Alpha Software Mobile Development Tools:   Alpha Anywhere    |   Alpha TransForm subscribe to our YouTube Channel  Follow Us on LinkedIn  Follow Us on Twitter  Follow Us on Facebook

Announcement

Collapse

The Alpha Software Forum Participation Guidelines

The Alpha Software Forum is a free forum created for Alpha Software Developer Community to ask for help, exchange ideas, and share solutions. Alpha Software strives to create an environment where all members of the community can feel safe to participate. In order to ensure the Alpha Software Forum is a place where all feel welcome, forum participants are expected to behave as follows:
  • Be professional in your conduct
  • Be kind to others
  • Be constructive when giving feedback
  • Be open to new ideas and suggestions
  • Stay on topic


Be sure all comments and threads you post are respectful. Posts that contain any of the following content will be considered a violation of your agreement as a member of the Alpha Software Forum Community and will be moderated:
  • Spam.
  • Vulgar language.
  • Quotes from private conversations without permission, including pricing and other sales related discussions.
  • Personal attacks, insults, or subtle put-downs.
  • Harassment, bullying, threatening, mocking, shaming, or deriding anyone.
  • Sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, or otherwise discriminatory jokes and language.
  • Sexually explicit or violent material, links, or language.
  • Pirated, hacked, or copyright-infringing material.
  • Encouraging of others to engage in the above behaviors.


If a thread or post is found to contain any of the content outlined above, a moderator may choose to take one of the following actions:
  • Remove the Post or Thread - the content is removed from the forum.
  • Place the User in Moderation - all posts and new threads must be approved by a moderator before they are posted.
  • Temporarily Ban the User - user is banned from forum for a period of time.
  • Permanently Ban the User - user is permanently banned from the forum.


Moderators may also rename posts and threads if they are too generic or do not property reflect the content.

Moderators may move threads if they have been posted in the incorrect forum.

Threads/Posts questioning specific moderator decisions or actions (such as "why was a user banned?") are not allowed and will be removed.

The owners of Alpha Software Corporation (Forum Owner) reserve the right to remove, edit, move, or close any thread for any reason; or ban any forum member without notice, reason, or explanation.

Community members are encouraged to click the "Report Post" icon in the lower left of a given post if they feel the post is in violation of the rules. This will alert the Moderators to take a look.

Alpha Software Corporation may amend the guidelines from time to time and may also vary the procedures it sets out where appropriate in a particular case. Your agreement to comply with the guidelines will be deemed agreement to any changes to it.



Bonus TIPS for Successful Posting

Try a Search First
It is highly recommended that a Search be done on your topic before posting, as many questions have been answered in prior posts. As with any search engine, the shorter the search term, the more "hits" will be returned, but the more specific the search term is, the greater the relevance of those "hits". Searching for "table" might well return every message on the board while "tablesum" would greatly restrict the number of messages returned.

When you do post
First, make sure you are posting your question in the correct forum. For example, if you post an issue regarding Desktop applications on the Mobile & Browser Applications board , not only will your question not be seen by the appropriate audience, it may also be removed or relocated.

The more detail you provide about your problem or question, the more likely someone is to understand your request and be able to help. A sample database with a minimum of records (and its support files, zipped together) will make it much easier to diagnose issues with your application. Screen shots of error messages are especially helpful.

When explaining how to reproduce your problem, please be as detailed as possible. Describe every step, click-by-click and keypress-by-keypress. Otherwise when others try to duplicate your problem, they may do something slightly different and end up with different results.

A note about attachments
You may only attach one file to each message. Attachment file size is limited to 2MB. If you need to include several files, you may do so by zipping them into a single archive.

If you forgot to attach your files to your post, please do NOT create a new thread. Instead, reply to your original message and attach the file there.

When attaching screen shots, it is best to attach an image file (.BMP, .JPG, .GIF, .PNG, etc.) or a zip file of several images, as opposed to a Word document containing the screen shots. Because Word documents are prone to viruses, many message board users will not open your Word file, therefore limiting their ability to help you.

Similarly, if you are uploading a zipped archive, you should simply create a .ZIP file and not a self-extracting .EXE as many users will not run your EXE file.
See more
See less

New Challenge

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    New Challenge

    There are Nine Fields each 1 c. There are two buttons if you press one of them it will put a random Constanant letter into the first empty field press it again and the next field gets filled. Press the second button and this would put in a Vowel into the next empty field. The two buttons can be pressed in any order. This is done till all Nine fields are filled. Press a third button to get the Alpha brain to kick into action. Now you have 30 seconds to find the longest proper word in the english dictionary. Humans can do it can Alpha? Because the letters are so random it may be that the logest word that can be found is only five or six letters.

    Any takers?

    Keith Hubert
    London.
    Regards
    Keith Hubert
    Alpha Guild Member
    London.
    KHDB Management Systems
    Skype = keith.hubert


    For your day-to-day Needs, you Need an Alpha Database!

    #2
    RE: New Challenge

    I take it you can rearange the nine letters to form the longest word combination. Would you also want to know the number of longest words. That is say you can have 15 words each 6 letters.

    bob sullivan

    Comment


      #3
      RE: New Challenge

      Hi Robert

      Yes all the letters can be aranged to make best use of them. It is better to get one seven letter word than any number of six letters as only one word actually scores. This is a little bit like Scrabble, but without the board and against the clock.

