I’ve been experimenting with the See Also and Classify commands. It appears that it is calculating the results based on only the proper words in my documents.
In my documents I have used many abbreviations and non alphanumeric characters (like < > % $ # etc) to represent names, subjects and other classification schemes. The See Alsocommand would be greatly enhanced for me if I could somehow add a list of my abbreviations and other non-alphanumeric strings to the list of “words” considered by the See Also algorythm.
Is there a way for me to expand the list of “words” used by that function?
A follow-up question…
Is there a handy way of performing a targeted Find & Replace on groups of documents within DT? I’m (very) new to OS X, as well as DT.
Thanks.
The first is a pretty special, unusual request and I doubt that the cost of development could be justified.
You might experiment with the Tools > Glossary. Glossary can be adjusted to only 1 character (the default is 3) and an option to filter for alphanumeric characters can be unchecked… But it isn’t designed to pick up all the characters that you use for your ‘symbolic language’. Altlhough DT Pro works well with a number of languages (some users have multi-lingual databases), it may have some limits. 
Assuming that you are talking about large numbers of text files for targeted find and replace, your best approach would be to export a group containing the target files, use an editor like BBEdit to do the operation, then import the folder back into DT Pro. However, one might use the Search tool to find a group of documents, then use the OS X find/replace (Command-F) tool to modify each search result. It might be possible to automate this on a group containing replicants of the search results – I haven’t checked.
Thanks for your swift reply.
A few questions about the Glossary/Concordance:
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Will adjusting the character length and alphanumeric settings of Concordance directly effect the results of the “See Also”? If it does, is there a seperate procedure for rebuilding the word list once the changes have been made?
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Will the See Also algorithm pick up irregular, but alphanumeric, “words”? If I mash words together like “plotpoint” or “characterdialogue” will they be treated as “words” by the See Also algorithm? Would a string that mixes numbers with letters, like “scene10”, work?
Thanks.
[1] I don’t think you’ll have any luck with your abbreviations that include, for instance, “<” and “#” for See Also purposes.
[2] Yes, DT Pro will count your mashed words as words, and look for contextual relationships among documents.