Artha:About

Artha ~ The Open Thesaurus is a cross-platform open source thesaurus based on WordNet developed and maintained by

Sundaram Ramaswamy <legends2k [at] yahoo [dot] com>

Thanks to all the developers and non-technical contributors. Most importantly:

• CS Shyam Sundar (for numerous valuable inputs and help on hosting this Wiki)

<csshyamsundar [at] gmail [dot] com>

• GTK App. Developer Mailing List (for help in sorting out a few issues in development)

<gtk-app-devel-list [at] gnome [dot] org>

Inspiration

WordNet is an excellent thesaurus database and a work of art by Cognitive Science Laboratory of Princeton University. But WordNet in itself is difficult for the masses to grasp with the simple WordNet browser they provide. Hence a need for a simple and handy GUI kindle us to write a new thesaurus interface over WordNet for easy access and to increase WordNet's usability. Nevertheless, without WordNet Artha wouldn't have been possible. We thank them for giving such a vast, comprehend-able corpus for free, which can be used for correlated study of the English language and its nuances.

Pidgin - The Instant Messanger was the prime source of inspiration to create a cross-platform application and in choosing GTK+. Its ease of use and consistency across different operating systems was a compelling drive.