      Keith Hubert
      London.
      Regards
      Keith Hubert
      Alpha Guild Member
      London.
      KHDB Management Systems
      Skype = keith.hubert


      For your day-to-day Needs, you Need an Alpha Database!

      Comment


        #4
        RE: New Challenge

        Alpha can't do it, but people can't either. You wouldn't be able to recognize a word that you don't know. You may think the longest word in

        absyzygyo

        is "bays" or "gabs" or "bags" or "soya" or "bogs" but that would only mean that you didn't recognize "syzygy".

        There are 362,880 possible permutations of 9 letters, each of which would have to be checked against a dictionary. Then there are also the same number of distinct 8-letter words, somewhat fewer 7-letter, etc. Each one would have to be checked against a comprehensive dictionary.
        - Peter

        Comment


          #5
          RE: New Challenge

          >>

          I suppose that's possible...by the way, what language is this, anyway? I think I injured myself trying to pronounce it.

          Comment


            #6
            RE: New Challenge

            Hi All

            Yes Peter is correct the mixed up letters would have to checked against a dictionary, but as the words from a dictionary can be sorted into size order the the number to to match should be reduced.

            Here are nine letters that make an every day word.

            U Y C I B T I P L a human can get this. Even you Steve. Isn't there a spell checker in the new version that could be used?

            Keith Hubert
            London.
            Regards
            Keith Hubert
            Alpha Guild Member
            London.
            KHDB Management Systems
            Skype = keith.hubert


            For your day-to-day Needs, you Need an Alpha Database!

            Comment


              #7
              RE: New Challenge

              You would have to clarify any answers as "based on" a certain dictionary or spell checker. The biggest problem is not the root words i.e. "plenty" but their derivitives i.e. "plentiful" which may not be directly listed.

              While this might be like scrabble (I cheat at scrabble and I am a chemist so therefore I can't spell-thus symbols and formulas) this is posible only to a point.

              Comment


                #8
                RE: New Challenge

                Hi Robert

                This is a simple case of sorting some mixed up letters to find the largest matching proper word in the dictionary that is on the computer. Not sounds like or the root of. I gave the example of nine letters that make an every day word. The clue is, this is something that Alpha wants a lot of. U Y C I B I T L P

                Keith Hubert
                London.
                Regards
                Keith Hubert
                Alpha Guild Member
                London.
                KHDB Management Systems
                Skype = keith.hubert


                For your day-to-day Needs, you Need an Alpha Database!

                Comment


                  #9
                  RE: New Challenge

                  oh, why not.

                  I like publicity, too :P

                  Tom Lyon

                  Comment


                    #10
                    RE: New Challenge

                    Well done Tom. Give the man a Coconut!!

                    I knew a human could do it. Now can we make Alpha do it?

                    Keith Hubert
                    London.
                    Regards
                    Keith Hubert
                    Alpha Guild Member
                    London.
                    KHDB Management Systems
                    Skype = keith.hubert


                    For your day-to-day Needs, you Need an Alpha Database!

                    Comment


                      #11
                      RE: New Challenge

                      hmmm

                      One could search through a database to find all words commonly used in it. That would be a short list. If I had an idea of what you wanted to do, I might be able to brain-storm. I've seen A5 do some things it wasn't capable of doing. I see no reason why this should be unattainable just from a technical standpoint. I mean, Steve Dentler blew my mind with how he solved my recent problem by linking a table to itself. Creativity can solve more problems than a database could ever imagine :)

                      Tom Lyon

                      Comment


                        #12
                        RE: New Challenge

                        >>

                        To tell the truth, Keith, it's just too difficult to think about this problem....without having a billing address!

                        Comment


                          #13
                          RE: New Challenge

                          Keith,

                          Using your "UYCIBITLP" as an example, I think (No, I'm not checking) that this script will provide all possible groupings of "Words." To complete the challenge, you'll need to come over and type all the words in your Funk & Wagnall into a table that I can test against. Please bring your own lunch and not to worry, the dog will only attack if you move.


                          a="uycibitlp"
                          for j = 1 to 9
                          for i = 1 to 9
                          x=substr(a,i,j)
                          y = strtran(a,x,"",1,1)
                          b = x+y
                          for k = 1 to 9
                          possible_word = substr(b,1,k)
                          trace.writeln(possible_word)
                          next
                          next
                          next

                          Comment


                            #14
                            RE: New Challenge

                            Hi Steve

                            I love puppy dogs. I eat them for Lunch. This was a good try but the script just repeats the same nine letter combination starting with the next letter nine times over. So the correct answer was not found. The total number of word combinations of nine letters is 9^9=362880. The correct word would be in there.

                            Keith Hubert
                            London.
                            Regards
                            Keith Hubert
                            Alpha Guild Member
                            London.
                            KHDB Management Systems
                            Skype = keith.hubert


                            For your day-to-day Needs, you Need an Alpha Database!

                            Comment


                              #15
                              RE: New Challenge

                              I know, I know. It was a miserable failure. I'm enclosing a full refund.

                              Comment

                              Working...
                              X