see every available relation in a Termbase if you open that Termbase directly in Déjà Vu X3, but the Lookup and AutoSearch windows cannot display that.

What if I want to see synonyms of a word I am searching the Termbase for?

If you want to be able to see what synonyms exist in a Termbase for a word you are looking for, you must have prepared the Termbase appropriately beforehand. Since Lookup and AutoSearch can only see the "translation" relation, you must forgo using the "synonym" relation to bind terms that are synonyms of one another, and rely on different methods to transmit this same information. Two such methods are:

Store synonyms as translations of another term

Suppose that you have a Termbase with three terms in it, which we will call Term 1, Term 2A and Term 2B. Term 2A and Term 2B are synonyms, and they are both translations of Term 1. When you created this Termbase, you might have specified these relations like this:

If you Lookup the term Term 1 in the Termbase, Déjà Vu X3 will find it, and it will show you Term 2A as well, but it will not show you Term 2B, even though Term 2B, being a synonym of Term 2A, would be a good candidate for a translation of Term 1:

To ensure that Lookup will return both Term 2A and Term 2B as translations of Term 1, you should instead define the relations between the terms this way:

Then, when you Lookup Term 1, Déjà Vu X3 will show you both Term 2A and Term 2B as possible translations for it:

Store synonyms in an attribute of a term

The AutoSearch window in Déjà Vu X3 now displays custom attributes of the terms that are found in a Termbase. Therefore, it is viable to add a new attribute to a Termbase for a synonym, store each term's synonyms inside the Synonym attribute, and then read the synonyms available for a term found by AutoSearch directly from the AutoSearch window.

To add a new attribute to a Termbase you must open the Termbase in Déjà Vu X3, and then access the Termbase Properties window by clicking on the button labeled Properties in the ribbon:

Once the Properties Window appears, select the Attributes tab, and then click on Add:

Déjà Vu X3 will then add a new attribute with a default name and configuration. You can edit the name and configuration values of the new attribute by clicking on them:

In this example, we change the new attribute's name and caption to Synonym, and select the option Text and the attribute type, then click on Apply or OK to save these changes:

Once the Properties window has closed, and you can see the terms in the Termbase being displayed by Déjà Vu X3, you can add new synonyms to the new synonym attribute you have created by selecting the term you want to add to, and then clicking on the Edit button above it:

The Edit Term window appears. Here you can see all the attributes available in the Termbase, and you can change any of their values, including adding a new synonym to the Synonym attribute you created before:

Now that this is done, the next time you come across a term you added synonyms to in a project, AutoSearch will show you the translations available for that term, and it will also show you the synonyms you added to the Synonym attribute: